Despite evidence that China's the country of origin of the COVID-19 outbreak, and thatr it may have even covered up its own role in the pandemic, the nation was elected to the World Health Organization's executive board Friday.
The move raised eyebrows among critics, if not world leaders.
U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer denounced the move over China's early handling of the virus, including the silencing of Chinese doctors who wanted to share the dangers of COVID-19 early on.
"This is the regime that crushed those in Wuhan like Dr. Li Wenliang who courageously tried to warn the world about the coronavirus," Neuer tweeted.
"Not a single democracy spoke out to object," Neuer lamented in an ensuing tweet.
Former President Donald Trump had attempted to pull U.S. funding from the WHO for their alleged covering up the COVID-19 virus origins at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab, but President Joe Biden restored "regular engagement" and vowed to "fulfill its financial obligations," Dr. Anthony Fauci announced mere hours after Biden's inauguration.
China is alleged to have provided false information to the WHO during the outbreak, including obstructing attempts at independent investigations.
Li was a Wuhan doctor silenced by the Chinese Communist Party when he sought to warn the world of the initial reports of a new SARs-like virus called COVID-19. He would die of the disease in February 2020 at the age of 34, according to reports.
"The World Health Organization has lost all credibility," The Spectator's Ross Clark wrote Saturday after the executive board decision.
"Let's be honest: Is there anyone out there who has faith in the ability of the World Health Organization (WHO) to tackle a future pandemic? Any lingering hope that the WHO might be an organization fit to be trusted with global heath concerns has pretty well evaporated with the election, by acclamation, of China as one of the 12 members of its executive board on Friday."
Clark denounced the 12-member executive board's makeup.
"America and Canada apart, it is stuffed with small countries, many with lousy human rights records, which will not dare to challenge China or which will not have the political clout to do so," Clark concluded. "The prospects for future pandemics do not look good."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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