Taiwan Vice-President schools WHO Director-General on epidemic prevention and control
Taiwan’s Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) called out World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on his unprofessional interpretation of data, after world health body claimed a 3.4% mortality rate from COVID-19.
Vice-President Chen, a qualified epidemiologist, who helped steer Taiwan through the SARS crisis of 2003 while serving as Minister of Health, made the statement in an interview with Mirror Weekly.
Tedros claimed in a speech at WHO on March 3 that, “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”
The statement was made after previous estimates by the “global health body” were estimated as around 2%.
In the WHO official statement, officials admitted that they didn’t know how the so-called COVID-19 behaves, or how to treat it. “It’s not like influenza,” the global health officials claimed.
“This is a unique virus, with unique features. This virus is not influenza,” Tedros said Monday. “We are in uncharted territory.”
Chen Chien-jen, a qualified public health professional, and a democratically-elected vice-president of a democratic country who happens to be excluded by the World Health Organization pointed out that Tedros “made a layman’s speech,” using erroneous methods of calculating the global mortality rate.
“It’s like not seeing the forest for the trees,” VP DR Chen said.
“WHO failed to alert the world to the threat as it arose, then caused unnecessary panic” Chen suggested.
Vice-President Chen, provided further explanations via a Facebook post today
1. WHO lists the number of confirmed cases, and the number of deaths, without taking the country’s population into account.
2. Different countries use different criteria for testing: Some only test people suffering serious symptoms; others test anyone with mild or even no symptoms.
Dr Chen pointed out that the testing regime used in different countries will turn up different mortality rates depending on the testing methodology. Testing a broad spectrum of the population would produce more confirmed cases of infection, with a lower mortality rate, while limiting tests to people suffering severe symptoms, would increase the perceived mortality rate.
Cover Picture: Now News.
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