Bill Gates defends China’s coronavirus response
Microsoft co-founder pushed back against criticism of China, calling the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic particularly poor compared to others.
TAIPEI (The China Post) — Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates pushed back against criticism of China in a CNN interview on Sunday, stressing that the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic was particularly poor compared to others.
Bill Gates described the criticism of China over the coronavirus outbreak as a “distraction” by the Republicans who have accused China of not being transparent about the origins of the virus.
“China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up,” he told CNN. “They can look back and say where they missed some things.”
Bill Gates claims that criticisms of how China lied and covered up the coronavirus is a “distraction”: “China did a lot of things right at the beginning … they avoided the incredible economic pain … I think there’s a lot of incorrect and unfair things said”
This is all a lie pic.twitter.com/RlbwV0fUcA
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 26, 2020
Gates, whose foundation is the second largest donor to WHO behind the United States, also called World Health Organization a “phenomenal” agency amid the U.S. plans to halt funding to the UN-run global agency responsible for international public health.
“In the retrospective, we’ll see things that WHO could have done better, just like every actor in this whole picture,” he said. “But the WHO has a strong connection with one country. That country is the United States.”
He continued: “The number of CDC people who are there, people who used to work for the CDC, there’s no UN agency more connected to a country than WHO is to CDC.”
As of Sunday, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 928,619 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 32,853 cases from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 2,020 to 52,459.
