Perhaps you’ll say that China’s rulers were deceptive because they were embarrassed, concerned for their country’s image. That’s understandable - which is not a synonym for forgivable. But there’s a more disturbing possibility. President Xi knew the disease would seriously weaken China’s economy. He knew that if he helped other countries, those countries might suffer little or no damage. Ben Lowsen, a longtime China expert at the Pentagon, wrote in The Diplomat that Mr. Xi may have asked himself this question: “Why should China suffer the effects of a pandemic while others stayed safe - and increase their strength relative to China - based on China’s own costly experience?” We cannot assume, Mr. Lowsen added, that Mr. Xi would decide against withholding “support from the international community to ensure that China would not suffer alone.” That would be immoral and, one might argue, criminally negligent. But don’t expect the International Criminal Court to take up the case. The ICC is too busy accusing the United States and Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nor is it likely that the U.N. Human Rights Council will say or do anything. The UNHCR has long been dominated by egregious abusers of human rights. Over many years, a growing list of transnational organizations have been taking Americans’ money and spitting in Americans’ eyes, under the direction of regimes hostile to America. China’s rulers continue to lie. Not long ago, MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) reported that China’s Arabic language television network is still telling its 14 million viewers that U.S Army personnel visiting China last October probably brought the virus with them.

It now seems unlikely that the virus destroying lives and livelihoods around the world began in a wildlife-for-supper market in Wuhan. More plausible: That it began in a laboratory in that same Chinese city. The evidence that has come to light so far suggests the pathogen was neither genetically engineered nor released as a bioweapon, but that it got loose by accident or, more bluntly, due to incompetence. Chinese officials deny that. At least as early as January, China’s rulers must have been aware that they were dealing with a local epidemic that could become a global pandemic. At that point, if they’d shared what they knew, and prevented those infected from traveling abroad, less damage would have been done. According to a study, had interventions in China been conducted just three weeks earlier, transmission of COVID-19 could have been cut by 95 percent. Instead, China’s rulers lied. On Jan. 14, they claimed the disease was not being readily transmitted human to human. On Jan. 19, they declared the virus “controllable” and its spread “preventable.” They silenced those who knew better, including Chinese doctors, Chinese journalists and even Wuhan’s mayor. Some were arrested and charged with “fabricating, disseminating and spreading rumors.” Some have disappeared. The World Health Organization, a U.N. body funded largely by American taxpayers, echoed such statements and praised the Chinese government’s response, including the “very rare leadership” of President Xi Jinping. The WHO resisted recommending restrictions on trade with or travel to China. Not until March 11 did it declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

Such politicized decision-making is consistent with someone who for decades has been a highly ideological actor. Mr. Tedros was not only Ethiopia’s health minister, but also a member of the Politburo in a government whose roots were Marxist with close ties to China. Indeed, Mr, Tedros’ WHO tenure is marked by placing politics over health. A month after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr. Tedros removed Dr. Mario Raviglione, the 25-year veteran and well-regarded head of WHO’s Tuberculosis Program and replaced him with a Russian official. If there is no accountability for such gross mismanagement, promoting public health by WHO becomes a secondary avocation to burnishing China’s global image. To that end, donors must apply pressure akin to that used to promote reform at the Global Fund. As the prime author of numerous global health and human rights laws, I recognize and respect the importance of WHO, but believe systemic reform is absolutely necessary. Moreover we, and other donor nations, can leverage funding to demand transparency and accountability, and check the rogue influence of China. When the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) cracked down on whistleblowers who uncovered corruption, the United States withheld 15 percent of its assessed contribution to insist that WIPO adopt state-of-the-art whistleblower protections and implement reforms. As the COVID-19 crisis underscores, China’s influence at WHO has cost lives. The world needs a better, totally transparent and accountable WHO ? and urgently needs it now.

China lied to WHO, while WHO pushed China’s false narrative about the disease - saying it was not very communicable and well under control in China, and therefore there was no need for travel bans. According to a recent study, however, China’s lack of transparency and WHO’s reliance on China’s disclosures likely caused a 20-fold increase in cases worldwide. If we want to restore the effectiveness of WHO, first we must promote transparency. The failure of WHO - especially Director-General Tedros - to demand that China permit access to all information in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic requires serious scrutiny. There is little likelihood that WHO or U.N. mechanisms such as the Office of Internal Oversight Services will conduct meaningful investigations without pressure. Donor countries must demand that WHO produce its files - including its correspondence with Chinese officials - to an independent auditing unit. Donor pressure on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria following discovery of corruption in 2011 helped turn that agency around - including by replacing its head, thereby restoring trust in the Global Fund’s ability to combat disease effectively. Following WHO’s bungling of 2014 Ebola outbreak, there should have been a thorough commitment to reform. At the last election for director-general in 2016, however, the reform candidate that the U.K. proffered lost after lobbying by China on behalf of Mr. Tedros. At the time of the election, there were credible allegations that Mr. Tedros suppressed information about cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia for political reasons.

Seventy-two years ago, on April 7, 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) was founded to organize global responses to infectious disease pandemics that respect no national boundaries. Its effectiveness depends heavily on the good will of its member states and the competence and trustworthiness of its leadership. The coronavirus pandemic revealed China’s malign influence on the leadership of WHO, and a glaring accountability and transparency deficit at WHO centered around Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Mr. Tedros dutifully echoed Chinese talking points on person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus while ignoring Taiwan’s contrary evidence, whom the WHO ostracized because of China. This isn’t the first time WHO has minimalized a major infectious disease emergency due to political pressure. In 2014, WHO dragged its feet for months before declaring the Ebola outbreak an emergency due to pressure from African governments fearing economic fallout. In March 2014, Doctors Without Borders described the international response to Ebola as “non-existent,” while WHO waited until August 2014, long after the epidemic was out of control, to take any action. When the bill came due for that blunder, more than 11,000 were dead. When the deadly coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, China’s first response was a campaign of human rights abuses suppressing truth-telling. China then leveraged its influence at WHO to minimize the damage to China’s image globally. WHO praised China for “openness to sharing information with WHO and other countries.”

China and Russia are not among the commonplace coronavirus panic-peddlers. They are also the principal sources of disinformation on the pandemic. From infection rates to fatalities, from the origins of the virus to casting blame for its global spread, China and Russia have spun webs of disinformation worthy of the Soviet Union. The Chinese regime claims fewer coronavirus infections than the United States, Spain or Italy. Because of China’s history of outright lies and well-spun propaganda, we can’t rely on those data. The government data is further challenged by the empirical evidence at hand. It appears, for example, that the number of deaths must be vastly higher, especially in Wuhan itself. Statements by Wuhan residents to Radio Free Asia have said that the death toll in their city alone is vastly higher than the national total reported by Xi Jinping’s regime. Mr. Xi’s regime’s propaganda has been picked up by most of the Western media as proof of China’s claims. That disinformation is the basis for media claims that the United States has the most coronavirus cases on Earth. China has also claimed that the virus was the product of the U.S. military and somehow spread in China by American athletes. Fortunately, the U.S. media haven’t swallowed that whopper, at least yet. Another bit of Chinese propaganda alleged that the virus originated in Italy. An Internet hashtag making that allegation has reportedly been viewed half a billion times. Meanwhile, China has expelled several U.S. news organizations in its attempt to block accurate reporting of coronavirus infections and deaths.

North Korea reported recently that despite testing, and amid quarantining, not one confirmed case of the coronavirus has been found. Not one. This, despite the fact that North Korea’s border countries, South Korea and China, have been hit hard by the virus. And the World Health Organization goes - yep, that’s right. That’s amazing. North Korea sits right at the door of the country responsible for bringing the world coronavirus in the first place, China. And North Korea has got nothing? Seems the vaccine makers might want to head North Korea’s way then, given the country’s natural shield. Perhaps something in the air? But it’s embarrassing that the WHO, absent any pushback at all, would buy this report. No wonder President Donald Trump wants to defund the global agency; it’s far from scientifically sound - even further from putting the world’s health first, above politics. “A U.N. human rights expert has called for lifting international sanctions against countries including North Korea - imposed for its nuclear and missile programs - to ensure that food supplies reach hungry populations during the pandemic,” Reuters wrote. But how curious: If North Korea isn’t being impacted by the coronavirus, why the worry about stalled food supply chains? Yet this, from Yahoo News: “North Korea continues to insist it has no cases of COVID-19.” That just defies logic. And that the WHO would seemingly defend the logically indefensible only underscores the politicization of the global body.

Other examples. The numerous cases over alleged climate-change damages. And the U.K. being challenged at the World Trade Organization by 15 other nations for compensation due to delaying its Brexit process. Many claims have been successfully made by groups against the United States, such as the Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, and by victims of forced sterilization. Reparations are currently being sought for descendants of African-American slaves. So, however difficult it may be, should China one day be made to take responsibility for any negligence over COVID-19? It is not that the communist state doesn’t have the resources, and the way that numerous national economies are currently hemorrhaging money, those governments may be left with little option than to ask China for compensation, rather than loans. However, it was not alone in initially playing down the threat of the virus. On March 4, a World Health Organization (WHO) official, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, stated, “We are eight weeks into this outbreak.” Does the WHO really believe it only began on Jan. 8? The WHO has also consistently advised against travel or trade restrictions on China, and member countries are supposed to heed that guidance. Singapore defied it early on. Italy and America followed later, but by then Chinese New Year had happened, so many Chinese would have already returned from visiting their homeland. Taiwan, which isn’t in the WHO, enforced its flight ban days before that major holiday, whereas the U.K. applied those WHO travel rules and allowing flights in from China, Italy and Iran.

So, will China ever be held responsible for withholding information about the onset of the COVID-19 virus? On Dec. 30, it reprimanded a brave young doctor for merely sharing his concerns online with his professional colleagues. Chinese officials accused Dr. Li Wenliang of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order.” He was forced to issue a statement denouncing his warning as “an unfounded and illegal rumour.” Soon afterwards, the 34-year-old husband and father tragically died after being infected by his “rumor.” Dr. Li made the ultimate sacrifice while helping others. He embodied the very best of Chinese character, unlike the officials who tried to silence him. That cover-up lasted from December through to early January and maybe it began even earlier. This could make the Chinese Communist Party open to negligence claims on a scale that dwarfs the corporate cases mentioned above. The rate of infections and deaths around the world are now surely much higher than expected. The resulting costs will run into trillions of dollars and no-one knows when it will end. Trying to bring a claim would not be easy as no nation has ever been held responsible for the outbreak of a disease, unless it was done intentionally. One argument China could use in its defense is that, even with earlier intervention, COVID-19 may still have spread around the world at some future point. And, it is easier to sue a corporation than a country, but not impossible. Examples include war reparations that are paid by defeated nations after acts of aggression.

While the world is in the midst of this coronavirus outbreak, few are talking about accountability. There isn’t even a consensus on what to call it. Early on, CNN and NBC referred to it as “China Flu” or “Wuhan Flu,” until someone warned this could be a racial slur. In horror, those news networks realized they had walked into their own identity politics trap and had been “hoisted by their own petard.” So, those same reporters brazenly began calling Mr. Trump a racist for repeating the same terminology ? as Fox News host Tucker Carlson has since reminded them. The Chinese government’s view is that, although the flu virus may have started in Wuhan, this doesn’t mean it was “made in China.” This was then ramped up by a surprisingly undiplomatic claim from within the Chinese foreign ministry that the virus was created by the U.S. Army. In contrast, some very brave scientists at the South China University of Technology claimed it escaped from a disease research laboratory in Wuhan city after one of the workers there got infected. But there could be an altogether different reason for China wanting to distance itself from owning the virus. In America, BP was forced to pay around $65 billion in compensation after it was found guilty of negligence for the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010. Volkswagen has already paid around $30 billion around the world for cheating on emissions tests and that figure is set to grow substantially due to claims now being heard in Germany.