China, the WHO and the power grab that fuelled a pandemic
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Did the World Health Organisation miss its chance to stop Covid-19? More than a year and a half into the pandemic, we're no closer to a definitive answer on the origins of the virus. In this episode, The Sunday Times Insight investigation team exposes China's ten-year campaign to seize power within the World Health Organisation, and the impact that had on the scale of the pandemic.
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Guests:
-Jonathan Calvert, editor, Sunday Times Insight.
-George Arbuthnott, deputy editor, Sunday Times Insight.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Clips: PBS, AAP, NBC, France 24, WHO.
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Transcript
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| 0:28.8 | on Sundays online only. |
| 0:34.6 | We all know the first cases of Covid-19 were found in Wuhan, |
| 0:40.4 | but was it inevitable that the virus would spread across the world? Could it, in those early days, |
| 0:48.4 | have been contained within China? Rather than saying publicly, China is claiming that there |
| 0:54.6 | is no human to human transmission, the WHO just repeated it as fact. |
| 0:59.9 | The Sunday Times insight team have been investigating the World Health Organization's response to |
| 1:05.5 | the pandemic. They are very concerned about the politicisation of the WHO and the way |
| 1:10.8 | countries can seemingly buy influence. They've found that the body that's tasked with looking |
| 1:16.7 | after the World Health seriously malfunctioned in those opening weeks when humanity most needed |
| 1:24.8 | it to come to their rescue. But why? You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the |
| 1:31.8 | Sunday Times. I'm Manvin Rana. Today, China, the WHO and the power grab that fueled a pandemic. |
| 1:48.4 | Meet the Journalistic Double Act behind some of the biggest and most revealing investigations |
| 1:54.2 | during the pandemic. I'm Jonathan Calvert. I'm the editor of the Sunday Times insight team. |
| 1:59.8 | I'm George Buffnut and I'm the deputy editor of the insight team. |
| 2:04.1 | You may have heard our podcasts with them on their investigations into government failings |
| 2:09.2 | in the handling of Covid-19, the number of code meetings that Boris Johnson missed, |
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