1/ "The WHO has a budget around the size of a large U.S. hospital. It's about one quarter of the budget of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," says Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University

2/ and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, which is an independent agency that works with WHO.’ -- NPR.

3/ The WHO is the only organisation in the world with the expertise to reliably direct pandemics of this kind, and has a proven track record of doing so since its inception in 1948 (smallpox, for one).

4/ If they were “in the pocket of Big Pharma,” surely they would have AT LEAST more money or even ONE example of having been led in an unethical direction. (Their budget is $2.4 billion a year, remember that)

5/ They stand in a multi-partisan, international role wherein they direct and advise with no real means of power. The WHO has undoubtedly, like any organization, made mistakes in its history - but not in the ways in which they are smeared to have done.

6/ The conspiracy theories are baseless in my opinion, and it is typical of the president that he engages in them. Not everything ‘established’ is some nefarious plot by a wicked “establishment.”

7/ These whispers can pose as much a danger to our democracy as is the propaganda and conspiratorial falsehoods screamed by the far right.

8/ I have a well-established record of healthy skepticism about Big Pharma, but I don’t believe the cynicism expressed by the extreme WHO critics is justified.