Thread by @DrEricDing

📍Listen up- we all respect NZ and its prime minister Jacinda Ardern for crushing the curve? Well she had a key mentor: fmr NZ PM @HelenClarkNZ. Clark also headed @UNDP and now is leading the inquiry of how we botched the pandemic. Good piece. Excerpt 🧵
theguardian.com/world/2020/jul…

2) Clark sat down with @WHO director general @DrTedros in Geneva in mid-February. She says he felt “helpless” to stop the pandemic.

“I think when we replay the record, most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement.”

3) “China was locking down Wuhan and Beijing and thinking back to January and early February it was kind of like that’s happening over there,” Clark says.
“Dr Tedros said to me, ‘There is a very narrow window to avoid a pandemic – but it’s closing fast’.

4) “And he said ‘I don’t know what else I can do – I am screaming every day but no one is listening’. That really chills me … this is the health nuclear accident.”

5) A leader of the Labour party, Clark had three terms in office, and was prime minister of NZ from 1999 to 2008.
She will be co-chairing the investigation with former Liberian president @MaEllenSirleaf, who helped her country escape an Ebola health crisis.

4) Clark’s investigation would look at the effectiveness of WHO work, and how to reform the international institutional response to a pandemic. She and colleagues had already been discussing whether the WHO needed more powers, or the introduction of a “convention on pandemics”.

7) “I think what is very clear to me is that to fight a global pandemic you need global co-operation, you need strong international organisations, you need the WHO to be the best it can be,” Clark said on Friday.

8) “Should countries which sign up to that convention accept that the WHO needs more powerful mechanism than it has at the moment? At the moment it can basically only call on countries to be co-operative.”

9) Clark said an urgent funding boost for the IMF and World Bank was needed, with “huge demand” from more than 100 countries worst-hit by the virus for bailouts, rescue packages and debt waivers.

10) Hat tip to @kentbuse and @DrSenait for highlighting the article. @andreafeigl1 @HealthFinInst.

11) Helen also famously mentored renowned social epidemiologist @DrNataliaLinos, who is a science leader running for US Congress in MA-4th district. Do we need more lawyers or public health leaders right now? secure.actblue.com/donate/natalia…