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Editor of Medical Journal Cited in Trump’s Wild Letter to the WHO Has Debunked It

Lancet editor Richard Horton said one of Trump’s major claims is completely wrong.

If you’re going to write a very long letter directed at scientists and then publish it for everyone on Twitter, it’s best to check your facts first. The editor of one of the medical journals cited in Donald Trump’s four-page warning to the World Health Organization has debunked one of the major planks of the president’s argument. Trump’s Monday letter to the WHO’s director-general warned that he was considering pulling U.S. funding and membership permanently. In the first of many bullet points, Trump states that The Lancet medical journal reported in December 2019 that the coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan—but that the WHO ignored those reports. Not so, according to Lancet Editor Richard Horton. He wrote: “Dear President Trump - You cite The Lancet in your attack on WHO. Please let me correct the record. The Lancet did not publish any report in early December, 2019, about a virus spreading in Wuhan. The first reports we published were from Chinese scientists on Jan 24, 2020.”