zlacker

>>option+(OP)
"The COVID-19 pandemic was avoidable. Any responsible country would have invited world health investigators to Wuhan within days of an outbreak. China instead refused offers of help – including from the United States – and punished brave Chinese doctors, scientists, and journalists who tried to alert the world to the dangers of the virus. Beijing continues today to withhold vital information that scientists need to protect the world from this deadly virus, and the next one."

The above shows this is a political statement.

I happen to agree with this quote. It's also not, as the US administration likes to pretend, any sort of defense of their response to the pandemic. But at the same time, the presence of this quote makes it very clear that this is little more than a political, rather than a fact based statement intended to get to the truth.

It also aligns with what Pompeo is doing in nearly every other delicate situation in the US over the past few weeks. Setting stuff on fire making it as difficult as possible for the incoming administration to deal with.

>>addict+s3
It's not a political statement if it's factual. Or rather, it's 'always political between states' but the legitimacy of the facts give it credibility.

China's initial dismissal and coverup of the spread of the virus, and their subsequent misinformation and lack of transparency, and finally, their attempts to stop an investigation into COVID origins are really seriously bad things.

To boot - they've made a political appointment to the head of the WHO and have been trying to obtain leverage within that organization of years.

It's actually reasonable that the US demands expulsion of China from the WHO on those grounds, until China plays be the rules. They can't claim 'it's an internal problem' as they always do here. Much like with currency and other things, if they want to be a part of these organizations they have to follow the rules.