zlacker

>>lazycr+(OP)
The WHO is a useless organization. For political reasons, it will be necessary to engage, but hopefully US authorities will not treat it as an information source.

The US should use its own primary sources in future to evaluate disease spread. China will lie to the WHO and the WHO will protect it.

But to know the truth, we should use our modern equivalents of Key Hole. There is no truth but that which you have examined yourself.

>>renewi+17
There is no winning with you... Of course it cannot be too powerful, because then nationalists would scream bloody murder and refuse to have anything to do with it.

The WHO is a forum to coordinate strategy and exchange information. Obviously, this requires a minimum of good faith, which seems to be difficult for some countries (yes, particularly dictatorships). But even then, it is better to have them within, collaborating on their terms, than to leave them outside, in which case it would be even harder to get any information out of them.

So yes, China will lie, which will make life worse for epidemiologists and governments across the globe, but not as worse as it could be with China being entirely uncooperative.

It is not the world police, and it won’t come anywhere and do anything against the local government’s wishes. Otherwise the screams world be even louder, and justifiably so.

>>kergon+3d
>But even then, it is better to have them within, collaborating on their terms, than to leave them outside, in which case it would be even harder to get any information out of them.

I tend to agree with this sentiment, however I'm always on the fence as to if acting on no new information is better than acting on false or misleading information. If you can't trust the source the data is almost worthless. Anyways, that's for self reported information. Getting any direct access to gather independent information I'd say is nearly always valuable unless it's also targeted with disinformation campaigns.