zlacker

>>lazycr+(OP)
First gen Chinese, grew up in NA. Have contact with relatives "on the ground".

My own experience: Don't ever trust the Chinese government on issues that could potentially involve the reputation of the party. Note that I'm not saying don't trust what CCP says, ever (sometimes they actually do good things) - just not on issues that involve anything to do with how the world might perceive them.

Which is exactly what this issue is about.

That's not to say we have compelling evidence that this was a lab virus, either. I think, for me, it's a, "we don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if it was a lab virus".

>>ttz+rc
The funny thing in this case is there was no reason for the CCP to cover this up. If they had just responded to the outbreak instead of trying to cover it up initially and been a little more open with the international community they would have been lauded for their handling of the situation.

>>fiftyf+YT
> If they had just responded to the outbreak instead of trying to cover it up initially and been a little more open with the international community they would have been lauded for their handling of the situation

Are we talking about China or the Trump administration?

>>crater+v21
Seriously. The amount of concern over what China, at the time regarded as a belligerent untrustworthy power, fails to explain why western governments took so long to take any mitigating measures and then some continued to actively oppose mitigating measures while still insisting this is somehow something China is going to actually fix on their end.

The tone and tenor of the investigation has always been to find a way to absolve local politicians of responsibility for their incompetence in managing this issue by blaming China.

All for the punchline of "so you're then going to do what to China in response?" Of which the answer is nothing. The genocide of the Uyigur people certainly hasn't motivated any strong international action.

>>XorNot+E41
World governments were formally advised by the WHO to not impose any travel restrictions. The WHO also laughably said there is no "human transmission" of the virus.

The WHO chief just blindly parroted whatever the CCP said for nearly 2 months while the pandemic spread and got out of control. That man deserves to be stripped out of his position. But he will face no justice for the many, many lives he has taken.

The entire timeline of tweets and statements by the WHO is open on the internet - don't see the need to quote them verbatim here.

The only nation in the world raising flags was Taiwan - and their warnings were ignored until it was too late.

>>lenkit+j91
This paints a rather colored picture. The initial advisory from 14 Jan 2020 [1] presents their case that

    "Based on the available information there is no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission."

The reader can decide if that was a fair assesment at the time. The text was followed by

    "Additional investigation is needed to ascertain the presence of human-to-human transmission, modes of transmission, common source of exposure and the presence of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases that are undetected. It is critical to review all available information to fully understand the potential transmissibility among humans."

A week later, on 22 Jan 2020, WHO followed up with a confirmation of human transmission [2]

    "Data collected through detailed epidemiological investigation and through the deployment of the new test kit nationally suggests that human-to-human transmission is taking place in Wuhan. More analysis of the epidemiological data is needed to understand the full extent of human-to-human transmission."

(Of course it was impossibly to deny that by then, since Wuhan was locked down the same day.)

In my small European countries, no public measures were taken based on all this info until early March (more than 2 weeks after Northern Italy was overwhelmed, while our countrymen had been traveling all over Europe), because there were no confirmed cases in our country yet. The only initial measures in early March were advices to "wash your hands", "don't shake hands" and "sneeze in your elbows".

So I don't think the WHO confirming human transmission on 14 Jan instead of 22 Jan would have changed a thing. People only take painful measures when bad things happen to people they know, and politicians only when bad things happen to people in their own country. Trying to shift the blame on the WHO or China is not very common amongst politicians here (though anecdotally it's not rare among citizens), that seems to be mostly an American (specifically, Republican party) thing.

[1] https://www.who.int/csr/don/14-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...

[2] https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit...

>>em500+0o1
It's not just 14th Jan. The WHO had more than sufficient data at its disposal to avoid making misleading statements. All warnings from Taiwan in December were actively ignored.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/taiwan-wa...

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3904054

Please note that the WHO confirmation statement on 22nd Jan came about after independent confirmation of human to human transmission and only after China's health ministry itself confirmed human to human transmission on Jan 20th. Just a mere week after strong denial, the casualties could not be hidden anymore after several whistleblowers spoke up and China was forced to backtrack.

The WHO merely acknowledged what China stated with a wishy-washy "more data is needed". I suspect if China hadn't itself come clean they would have simply followed what the CCP stated well into the future!

If the WHO had chosen to acknowledge Taiwan's concern in December, performed the most minimum of followups and raised the alarm early, this disaster could have been nipped in the bud. A lot of second and third-world nations put faith in the WHO and outside the EU and the US, the anger at the WHO is palpable.