If that isn't clear evidence that they are beyond useless, then I don't know what is.
Alas, sometimes large bureaucracies take a while to catch up with common sense. (See also, fax machines).
There actually is solid, undeniable evidence now, which is great! Let's see how they apply that in the future.
Someone didn't listen to common sense and the available Intelligence also.
Trump did not call COVID19 a hoax. He called what Democrats said about his administration's response to the pandemic a "hoax", akin to the "impeachment hoax" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/joe-biden-trum...).
https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6...
[paywalled - but going via a google search gets round it]
'Wuhan virus probably is spreading between people (2020-01-04)
Wuhan officials also said on Friday that no evidence of human to human transmission has been found so far.
But Ho said it is possible that the virus can be passed from person to person, and this is likely to have already happened in the Wuhan outbreak.'
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1500994-20200104.h...
'Wuhan pneumonia: what we know about the new virus and how you can stop yourself getting sick (2020-1-9)
Dr Ho Pak-leung, from the University of Hong Kong, said the new coronavirus was believed to be spread through droplets.
"The public should wear disposable surgical masks in crowded places," Ho said. "They should also clean their hands frequently."
https://today.line.me/hk/article/Wuhan+pneumonia+what+we+kno...
'Q&A with HK microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung who helped confirm coronavirus' human spread
Tell us what you saw in Wuhan (on 17th Jan).
Let me tell you what I think is the truth. All the places we visited in Wuhan looked like they were putting on a show. Whatever we asked them, they answered as if they had prepared hard with well-thought-out replies. However, Zhong Nanshan was extremely sharp - he kept asking follow-up questions, like: "Is there anything else?" "Are there any more cases?" "Is it really like you're saying, just that many cases?"
Eventually, under pressure, they relented and told us it seemed that there was one patient in the neurosurgery department who had infected 14 medical workers. But they also said those medical staff had not had their diagnoses confirmed.
...
We met a deputy-level national leader and officials from the National Health Commission. They were all quite frank. Our expert group reported that the situation was severe, and there must have been cases of human transmission, and that preventive measures needed to be taken immediately.'
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/exclusive-qa-wit...
> https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6...
The Guardian disagrees: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/caught-in-a-su...
> “Why did the WHO Ignore an email from Taiwanese health officials in late December alerting them to the possibility that coronvirus could be transmitted between humans?” the president asked in a tweet on Friday, echoing a claim made by Taipei.
> However, the Taiwanese email appears to have made no such warning. It was sent from Taiwan’s CDC to its WHO liaison officer on 31 December, hours after the first official report of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan were published online.
> According to the text provided to the Guardian, the email said: “News resources today indicate that at least seven, atypical pneumonia cases were reported in China.”
> It restates the details of Chinese report, adding “I would greatly appreciate it if you have relevant information to share with us.”
> The email did not contain new information, and certainly nothing about human-to-human transmission. The WHO had picked up the same report on the night of 30 December and was urgently seeking more information. On 1 January it activated its incident management support team, putting the organisation on an emergency footing.
I feel like this whole "it said/it said" thing with all these various organizations and their shifting messages is going to take years, at least, to disentangle.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3904054
https://news.yahoo.com/taiwan-accuses-failing-heed-warning-1...
'The officials said doctors in Taiwan had learned from their colleagues in mainland China that medical staff were falling ill from the as-yet unnamed coronavirus, a sign of human-to-human transmission that Taiwan says it passed on to the WHO and Chinese authorities on December 31. However, the WHO did not communicate the information with other nations.'
So I guess it comes down to semantics; whether a mention of atypical cases and request for confirmation is effectively a warning - or not.
Whatever the interpretation, it seems like the lack of response from the WHO to that email indicates the WHO were in the dark at the time, or not willing to share what they had. If the former then the email could be said to have formed a warning of some kind.
>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/caught-in-a-su...
I love how The Guardian tries to twist the facts in the service of an anti Trump screed. Personally I feel the report from Reuters was far more balanced (it doesn't even mention Trump)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-taiwan...
(curious about the downvotes btw...)
“News sources today indicate that at least seven cases of atypical pneumonia were reported in Wuhan, China. Her health authorities responded to the media that they did not believe the cases were SARS; however, the examples are still under study and the cases were isolated for treatment. I would greatly appreciate if you have relevant information to share with us. Thank you very much for your attention in this matter. ”
But on January 30th, WHO said there was human to human transmission, and it was dangerous, officially declared a public health emergency.
At what point would you say CDC started taking it seriously?
> At what point would you say CDC started taking it seriously?
I’ll let you know.
The alarm was not being widely sounded by anyone but the WHO before then either. (Actual nation states DO have intelligence agencies who could have been analyzing this threat, btw).
However, on January 30th when they did sound the alarm -- countries that paid attention to this and took the threat seriously then are, still, doing much better than countries that waited months to take it seriously, or which still aren't taking it seriously. This shows that the WHO in fact did something useful.
The U.S. pulling out of the WHO is meant to distract from the fact that U.S. didn't take it seriously even when the WHO did sound the alarm, somehow blaming the WHO for the U.S. ignoring the WHO. Eliminating the WHO and having no world health organization at all wouldn't fix this problem, and would harm rather than help the global capacity for pandemic response. Perhaps they should have sent out an alarm earlier and not doing so was some kind of incomptency (I'm not convinced, but perhaps), but they still in fact played an important role and did send out the alarm far far before the U.S. paid any attention to it; sending out the alarm earlier wouldn't have made much difference for the US, we would have just had more time to ignore it.
I mean, I guess if the U.S. took the money they were giving to the WHO and instead spent it on re-funding the infectious disease monitoring and research in China that we used to fund but stopped at least that would sound like trying to improve monitoring efficacy (whether it's a wise way to do it or not), instead of just bullshit. But we all know that's the opposite of what is happening, in fact, they recently cancelled MORE US-funded research on infectious diseases in China.