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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

There is a reason, the U.S. has traditionally had a U.S. WHO representative in China since the first SARS outbreak, well until TRUMP. Trump's removal of the U.S. presence "on-the-ground" made it easy for the Chinese gov't to delay the real-time reporting while they struggled to figure out on their own whether they had something really serious to worry about or not. Covid-19 is not ENTIRELY Trump's fault, but he sure did just about everything he could to make it worse.

I wasn't aware of that. Can you let me know who was the earlier representative and their term period ?

I fully agree that Trump could have handled the virus better. Unfortunately, ALL media attention was focused on his impeachment at the time and he was derided as a racist and tyrant for banning China travel.

He should had the courage to ban all international travel immediately when the virus got to the EU and begun to initiate national readiness. Some nations did this and suffered far less as a result. Sadly, he - like so many national leaders - took the virus seriously far too late.

"Covid-19 is not ENTIRELY Trump's fault" - in what way is it his fault at all? Also, the timeline of events you are sighting is intentionally misleading.

He encouraged people not to wear masks as a lifestyle choice and cultural signalling thing. Some % of transmission rate is directly attributable to him -- he could have said wearing a mask owns the libs and massively helped instead of hurting.

Dr Fauci told people masks where ineffective early on in the pandemic, allegedly for the "altruistic" motive of ensuring "front line" workers don't have issues getting hold of masks. Do you attribute a percent of transmission to him?

The final verdict on the efficacy of masks against this virus is still TBD once we have more information and the passage of time removes the political agenda's that cloud this conversation. Your "own the libs" certainly doesn't help either.

It's creepy how some people keep trying to memory hole what our own health officials said about masks in the early days. I wonder whether they really think this kind of thing flies under the radar or they are so embarrassed they parroted the 'masks are worse than useless' line that they genuinely forgot about that part of the story themselves.

Though IMHO, given the role vitamin D deficiency seems to have on mortality rates, I think the harshest criticism (charges?) should be reserved for any mayor who ordered tanning beds to close in his or her city.

Do you feel the same way about Nancy Pelosi telling people to “come to Chinatown” during the start of the pandemic?

We were supposed to have N95’s available from day 1, but that funding was canceled a decade ago.

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...

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.

What would the anti-China xenophobes be saying if WHO were to say, without sufficient evidence, that human-to-human transmission was happening and it turned out to be mistaken?

Being skeptical is acceptable but not to the extent of rejecting the evidentiary process.

Also, Taiwan News is notably anti-China and is associated with Taiwanese nationalists.

The WHO could have chosen not to ignore Taiwan's warnings and launched their investigation earlier independent of China's claims.

Being skeptical is necessary when considering China's terrible past track record. The SARS epidemic also started with a denial and cover-up by China.

There are many other news sources apart from Taiwan News. You can check out the FT. You can check out Reuters. (Decrying Taiwan News as comprising of anti-Chinese nationalists is rather strange considering the CCP's stance against Taiwan)

https://archive.is/nqiKV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-taiwan...

Please note that even in Feb, the WHO chief was saying travel bans. are not needed https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1...

"The head of the World Health Organization said on Monday there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade” in trying to halt the spread of a coronavirus that has killed 361 people in China, and he lauded China’s efforts to contain it." (real figure as we learnt later was already >10x by that time)

“It’s no reason to really panic now,” he said. “The chances of getting this going to anywhere outside China is very low, and even in China, when you go to other provinces, it’s very low.”

"The WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks"

Taiwan's "warnings" were redundant information already provided by PRC - they had no unique observations. Their first case of covid was imported on Jan 21st. They didn't know shit about epidemiological characteristics of virus outside of what was communicated between medical professionals until then. Even Taiwanese media thought H2H chance was low mid January, and Taiwanese CDC didn't believe evidence for H2H was possible to establish until after mid Jan. Any notion that Taiwan had anything useful to warn about in December is part of a _literal_ propaganda drive coordinated by Taiwan and Pompeo's State Department in late March / early April.

https://archive.is/2AdyB

https://apnews.com/article/a0b22f45f0cbc8e83e7d496dd2e09556

China cracked down harshly and sufficiently that countries that immediately listened to WHOs advice to test/trace/isolate managed to contain the virus well because very few cases ever made it abroad as seen in import cases statistics from many countries. Expatriation flights meant leakage was inevitable, but screening procedures were mostly theatre, temperature checks instead of 14day quarantines. The problem is very few countries listened to WHO's advice, and still don't.

> 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.

I think you have this backwards. The obsession has always been first and foremost with US domestic politics because so many americans on the internet have an unhealthy obsession with domestic politics. Present discussion is a yet another example.

There's an unsolved mystery we would like to see solved. Specifically right at the heart of one of the most traumatic and pivotal events of our lifetime. Why do you care so much about finding ulterior motives for people interested in that mystery?

Because ulterior motives are the best motives!

There's a huge incentive to blame China for our fuckups. Really, it should be assumed unless proven otherwise.

After all, aside from the whole "no evidence" thing, what does it matter if it's a lab accident or a bat bite or whatever? We had months of warning and fucked it up badly. They were blindsided and recovered nicely. Clearly this must be their fault.

> After all, aside from the whole "no evidence" thing, what does it matter if it's a lab accident or a bat bite or whatever?

Indeed because both of those leading theories point the blame at China. So if people want to blame china nothing is stopping them. Except perhaps those claiming it came from Europe or the US first. Perhaps that's the point of the stonewalling, to provide cover for being able to claim alternative theories? Since you're so into ulterior motives.

Who is the "we" you are referring to? The western world? The US?

Yeah, whatever % of Chinese who blame the West are the mirror image of westerners blaming China, and they're all absolute morons. It doesn't matter where the virus showed up first, it's here and we all have to deal with it.

> Who is the "we" you are referring to? The western world? The US?

I was thinking US -- I guess it goes to varying extents to the rest of the "western world", depending on how you define that.

> Yeah, whatever % of Chinese who blame the West are the mirror image of westerners blaming China, and they're all absolute morons.

But you're a westerner blaming the west, so that's cool?

Anyway doesn't one of the sides have the majority of facts on their side? I can't imagine the virus would have been eliminated by anything the west did, as it surely spread to the developing world at the same time anyway. I really don't think there's much the US could have done to lock down either. Trump floated the idea of restricting travel to the NYC region and Cuomo threatened to sue. You want Trump seizing emergency powers and suspending the constitution?

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