4 ms·

Pick any politician and you will likely find some egregiously false statements about Covid-19...but I have to say the WHO, maybe acting on the best info at the

Pick any politician and you will likely find some egregiously false statements about Covid-19...but I have to say the WHO, maybe acting on the best info at the time or acting as puppet for China, had put out some seriously dangerous false statements, including: On January 14, the WHO stated that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.”

knzhou 6y ago
This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying there probably is person-to-person transmission, and a bunch saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.
- throwaway_USD 6y ago
  >This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. You say it is "completely false" that people only believe is true by repetition, well WHO has a twitter account and their whole tweet is: Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 An wouldn't you know the WHOs completely false tweet was repeated 20k times.
  - knzhou 6y ago
    "No clear evidence" uncovered in a "preliminary investigation" was a completely true statement. They never ever said "okay, this definitely isn't transmissible, everybody can ignore it". They said in the early stages that it was too soon to be sure. All the other tweets from this period are saying the same thing: something might be coming, so countries should prepare.
    - throwaway_USD 6y ago
      >"No clear evidence" uncovered in a "preliminary investigation" was a completely true statement. Something tells me you haven't seen this alleged "preliminary investigation" report, but assuming you had, how do you know China didn't withhold information? The WHO tweet is dated 14 January 2020, but the 1st case of Covid was identified in December 2019. Chinese police forced Dr. Li to remove his comments about Covid19 from the internet on 3 January 2020. Hell Dr. Li returned to work and contracted the Virus himself on 8 January 2020 before the WHO tweet...so how did he get it if not person to person transmission? So China had the information and conducted a cover up a full 2 weeks before the WHO tweet. Can you explain why Dr. Li was forced by police to remove his social media posts and sign a confession? Can you explain whether Chinese authorities investigating how the virus was transmitted to Dr. Li before informing the WHO there was no clear evidence of person to person transmission? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
      - knzhou 6y ago
        I mean, if you actually dig a bit deeper into the story there, Li Wenliang had no expertise in the field, was going off very little information, and was sending out mass messages saying that SARS had returned (which was absolutely not true; SARS is far worse, with 25x the mortality rate of COVID-19), which would have incited completely panic. Yes, in hindsight they should have listened to him, and back in January I was pissed off about this because it set China’s response back by about a week, but these days a week of wasted time sounds like an excellent performance compared to almost every other country. It’s not about the political system. Imagine an American eye doctor posting on Facebook that Ebola was going around in NYC. They would definitely face immediate professional consequences — probably more than Li Wenliang did. My impression is that the full extent of the consequences he experienced was a stern talking to by the police, which is what you get here when pulled over for speeding.
        wolco 6y ago
        An ER Doctor reporting about the unusual number of cases is someone who doesn't have enough educational background? If an ear doctor was finding a high number of ebola patients when treating ear conditions you would discount that information because it didn't come from someone study ebola? The frontline doctors are the ones who will see the cases explode first. Arresting him and saying it's nothing, he just had a stern talking to. Just like a parent educating child. Was he putting other lives in jeopardy by sharing the truth or saving lives? Not really the same as speeding. Let's be honest China didn't want to hurt it's imagine and thought they could cover this up. Big mistake, now they look dishonest and investment will be out not in China going forward.
malydok 6y ago
The whole citation [0]: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". Should they have not posted this at all? [0]: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
- throwaway_USD 6y ago
  It depends...like I said in my comment you replied to: >maybe acting on the best info at the time or acting as puppet for China The WHO is supposed to be an independent international organization, so again the question is what kind of independent study or review did the WHO do before accepting the representations of Chinese authorities and repeating them to the World? If the WHO did nothing but promoted a tweet at the request of Chinese authorities without an independent investigation into the merits of the tweet, then it seems clear they should not have posted it at all. Either way the international community needs to know who these Chinese authorities were and an independent review of these preliminary investigations needs to be completed.

knzhou 6y ago

This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying there probably is person-to-person transmission, and a bunch saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.

throwaway_USD 6y ago
>This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. You say it is "completely false" that people only believe is true by repetition, well WHO has a twitter account and their whole tweet is: Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 An wouldn't you know the WHOs completely false tweet was repeated 20k times.
- knzhou 6y ago
  "No clear evidence" uncovered in a "preliminary investigation" was a completely true statement. They never ever said "okay, this definitely isn't transmissible, everybody can ignore it". They said in the early stages that it was too soon to be sure. All the other tweets from this period are saying the same thing: something might be coming, so countries should prepare.
  - throwaway_USD 6y ago
    >"No clear evidence" uncovered in a "preliminary investigation" was a completely true statement. Something tells me you haven't seen this alleged "preliminary investigation" report, but assuming you had, how do you know China didn't withhold information? The WHO tweet is dated 14 January 2020, but the 1st case of Covid was identified in December 2019. Chinese police forced Dr. Li to remove his comments about Covid19 from the internet on 3 January 2020. Hell Dr. Li returned to work and contracted the Virus himself on 8 January 2020 before the WHO tweet...so how did he get it if not person to person transmission? So China had the information and conducted a cover up a full 2 weeks before the WHO tweet. Can you explain why Dr. Li was forced by police to remove his social media posts and sign a confession? Can you explain whether Chinese authorities investigating how the virus was transmitted to Dr. Li before informing the WHO there was no clear evidence of person to person transmission? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
    - knzhou 6y ago
      I mean, if you actually dig a bit deeper into the story there, Li Wenliang had no expertise in the field, was going off very little information, and was sending out mass messages saying that SARS had returned (which was absolutely not true; SARS is far worse, with 25x the mortality rate of COVID-19), which would have incited completely panic. Yes, in hindsight they should have listened to him, and back in January I was pissed off about this because it set China’s response back by about a week, but these days a week of wasted time sounds like an excellent performance compared to almost every other country. It’s not about the political system. Imagine an American eye doctor posting on Facebook that Ebola was going around in NYC. They would definitely face immediate professional consequences — probably more than Li Wenliang did. My impression is that the full extent of the consequences he experienced was a stern talking to by the police, which is what you get here when pulled over for speeding.
      - wolco 6y ago
        An ER Doctor reporting about the unusual number of cases is someone who doesn't have enough educational background? If an ear doctor was finding a high number of ebola patients when treating ear conditions you would discount that information because it didn't come from someone study ebola? The frontline doctors are the ones who will see the cases explode first. Arresting him and saying it's nothing, he just had a stern talking to. Just like a parent educating child. Was he putting other lives in jeopardy by sharing the truth or saving lives? Not really the same as speeding. Let's be honest China didn't want to hurt it's imagine and thought they could cover this up. Big mistake, now they look dishonest and investment will be out not in China going forward.

malydok 6y ago

The whole citation [0]: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". Should they have not posted this at all? [0]: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

throwaway_USD 6y ago
It depends...like I said in my comment you replied to: >maybe acting on the best info at the time or acting as puppet for China The WHO is supposed to be an independent international organization, so again the question is what kind of independent study or review did the WHO do before accepting the representations of Chinese authorities and repeating them to the World? If the WHO did nothing but promoted a tweet at the request of Chinese authorities without an independent investigation into the merits of the tweet, then it seems clear they should not have posted it at all. Either way the international community needs to know who these Chinese authorities were and an independent review of these preliminary investigations needs to be completed.