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Honestly I don't think it's true to say it's about politics. The WHO tweet from 14 January was very misleading and no doubt caused things to get worse: > Preli

Honestly I don't think it's true to say it's about politics. The WHO tweet from 14 January was very misleading and no doubt caused things to get worse: > 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🇨🇳.

ceejayoz 6y ago
As far as the WHO was aware, and at the time of posting, that tweet was entirely accurate. They're not the CIA. They don't have an adversarial spy arm. They rely enormously on member nations' self-reporting, and they rely on those reports being honest. That clear evidence came later on doesn't mean the WHO had clear evidence at the time. (And, as the saying goes, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Nothing in that tweet says "it can't spread"; it says "we can't solidly confirm it has been yet".)
- legolas2412 6y ago
  Sure, and a lot of misleading stuff is true. Consider this imaginary scenario. Imagine a dead body is found in the street in front of your house. The dead person has multiple stab wounds, and there is a knife 20 feet away from the body. Imagine you inform the police, but they come 2 hours later, and announce that they'll investigate the death. Then 2 days later they come and announce that they had no evidence that this was a murder. They also announced that staying in and locking your doors had shown to not stop serial killers and was counter productive. Do you want such an investigative agency? I would prefer if the police said something like this within 1 hours of arriving at the crime scene "the stab wound and a bloody knife indicate that this might be a murder. In order to stay safe, the residents should stay in, take precautions and lock their doors" In case you didn't get what I referred to, there is no reason to doubt via a SARS like virus with respiratory sickness may be transmitted via air. Their default reaction should have been to assume the worst. Further, saying that travel restrictions do not stop a disease is a stupid statement to make. Specially when we see South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, NZ etc exterminate the virus. WHO is to blame as much as individual governments.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    Per https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-false-claim-that-who-said-coronavirus-was-not-communicable/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-fa..., on the same day, the WHO said this: > Van Kerkhove added, however, that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given the WHO’s experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens. > Van Kerkhove’s message was not lost on reporters. The Telegraph in Britain headlined its article on the news conference: “WHO refuses to rule out human-to-human spread in China’s mystery coronavirus outbreak.” Within a week (Jan 20) they'd confirmed the human-to-human transmission, too.
newacct583 6y ago
But it's NOT misleading. It's correct. They (both the Chinese health care folks and the WHO thought) that all the cases were from that one market and that it wasn't spreading in the community. That's what "human-to-human transmission" means in context. (They were wrong, obviously, but that was a sincerely held belief given the evidence at the time.) The misleading bit is to try to insist that what the WHO "meant" was something more akin to "it's not contagious, you can't catch it". NO ONE thinks a respiratory virus isn't contagious. The WHO quite clearly did not mean that. And yet we still have this argument months later because people like you steadfastly refuse to assume good faith (and bad writing) on the part of the WHO. That, sorry, is politics. The WHO isn't your tribe, so they have to be skewered as enemies instead of interpreted as (however confuddled) people just trying to do their job under extreme time pressure and with limited information.
- snapetom 6y ago
  By the time of the tweet, it was pretty well established that there was at least familial spread (aka human to human) in Wuhan. Everyone raised at eyebrow at the tweet because it goes against all observations on the spread, even from official Chinese reports. The WHO is clearly a very conservative and cautious organization. They won't do anything without really good studies and evidence. In this pandemic, though, this staunch stance gives a perception counter to lot of common sense and comes off as inaction.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    There was suspicion. There was not "clear evidence" yet (in the WHO's hands, at least; China may have had evidence they weren't sharing). Full timeline here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-false-claim-that-who-said-coronavirus-was-not-communicable/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-fa... Later that same day: > Van Kerkhove added, however, that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given the WHO’s experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens. > Van Kerkhove’s message was not lost on reporters. The Telegraph in Britain headlined its article on the news conference: “WHO refuses to rule out human-to-human spread in China’s mystery coronavirus outbreak.” It only took a few more days for the evidence to emerge to the WHO's satisfaction, too. Widespread attempts to justify American officials' inaction in February/March based off the Jan 14 tweet are disingenuous. > Jan. 19 WHO tweet: “An animal source seems the most likely primary source of this novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, with some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts.” > Jan. 20 WHO tweet: “It is now very clear from the latest information that there is at least some human-to-human transmission of #nCoV2019. Infections among health care workers strengthen the evidence for this.” At the time, there were only 222 confirmed cases in the world, including four deaths.
sudosysgen 6y ago
Why was this their fault? As far as everyone was aware all the cases came from a food market, and a few days later when it was clear it was H2H they said it was. There were some people in local Chinese government that had preliminary indications that it might have transmitted H2H, but that data propagated in under a week after the tweet and it's not the WHO job to run an intelligence agency.

ceejayoz 6y ago

As far as the WHO was aware, and at the time of posting, that tweet was entirely accurate. They're not the CIA. They don't have an adversarial spy arm. They rely enormously on member nations' self-reporting, and they rely on those reports being honest. That clear evidence came later on doesn't mean the WHO had clear evidence at the time. (And, as the saying goes, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Nothing in that tweet says "it can't spread"; it says "we can't solidly confirm it has been yet".)

legolas2412 6y ago
Sure, and a lot of misleading stuff is true. Consider this imaginary scenario. Imagine a dead body is found in the street in front of your house. The dead person has multiple stab wounds, and there is a knife 20 feet away from the body. Imagine you inform the police, but they come 2 hours later, and announce that they'll investigate the death. Then 2 days later they come and announce that they had no evidence that this was a murder. They also announced that staying in and locking your doors had shown to not stop serial killers and was counter productive. Do you want such an investigative agency? I would prefer if the police said something like this within 1 hours of arriving at the crime scene "the stab wound and a bloody knife indicate that this might be a murder. In order to stay safe, the residents should stay in, take precautions and lock their doors" In case you didn't get what I referred to, there is no reason to doubt via a SARS like virus with respiratory sickness may be transmitted via air. Their default reaction should have been to assume the worst. Further, saying that travel restrictions do not stop a disease is a stupid statement to make. Specially when we see South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, NZ etc exterminate the virus. WHO is to blame as much as individual governments.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Per https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-false-claim-that-who-said-coronavirus-was-not-communicable/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-fa..., on the same day, the WHO said this: > Van Kerkhove added, however, that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given the WHO’s experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens. > Van Kerkhove’s message was not lost on reporters. The Telegraph in Britain headlined its article on the news conference: “WHO refuses to rule out human-to-human spread in China’s mystery coronavirus outbreak.” Within a week (Jan 20) they'd confirmed the human-to-human transmission, too.

newacct583 6y ago

But it's NOT misleading. It's correct. They (both the Chinese health care folks and the WHO thought) that all the cases were from that one market and that it wasn't spreading in the community. That's what "human-to-human transmission" means in context. (They were wrong, obviously, but that was a sincerely held belief given the evidence at the time.) The misleading bit is to try to insist that what the WHO "meant" was something more akin to "it's not contagious, you can't catch it". NO ONE thinks a respiratory virus isn't contagious. The WHO quite clearly did not mean that. And yet we still have this argument months later because people like you steadfastly refuse to assume good faith (and bad writing) on the part of the WHO. That, sorry, is politics. The WHO isn't your tribe, so they have to be skewered as enemies instead of interpreted as (however confuddled) people just trying to do their job under extreme time pressure and with limited information.

snapetom 6y ago
By the time of the tweet, it was pretty well established that there was at least familial spread (aka human to human) in Wuhan. Everyone raised at eyebrow at the tweet because it goes against all observations on the spread, even from official Chinese reports. The WHO is clearly a very conservative and cautious organization. They won't do anything without really good studies and evidence. In this pandemic, though, this staunch stance gives a perception counter to lot of common sense and comes off as inaction.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  There was suspicion. There was not "clear evidence" yet (in the WHO's hands, at least; China may have had evidence they weren't sharing). Full timeline here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-false-claim-that-who-said-coronavirus-was-not-communicable/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/17/trumps-fa... Later that same day: > Van Kerkhove added, however, that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given the WHO’s experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens. > Van Kerkhove’s message was not lost on reporters. The Telegraph in Britain headlined its article on the news conference: “WHO refuses to rule out human-to-human spread in China’s mystery coronavirus outbreak.” It only took a few more days for the evidence to emerge to the WHO's satisfaction, too. Widespread attempts to justify American officials' inaction in February/March based off the Jan 14 tweet are disingenuous. > Jan. 19 WHO tweet: “An animal source seems the most likely primary source of this novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, with some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts.” > Jan. 20 WHO tweet: “It is now very clear from the latest information that there is at least some human-to-human transmission of #nCoV2019. Infections among health care workers strengthen the evidence for this.” At the time, there were only 222 confirmed cases in the world, including four deaths.

sudosysgen 6y ago

Why was this their fault? As far as everyone was aware all the cases came from a food market, and a few days later when it was clear it was H2H they said it was. There were some people in local Chinese government that had preliminary indications that it might have transmitted H2H, but that data propagated in under a week after the tweet and it's not the WHO job to run an intelligence agency.