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The WHO really dropped the ball in early 2020, since they were also recommending against personal mask use. That said, I think it's fair to say that some kind

The WHO really dropped the ball in early 2020, since they were also recommending against personal mask use. That said, I think it's fair to say that some kind of response might've been faster in one place vs another... But any response at the beginning was taken out of caution (again: no healthcare workers infected, no deaths, no proof of human to human transmission) Taiwan was obviously wise in applying caution, but did they actually publish any kind of statement regarding their beliefs for h2h transmission? (I'd be surprised if they did, since without cases there hadn't been any samples, and research on the genome of the virus couldn't start before Chinese researchers uploaded it online one January 10th) "Based on the available information there is no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission" does not mean that there was no h2h transmission: just that there was no evidence, yet. Everyone reading this stuff was obviously concerned, but again: if you remember, the 2nd death was only confirmed on January 15th...

acdha 6y ago
I think a lot of this comes back to the mid-level Chinese bureaucrats’ instinct for damage control. That infamous WHO tweet came in the 6 day interval between Chinese officials being briefed on the likelihood of a pandemic and publicly acknowledging it, and I haven’t heard any evidence that WHO was a party to that decision rather than simply not having better data available to them because it hadn’t been approved for public release by the Chinese government prior to January 20th. In retrospect, it’s impressive how quickly the Taiwanese government moved based on the equivalent of a Reddit post including a screenshot from that Chinese doctor (Li Wenliang) who was jailed for spreading the news before it was officially acknowledged: https://web.archive.org/web/20200417144920/https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202004170016 https://web.archive.org/web/20200417144920/https://focustaiw... So, no, Taiwan didn’t put out a big press release on December 31st when they started the discussion with WHO, the China CDC, and others but they had started circulating what they knew in public health circles and being a free country they didn’t conceal what they were concerned about when they started screening travelers. Here’s their statement on the December 31st email: https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-viBOuw?typeid=158 https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi... If you recall the origin of this thread, I was responding to someone who said “I don't think a strategy that needs every country on earth to cooperate this tightly ever had a chance to work.”. My point, again, wasn’t that Taiwan had secret knowledge of the future but that they showed how much could be done with basic public health protocols and, importantly, without requiring widespread international cooperation. Every sovereign nation could have started health screenings and quarantined travelers, but most waited too long and simpler methods weren’t going to be adequate by that point.

acdha 6y ago

I think a lot of this comes back to the mid-level Chinese bureaucrats’ instinct for damage control. That infamous WHO tweet came in the 6 day interval between Chinese officials being briefed on the likelihood of a pandemic and publicly acknowledging it, and I haven’t heard any evidence that WHO was a party to that decision rather than simply not having better data available to them because it hadn’t been approved for public release by the Chinese government prior to January 20th. In retrospect, it’s impressive how quickly the Taiwanese government moved based on the equivalent of a Reddit post including a screenshot from that Chinese doctor (Li Wenliang) who was jailed for spreading the news before it was officially acknowledged: https://web.archive.org/web/20200417144920/https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202004170016 https://web.archive.org/web/20200417144920/https://focustaiw... So, no, Taiwan didn’t put out a big press release on December 31st when they started the discussion with WHO, the China CDC, and others but they had started circulating what they knew in public health circles and being a free country they didn’t conceal what they were concerned about when they started screening travelers. Here’s their statement on the December 31st email: https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-viBOuw?typeid=158 https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi... If you recall the origin of this thread, I was responding to someone who said “I don't think a strategy that needs every country on earth to cooperate this tightly ever had a chance to work.”. My point, again, wasn’t that Taiwan had secret knowledge of the future but that they showed how much could be done with basic public health protocols and, importantly, without requiring widespread international cooperation. Every sovereign nation could have started health screenings and quarantined travelers, but most waited too long and simpler methods weren’t going to be adequate by that point.