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China called it the Wuhan Virus. When the world called it the Wuhan Virus. State run media and the CCP called it racist. Then the WHO bent over and changed it.

China called it the Wuhan Virus. When the world called it the Wuhan Virus. State run media and the CCP called it racist. Then the WHO bent over and changed it. When the “India variant” happened, the WHO didn’t batter an eyelid. China spent ages blocking Taiwan from the discussion and succeeded as the WHO had to appease the CCP. Seems like chinas influence on the WHO is a lot.

jacquesm 5y ago
The reason the WHO changed it is because they did not want to have the politics of directly connecting the virus to China become a hindrance in their work. See also: "The Spanish Flu", the "Mexican Swine Flu" and others, associating a virus outbreak in name with a particular country allows for politicization which in turn can hinder doing something about it. Only very few countries tried to do this (with specifically calling this a Chinese Virus) but that did quite a bit of damage to the WHOs mission of trying to help curb the pandemic. You can accuse the WHO of a lot of things (for instance: not calling a pandemic early enough and not being far more pro-active in calling for governments to curb the spread), but the problem there is that they can't sound the alarm too often too early before people will start to ignore them, which is just one more variation of the prevention paradox.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  > not calling a pandemic early enough and not being far more pro-active in calling for governments to curb the spread I'm not sure if I agree that they did or didn't call it early enough. But lying to the public is what rubs me the wrong way. The WHO should not contain any politics, but that's exactly what it has done the entire time. They spent more time pandering to the CCP than being a /World Health Organization/. While china was telling the world it's racist for calling it the Wuhan Virus or Wuhan Flu, it's own state run media was continuing to call it that despite the WHO giving it a name. When we knew it was human transmissible, the WHO was parroting the CCP telling us it's not. When countries were stopping flights. The WHO was telling everyone not to stop flights. China was stopping flights while telling America it's racist for stopping flights. At some point we need to ignore the child throwing its toys out of the cot and focus on the actual issue.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    > They spent more time pandering to the CCP than being a /World Health Organization/. Where do you even get this nonsense? Seriously, do you really believe that the WHO spent more time pandering to the CCP than to being a World Health Organization? If you do then I am really at a loss on how to get you out of that because it is so far from what I've seen that I suspect you are looking at this through some kind of lens that magnifies the relatively insignificant first two weeks or so relative to the remainder of what is now almost two years of non-stop effort to help curb this pandemic. They certainly aren't perfect, but at least they are trying and the bulk of the people that are - unsuccessfully - trying to link this to some kind of shadowy Chinese control are typically found on the extremes of the spectrum trying hard to assign blame for all this rather than to get it resolved.

jacquesm 5y ago

The reason the WHO changed it is because they did not want to have the politics of directly connecting the virus to China become a hindrance in their work. See also: "The Spanish Flu", the "Mexican Swine Flu" and others, associating a virus outbreak in name with a particular country allows for politicization which in turn can hinder doing something about it. Only very few countries tried to do this (with specifically calling this a Chinese Virus) but that did quite a bit of damage to the WHOs mission of trying to help curb the pandemic. You can accuse the WHO of a lot of things (for instance: not calling a pandemic early enough and not being far more pro-active in calling for governments to curb the spread), but the problem there is that they can't sound the alarm too often too early before people will start to ignore them, which is just one more variation of the prevention paradox.

philliphaydon 5y ago
> not calling a pandemic early enough and not being far more pro-active in calling for governments to curb the spread I'm not sure if I agree that they did or didn't call it early enough. But lying to the public is what rubs me the wrong way. The WHO should not contain any politics, but that's exactly what it has done the entire time. They spent more time pandering to the CCP than being a /World Health Organization/. While china was telling the world it's racist for calling it the Wuhan Virus or Wuhan Flu, it's own state run media was continuing to call it that despite the WHO giving it a name. When we knew it was human transmissible, the WHO was parroting the CCP telling us it's not. When countries were stopping flights. The WHO was telling everyone not to stop flights. China was stopping flights while telling America it's racist for stopping flights. At some point we need to ignore the child throwing its toys out of the cot and focus on the actual issue.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > They spent more time pandering to the CCP than being a /World Health Organization/. Where do you even get this nonsense? Seriously, do you really believe that the WHO spent more time pandering to the CCP than to being a World Health Organization? If you do then I am really at a loss on how to get you out of that because it is so far from what I've seen that I suspect you are looking at this through some kind of lens that magnifies the relatively insignificant first two weeks or so relative to the remainder of what is now almost two years of non-stop effort to help curb this pandemic. They certainly aren't perfect, but at least they are trying and the bulk of the people that are - unsuccessfully - trying to link this to some kind of shadowy Chinese control are typically found on the extremes of the spectrum trying hard to assign blame for all this rather than to get it resolved.