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On Feb. 4, 2020, after a private meeting with Xi, Tedros formally announced to the WHO Executive Board that there was no need to “interfere with international t

On Feb. 4, 2020, after a private meeting with Xi, Tedros formally announced to the WHO Executive Board that there was no need to “interfere with international travel and trade” and restricting Chinese flights was “counter-productive” to fighting the global spread of the virus.

jacquesm 5y ago
That's a far cry from claiming that China controls the WHO. This was simply because at that time there wasn't any evidence to the contrary, which, unfortunately turned out to be not true once more evidence came out. You know what? We still don't have the whole picture, and we will still come to conclusions that hindsight will tell us is wrong. But that doesn't mean you need to attribute all of that to malice or control by the Chinese.
- dang_wumao 5y ago
  China blocked (incoming) international flights but allowed outgoing, while calling countries who blocked incoming flights from China racist. Who's side is the WHO on?
- louloulou 5y ago
  We still don't have the whole picture precisely because the CCP have covered-up and blocked any real investigation into the origins at every step.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    There is nothing that will every satisfy the people that push the 'it was a lab leak' angle that it wasn't just like there is nothing that will ever convince people that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job that it wasn't or that pedophile democrats are running the world. For one you are trying to prove a negative, for another, you are asking others to prove a negative, when in fact it should be the opposite: there should be some pretty hard proof before a lab leak hypothesis would even rise to the same level of consideration that a zoonotic jump (which is default) should be given. Absent such evidence you can safely discard it, and if and when such (non circumstantial) evidence does surface it would be a good time to get seriously upset about it. But until then it is a complete non-issue, except in those places that seem to go out of their way to make this a 'China has tried to destroy the world and then tried to cover it up' story, none of which seems to match the available evidence. That said, the Chinese have not made their own story any better with their initial handling of the pandemic and the degree to which they were transparent with the data that they must have already had at their disposal. But that is nothing that can't be explained by their usual reluctance to own up to fuck-ups. Other countries (the Russian Federation, and the United States, India and plenty of others besides) have done similar if not worse things, it seems to be a political reflex: try to squelch the problem in an attempt to avoid blame. This of course doesn't work and only makes things worse.
    - louloulou 5y ago
      It was a lab leak.

jacquesm 5y ago

That's a far cry from claiming that China controls the WHO. This was simply because at that time there wasn't any evidence to the contrary, which, unfortunately turned out to be not true once more evidence came out. You know what? We still don't have the whole picture, and we will still come to conclusions that hindsight will tell us is wrong. But that doesn't mean you need to attribute all of that to malice or control by the Chinese.

dang_wumao 5y ago
China blocked (incoming) international flights but allowed outgoing, while calling countries who blocked incoming flights from China racist. Who's side is the WHO on?
louloulou 5y ago
We still don't have the whole picture precisely because the CCP have covered-up and blocked any real investigation into the origins at every step.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  There is nothing that will every satisfy the people that push the 'it was a lab leak' angle that it wasn't just like there is nothing that will ever convince people that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job that it wasn't or that pedophile democrats are running the world. For one you are trying to prove a negative, for another, you are asking others to prove a negative, when in fact it should be the opposite: there should be some pretty hard proof before a lab leak hypothesis would even rise to the same level of consideration that a zoonotic jump (which is default) should be given. Absent such evidence you can safely discard it, and if and when such (non circumstantial) evidence does surface it would be a good time to get seriously upset about it. But until then it is a complete non-issue, except in those places that seem to go out of their way to make this a 'China has tried to destroy the world and then tried to cover it up' story, none of which seems to match the available evidence. That said, the Chinese have not made their own story any better with their initial handling of the pandemic and the degree to which they were transparent with the data that they must have already had at their disposal. But that is nothing that can't be explained by their usual reluctance to own up to fuck-ups. Other countries (the Russian Federation, and the United States, India and plenty of others besides) have done similar if not worse things, it seems to be a political reflex: try to squelch the problem in an attempt to avoid blame. This of course doesn't work and only makes things worse.
  - louloulou 5y ago
    It was a lab leak.