Sources?
AFAIK, the WHO never said the coronavirus outbreak 'wasn't that serious', nor did it ever say that it couldn't be passed from person to person... the may have said there was no evidence of human to human transmission when none existed, but I don't recall them even saying that - it's a respiratory virus.
The WHO is not "China's mouthpiece" - that is a Trumpian slur that basically holds no water.
On January 5, the WHO issued this
statement.
Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.
The WHO is seemingly taking what the Chinese government found out to be truthful enough to issue a statement on it. As you said, it's a respiratory virus, you'd have to be living under a rock to think that there's no evidence or proof that human-to-human transmission exists. Nevermind that on
December 25, there were rumblings that medical staff was coming down with COVID-19 while treating patients in Wuhan. Even Dr. Li Wenliang warned of the spread of the virus and was almost immediately censored by the Chinese government for spreading false information, even though what he was saying was true. China
arrested others for doing, essentially, the same thing as Dr, Li Wenliang as well.
Around January 8th, the NYT
printed this article with a quote from Dr. Gauden Galea, the WHO's representative in China:
“Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks,”
Ya, China was managing the outbreak by covering up its data and severity of the illness. The WHO bought into it and bought into it enough to make statements that China was somehow doing the right thing. It doesn't take much to look into China's history of lies and deception.
By January 14th, we get the
statement from the WHO about there being no clear evidence, when there was plenty of information circulating that there was actually evidence. A day later, the
Wuhan Munciple Health Commission even came out and continued this line of thought as well.
On January 22nd, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had this to say in one of his statements:
I also appreciate the cooperation of China’s Minister of Health, who I have spoken with directly during the last few days and weeks. His leadership and the intervention of President Xi and Premier Li have been invaluable, and all the measures they have taken to respond to the outbreak.
Here's the WHO's General Director continuing to praise China even though by then we'd seen human-to-human spread, international spread, and the death of patients. The rest is pretty well documented since at the end of January pretty much everything came to light.
Here's a more in-depth breakdown on how the WHO was deceived by China. Why the WHO won't admit it, I'm not sure.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...ganization-blame-pandemic-coronavirus/609820/
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As for the point about Taiwan, here's a source from Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-questions-at-start-of-outbreak-idUSKBN21B160
And let's not forget about Dr. Bruce Aylward's lame attempt to dodge a question by RTHK reporter Yvonne Tong about Taiwan being admitted into the WHO.
Given all of this, it's why I think the WHO is nothing more than a mouthpiece for China, or if not a mouthpiece, at least pandering to China in a really questionable way. It seemingly took China's "studies" at face value during the early days of COVID-19 and then proceeded to pass it off like they were somehow meaningful. It's like the WHO didn't want to upset China, even though China's ineptitude lead to the COVID-19 being a crisis in the first place. If China hadn't tried to cover everything up and actually was forthcoming with its findings earlier, we would probably be living in a different world now.
That statement is now providing the basis for people using older WHO statements to justify the US's relative lack of action.
Don't get me wrong, I think the US has done a terrible job at managing this and should've done something immediately after the first cases were discovered in Washington. Although, I know there are a few things floating around regarding how US intelligence had information on the COVID-19 back in November/December. That alone should've made the government act if it's true.
Just because the US did and is currently still doing a poor job, that doesn't excuse China and the WHO from also dropping the ball big time.
