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Comment by Darmody | Hacker News Reader

The WHO is a joke.

What they did these last months should be the last nail in the coffin.

More like a health organization they act like a political one taking sides with China and ignoring/censoring Taiwan even if they managed to control de spread of the virus.[1][2]

And if that wasn't enough, they actively insisted that all the measures we're taking now were pointless.

Why would anyone want a health organization that only cares about politics?

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/28/taiwan-who-coronavirus-... [2] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/taiwan-who-coronavir...

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Given the weight of US in UNO, why would they want to stop their funding, instead of pushing for a reform of WHO?

Of course everybody benefits from the existence of an organ like WHO, the only problems would be the number and quality of its experts network and labs. And to reform that, that's in the opposite direction of stopping funds...

At that level, you can most effectively get reform by cutting off funding.

Give it a week. Two at the most. You’ll see changes at the headline level.

I doubt it, because the attack lacks seriousness when it's led by Trump.

It is right that WHO should have waited more verification of scientific data before publishing easily misinterpreted too-short statements, on Twitter or elsewhere. But look who is denouncing that.

It is not about to solve the problem but to gain political point. Pointing finger as hard as to avoid accountability. Chinese virus, virus will bring job to US, left wing nasty media, nasty democrat, Europe treat US bad etc etc

Of course everybody benefits from the existence of an organ like WHO

Why? Does it do anything beyond encourage groupthink? What does it do that other organisations cannot?

If you want to make changes in the WHO fine, you contribute a major share if it’s funding, you should get a commensurate say, but de-funding right now at the height of the crisis is ludicrously reckless and irresponsible. Are you really going to argue this move right now is in the best interests of the USA and the world?

From a life long Conservative voter here in the UK, this is serious. Get a grip. I never thought Trump was funny, but _nobody_ is laughing any more. US Republicanism needs to face up to the fact it took a badly wrong turn with this guy.

Why is it reckless? The WHO has arguably made the problem worse.

Wouldn’t you want to defund any organization that makes a problem worse?

You’re seriously telling me that the work they are doing right now World wide is making the situation worse?

This is classic Trump. Instead of taking effective action, he’s picking a fight because he knows his supporters will rally round, his opponents will be enraged and now it’s a partisan bun fight. De-funding the WHO is an appalling attack on the worlds ability to fight this pandemic. What is Trumps plan to actually help solve this problem?

> Why is it reckless? The WHO has arguably made the problem worse.

Ah, this is a typical conservative response. "The government responded ineffectively!" they will say, to which the only possible response is to simply start dismantling government institutions and replace them with their corporate friends.

Then, when the next crisis occurs, and the even further weakened public institutions struggle to respond, they can remind us that they were right all along - it is the institutions that have failed us! Etc etc, into the downward spiral.

"Starve the beast" is not a strategy that can possibly result in reform, and I have trouble believing that anybody advocating it believes it in good faith.

The WHO did not make the problem worse, because their statement just said that no human-human link was found yet, but that of course did not prevent scientists from launching new studies or continuing current studies to fill this gap. From a scientist perspective, to the contrary, stating the absence of knowledge would provoke the need for more studies.

> The WHO did not make the problem worse, because their statement just said that no human-human link was found yet

Not true. Taiwan had already warned them of human to human transmission in December. The WHO's failure to report it has cost the world many lives and a great deal of suffering: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/03/25/2...

Oh, I saw your other reply of my previous comment.

Well, you're right that physicians directly emailing other physicians is a good source for being cautious about China declarations, especially under an authoritarian government not allowing other forms of publications.

But still, from the point of view of WHO, it was not clear that there was such a pressure on experts. They only had China's studies in hands.

PS: well, maybe there was something more political going on. You seem well documented and I believe you. But they had to play with China on their side. Changing that means huge reforms, of not only WHO but UN. And reforms, not deletions...

This is a different link and, as it mentions, Taiwan's CDC has email receipts of its communications with the WHO.

In an outbreak situation, the correct response is NOT to say, "until you've published a study we'll tell the world there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission". If multiple doctors are getting sick from their patients, there IS evidence of human-to-human transmission.

If those doctors are in an authoritarian country that controls the flow of information, but they've emailed their colleagues abroad, that information itself must be shared by any responsible health organization.

That makes sense.

Did Taiwan try to publish directly? On social media or other.

Yes. The local CDC is on Twitter and Facebook.

This is true, absolutely, but had no material effect on the world's ability to respond to the situation. Suppose they had reported possible human transmission in December, instead of early January, would that have made any difference to Trump calling it a hoax on February 28?

> Trump calling it a hoax on February 28?

cite please.

Not directly calling the virus a box, but: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...

The question was rhetorical, it's well known that he didn't, and the statement is false.

And replace it with what? Nothing?

Ya well maybe shutdown the CDC too huh?

This is all bullshit that Trump (and his self certified visionary crew) want people to focus on, so no one really asks what useful outcomes have the Whitehouse actually produced over the last 4 years? I cant see one thing.

I lack a lot of context here, but I recently saw a tweet of theirs from January. It was jarring to see how much they uncritically went along with China’s narrative about the virus. I understand a lot about the situation is unprecedented and especially in early weeks there was a lot of confusion and a lot of unknowns. But hopefully this at least will spur them to act more cautiously in regard to info from China.

I don't think their behavior is redeemable, given they continue to lie.

After all, the WHO Director-General claimed within the last week without a shred of evidence that he was subject to racist and derogatory attacks from Taiwan's leaders.

This is after WHO threw Taiwan under the bus and denied them access to critical health information on the express orders from China.

The entire organization is corrupt. Blindly repeating CCP propaganda and punishing China's enemies is not the sign of a healthy organization.

Their recommendations were, at times, completely false.

By "their recommandations", you are alluding to when they said that travel bans on China where ineffective (that's true, only complete border closure is effective), and to when they said there was no proof of human-human transmission (that was true when they said it, nobody knew yet, except some Chinese scientists prevented from speaking by their government).

I see a lot of these deformed affirmations...

Taiwan warned the WHO about human to human transmission on December 31st: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3904054

I searched for the sources, and all that I found is that Taiwan asked WHO more investigation and verification of China's affirmation. Taiwan did not add any study results or scientific knowledge, so had nothing to really "warn" about.

The China "results" were actually biased, so Taiwan was right to ask verification, but that's only retrospectively. At the time, there was no such certainty of their wrongdoing, especially given that they also collaborated by other means.

> The China "results" were actually biased, so Taiwan was right to ask verification, but that's only retrospectively. At the time, there was no such certainty of their wrongdoing, especially given that they also collaborated by other means.

The reason you didn't find much is that the WHO refused to pass on Taiwan's warning.

Taiwanese doctors had direct emails from multiple colleagues in Wuhan, some of whom were punished by the local government for speaking. Doctors getting sick with the virus was direct evidence of human to human transmission.

Keep in mind that China also covered up and denied the existence of SARS for months. The WHO's decision to aid in suppressing the information of the epidemic has cost the entire globe countless lives and economic damage. What is it that so motivates you to defend them that you comment 20 times in this thread?

FWIW, I've followed the news this time and during SARS from the start, from local media in Taiwan and been deeply disappointed with the WHO and early international reporting both times.

Locked-down... heh... ^^

Also, I like supra-national bodies. They warrant that the non-zero sum game that is our planet and societies still live on...

PS: did Taiwan try to pass the warning directly? They could have published through other ways, Twitter being only one among numerous examples. This is a sincere question, not a trap.

Yes. It was in national media and the TW CDC has a Twitter account that was tweeting about it repeatedly for weeks while the WHO was still downplaying it.

Counterpoint: imagine an international organisation's leader having to stroke Trump's ego to be allowed access into the country. Now replace Trump with Xi. Apparently that's what happened, if this analysis is to be believed: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/trump-turns-...

Which seems obvious. The WHO is just an intermediating body between nations. As so, it's not surprising politics is in play behind the core of the organization...

The fact is when the WHO was ringing every alarm bell they could reach, and the CIA and CDC was warning of an imminent threat, Trump was calling it a hoax. If you’re so insistent on punishing those that missed opportunities to take the threat seriously, a bit of consistency in that would be appreciated.

The crucial contribution the WHO made was forcing the Chinese to revise their reporting system and publish accurate infection counts in mid January. They could only do that once they had a team on the ground working with the Chinese and that required Chinese cooperation. Up to that point they and we were utterly reliant on China for information.

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