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Comment by mikaeluman | Hacker News Reader

This is a mistake.

It implies that we should all agree that WHO:

1) Is not corrupt 2) At all times represents the best available expert opinion and advice

But all institutions can become corrupted and the second point is highly implausible.

WHO ignored Taiwan’s early warning and maintained for a dangerously long time that human to human transmission was not possible.

There is a reason why the US cut funding to WHO.

This new direction of social platforms to silence people is a fundamentally anti-intellectual and authoritarian idea. We are heading for something awful if we all keep playing along.

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Taiwan didn't even have a confirmed case until January 21. They couldn't possibly have reported anything but unconfirmed rumors from China. WHO warned about human-to-human transmission as soon as it was confirmed by Chinese scientists.

The US cutting funding is obviously a political move in order to shift blame away from the utterly incompetent government.

> Taiwan didn't even have a confirmed case until January 21. They couldn't possibly have reported anything but unconfirmed rumors from China.

Actually, Taiwan sent its own experts to Wuhan:

https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/jFGUVrlLkIuHmzZeyA...

As did several countries.

From the article it should be clear that the observers were there to learn from their Chinese colleagues, not to conduct independent research on human-to-human transmission.

> From the article it should be clear that the observers were there to learn from their Chinese colleagues, not to conduct independent research on human-to-human transmission.

The Taiwanese experts saw clusters of disease, such as a wife who got sick a few days after her husband, but did not visit the wet market personally. This was an indication of human-to-human transmission. Not quite the "unconfirmed rumors from China", as you put it.

EDIT: disregard, I got the dates mixed up. Original included below for transparency's sake.

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And particularly-damningly, the WHO then turned around and claimed on 14 January¹ that there was "no evidence" of human-to-human transmission even though said evidence was right there in front of them.

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¹: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUN7LIXUMAY_2DI.jpg

WHO never claimed this, they (correctly) cited what Chinese authorities were saying. Here is the full text of the tweet for people that don't like reading images of text:

> Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.

Also note that the WHO field visit to Wuhan took place a week later, on 20-21 January. In their mission summary from 22 January they wrote [1]:

> Data collected through detailed epidemiological investigation and through the deployment of the new test kit nationally suggests that human-to-human transmission is taking place in Wuhan. More analysis of the epidemiological data is needed to understand the full extent of human-to-human transmission. WHO stands ready to provide support to China to conduct further detailed analysis.

[1] https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit...

They may not have ignored it. Maybe it was just Bruce Aylward's poor hearing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wePJF3MaPM

the WHO is... corrupt? this is the first I have heard of such an idea. What would someone gain by I guess bribing the WHO?

Bribing? How about Beijing hand placing the director and then letting the corruption trickle down. There are lots of things you can gain from owning a global organization like the WHO. For one, they will tote your colonies like N.Korea as being "the envy of the developing world." They can be used as a tool to influence your enemies. The only limits are your creativity.

From "AP Exclusive: Health agency spends more on travel than AIDS" [1]:

> Senior officials have complained internally that U.N. staffers break new rules that were introduced to try to curb its expansive travel spending, booking perks like business class airplane tickets and rooms in five-star hotels with few consequences.

> “We don’t trust people to do the right thing when it comes to travel,” Nick Jeffreys, WHO’s director of finance, said during a September 2015 in-house seminar on accountability — a video of which was obtained by the AP.

> the compliance rate for booking travel in advance was between 28 and 59 percent.

[1]: https://apnews.com/1cf4791dc5c14b9299e0f532c75f63b2/AP-Exclu...

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