Instead of trying to contain the pandemic in it's earliest stages, the WHO told the world there was nothing to worry about. They screwed up about as bad as they possibly could, and helped enable the spread of a disease.
That is an US conservative disinformation meme, this [0] was the actual WHO tweet;
"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."
That statement only refers to those particular preliminary investigations, yielding no clear evidence. It's very specific and scientific language, that many news pundits just chose to read and interpret in the most generalized way possible to get their sensationalist outrage headline of "WHO says there is no evidence for H2H!".
There is a similar disinformation meme out about the WHO and CDC allegedly saying "masks don't help and people shouldn't wear them!", when the actual WHO and CDC statements were about prioritizing masks, as in respirators, for health care workers at the front, instead of the general public buying up all the supplies of them in panic.
A bit part of that was very unclear messaging by a whole lot of authorities and governments, where to this day nobody makes much of a distinction between "mask", as in any kind of face covering, and "mask" as in actual medical respirator like a FFP2/N95.
"WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travellers"
The WHO put it's faith in the Chinese government, how did that work out? If China was open and honest, we could have started taking COVID-19 seriously a month earlier. Instead they tried to assure everyone it was nothing to worry about and the WHO went right along with it.
I traveled from China to US in January 2020 well after China had reported the virus as transmissible and the US was not doing jack shit to screen.
Technically true, but very misleading. It was discovered that it was already in Italy before China acknowledged human-to-human transmission.
Also, nothing in my first comment has anything to do with the US. I don't know why you keep shifting attention to the US, unless you think the US is responsible for the international spread?
China actually managed to catch the disease.
This just got obscured because the American media is a bunch of partisan trash with unfortunate global influence that saw the pandemic as a good way to replace a leader they dislike. So everything got distorted and spun based on that angle, and it did immense damage to people's understanding of the pandemic. American potlics seems to have a bit of a main protagonist problem at the best of times too.
The only reason Taiwan is not a member is because of China being a bully.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/o...
Let me explain my downvote here.
You are not wrong, and as an american it is infuriating to see what our country has become.
But that makes his original point no less valid.
China silenced the WHO and the WHO literally pretended their internet went out when asked about Taiwan.
Both sides having done something fucked up doesn't negate what's going on in this situation, thus the 'both sides-ism'
If it did all arguments would be over instantly, as only babies are innocent.
There are degrees of fucked up and context matters.
On a more serious note: "The WHO" is already a sign of a limited understanding of how this works. In as far as an organization of that name exists, it's a tiny bureaucracy tasked with coordinating other organizations to carry out tasks set by the other thing called "WHO", which is just the label for a group of delegates from those national organizations.
The WHO does not have any institutional power of itself. It does not have any interests or credibility that is distinct from the interests and credibility of "getting the world's national health agencies" in a room.