They didn’t declare it a pandemic until March 11 - extremely late.
They were extremely critical of travel restrictions, while the countries they did the best in the first year defied that advice and had the most extreme restrictions, like New Zealand.
They failed to actually investigate the Wuhan Lab that may have been the source.
They didn’t acknowledge airborne spread for two years - allowing people to live in fear of packages.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
What did they do right?
And during all this the WHO bent over backward to praise and defend China. The same country that covered this up and who’s actions ultimately led to a global outbreak.
The WHO was so China centric that Bruce Aylward was outright ignoring questions if they contained the word “Taiwan.” It become so comical that the Japanese deputy PM said they should change the name to “Chinese Health Organization.”
China lied about the nature of the pandemic, lied about the severity, gave fake statistics and information, and the WHO never questioned or looked further into any of it.
The WHO is a joke. They have been dragged through the mud during Covid because they deserved to be dragged through the mud. We might not be in this situation if the WHO were a competent organization willing to rise to the challenge of an actual health emergency.
This is comically false. When the virus spread in the rest of the world we got to see that it wasn't the Black Plague 2.0 and the CCP didn't (and couldn't) possibly hide millions of deaths in Wuhan.
The stance and respect that China has managed to acquire is only logical given the very united front they present. That isn't without cost for the individual as the harsh lockdowns clearly show. Would you trade places with a Chinese in order to have the same treatment for your country in a press conference happening 5000mi away from you?
No? Me neither. It's settled then, China can have #1 as far as I am concerned. England used to be #1 for the longest time and now it's #6. It's not like people are running around like chickens with their heads severed off. As always it's all about purchasing power parity and your very immediate surroundings which make a person satisfied with their life.
The WHO declared COVID-19 a PHEIC on 30 January 2020 [0], about a month after it arouse original attention in international media by very late 2019 [1] [2] [3]
> The WHO was so China centric that Bruce Aylward was outright ignoring questions if they contained the word “Taiwan.”
The very same would have happened if any WHO official was asked something in relation to Palestine [4]. Which, just like Taiwan, is not a sovereign nation recognizes by the UN because certain other UN members are actively denying these territories that recognition.
That's why WHO, and UN officials in general will act like certain places don't even exist; Their mere mention of these territories, like sovereign states, can be interpreted as the UN, giving them, at least unofficial, recognition.
> China lied about the nature of the pandemic, lied about the severity, gave fake statistics and information, and the WHO never questioned or looked further into any of it.
I'd be really interested what your alleged timeline for events looks like. By late 2019 China was publicly admitting investigating a SARS like outbreak. When do you locate the actual outbreak start? Months earlier?
That's the only way the WHO could have taken "months" to declare it a PHEIC, yet any public awareness about any of this only existed by late 2019.
[0] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/covid-19-public-heal...
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/china-investigates-sars-like-virus-as-...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/00c78d1974410d96fe031f67edbd86ec
[3] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-china-probes-pneumoni...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_t...
Yes - it is antithetical to national sovereignty. Simple as.