"THE 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's the statement announced by the World Health Organization (the WHO) on Twitter on January 14.
The WHO's claim, with hindsight, clearly sounds naive, noncritical, and even tragically irresponsible. On the other hand, less than 50 cases were confirmed in China at that time, and only two cases outside of China - in Japan and Thailand.
But is this statement justified from the past perspective? It was posted only nine days before China confirmed that the Wuhan epidemic had escalated and introduced mass quarantine, firstly in that city, then in the entire Hubei province, which has 60 million residents, and finally in other virus-stricken cities in the world.
Only three weeks later, on February 4, there were already 204 cases confirmed outside of China, including two deaths.
Why did the WHO blindly believe the Chinese regime about coronavirus?
In the WHO's defense, one could say that they only passed the information on from the Chinese authorities. But isn't exactly that a problem? The Chinese communist regime is notorious for its massive censorship, as well as covering up the SARS epidemic in 2003-04, which took the lives of almost 800 people, mostly in China.
In the meantime, a handful of information has leaked indicating that the Communist Party of China, with its leader Xi Jinping, was keeping as secret or decreasing the key information about the nature of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and the number of the infected and the dead - even indicating that the reduction and secrecy continue today.
The president of the USA, Donald Trump, certainly had this in mind when he directed the harshest criticism to the WHO up to this time, calling them "China-centric" in his response to the coronavirus pandemic and stating that they "really blew it."
Trump: The WHO is "China-centric," they really blew it
"They've made a mistake. They've called the pandemic too late and should have done it much earlier. It's great when these organizations function well, but in this case, they've done everything wrong and stood by China's side. We'll stop the WHO funding," threatened Trump at a press conference on Tuesday, just to say a few minutes later that he'd strongly consider it.
The WHO responded by justifying themselves that it was "absolutely essential" to closely collaborate with China in the early phase of the epidemic so they could get "full access to everything possible, to get in the field and collaborate with the Chinese to understand the situation."
It's clear that international organizations such as the WHO or the UN have to carefully balance and make compromises when dealing with crises in autocratic countries, whether the crisis is about an epidemic, civil war, or persecution of minorities. However, it's evident that the WHO didn't get access to all information at the Chinese regime's disposal. And the question is whether it was really their priority - or to act as Beijing's attorney?
As we have found out in the meantime, the laboratory in Wuhan confirmed coronavirus at the end of December after an analysis of the novel coronavirus sample that causes "lung infection of unknown cause." On December 31, Beijing notified the WHO, but at the same time, the intelligence services have energetically started to fight - not the epidemic, but the spread of information.
In January, Beijing was repeating that everything is under control, the WHO praised them
And while cases of coronavirus continued to mount up, authorities insisted that the contagion is "under control," and medical institutions persistently denied the human-to-human transmission, although the finding that 14 out of 41 cases didn't have contact with the fish market had suggested precisely that.
The Hubei Provincial Health Commission ordered the local institutions not to publish information about the infection, to transfer samples to the institutions pre-determined for testing, or to destroy them. It was reported by a web portal written in the Chinese language, Caixin Global, and shared by the American web portal Axios.
After the leading Chinese expert for respiratory medicine, Wang Guangfa, visited Wuhan on January 10, he stated for the state television CCTV that the mysterious lung infection in Wuhan is "under control" and "mainly mild." Eleven days later, he confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus.
Moreover, at the moment that the WHO posted an unbelievably irresponsible statement that there's no evidence for human-to-human transmission, the official number of the infected in Wuhan was inexplicably stopped at 45 cases, although the first cases were already showing up in China and neighboring countries. That entire time, Wuhan residents were leaving the city and were freely traveling to other parts of China and foreign countries, and people from other parts of the country were visiting the city.
Why didn't the WHO criticize keeping the doctor-whistleblower silent?
Only after the national assembly in Wuhan, clearly with the green light from the top, the number of confirmed cases continued to grow. But in the first three weeks in January, before implementing a truly impressive quarantine, as much as seven million people traveled through or left Wuhan, according to the New York Times. The consequences of this free spread of the infection at the beginning of the epidemic are unforeseeable.
Let's recall that eight doctors from Wuhan were arrested or warned in January because of "spreading rumors" about the new disease and the possible SARS rerun. The police warned all who were spreading "false news," and the social media censorship system kicked it into a higher gear than usual. One of the doctors, Li Wenliang, later died of COVID-19, and even his death couldn't have gone through without blatant lies and censorship.
If the Wuhan quarantine had been implemented three weeks earlier, the number of infected would have been 95% lower
Everyone who covers up the new cases of infection "will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity," China's top political commission in charge of law and order warned in its dramatic announcement. As we can see now, the Chinese authorities apparently covered up the vital information about the new epidemic in the critical period when most could have been done with the prevention.
The research by the scientists from the University of Southampton showed that China significantly reduced the number of new cases by implementing the measure of mass quarantine, which started on January 23. But the research also showed that the total number of COVID-19 cases could have been reduced by 66% if the preventative measures in Wuhan and China had been implemented a week earlier. If the measures had been implemented three weeks earlier, a total number could have been reduced by an astonishing 95%.
Unfortunately, by using the syntagm of the Communist Party of China, one could also conclude that the WHO will be the one nailed on the pillar of shame, whether because of the catastrophic mistake in judgment or because of the shameful adulation to China - and in the moment when it should have to be clear and had to be clear that the situation in the country is already out of control, and that an extremely dangerous infectious disease is threatening the entire world.
The Director-General of the WHO: There's no need for flight bans from China
Moreover, the WHO refused to announce a public health emergency of international concern on January 22, despite the confirmed cases in five other countries. For no apparent reason, they had waited for declaring the epidemic until March 12.
Instead, the WHO praised China for "the transparency they showed," as well as its response to the epidemic. We didn't hear a word of the WHO's criticism against Peking, while at the same time, they criticized the USA and other countries because of flight bans from China, almost in sync with the Chinese regime.
On February 3, the Director-General of the WHO, Ethiopian microbiologist Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, claimed that there's no need for implementing measures which "unnecessarily interfere with the international trade and transport." Twelve days later, he gave a bizarre statement that "the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it's the stigma that turns us against each other." Let's bring to mind that more than 89 thousand people died from this virus, and tens of thousand people are put on respirators, while the number of victims of "stigma," although undetermined, is surely surpassingly lower.
The reports of the American Bloomberg and Hong Kong's South China Morning Post also confirm that the number of confirmed cases in China is still significantly reduced. According to the reports, the accepted practice of the Chinese authorities was to record the asymptomatic cases of the infected only when they start to show symptoms. It means that, in China, the number of infected without symptoms is not listed in the official number of cases despite being tested positively.
Taiwan warned the WHO in December, but the WHO pretends Taiwan doesn't exist
The result is, of course, a much lower number of cases that it should have been otherwise. And in the SCPM's words the last month, as much as the third of the total number of the infected in China could be asymptomatic, according to the Chinese authorities' classified data for which the SCMP news got access to.
Possibly the most shameful episode which demonstrates the WHO's submission to Peking is the interview a Taiwanese reporter had with the WHO's Senior Adviser, the Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward.
Although Taiwan's response to coronavirus was probably the most successful in the world, Aylward simply dodged the question about Taiwan, pretending not to have heard it, and then left the video call with the reporter. After that, he bizarrely said that he "had already talked about China," completely in accordance with the political line of Peking, according to which Taiwan is de facto not an independent country, but a breakaway Chinese province that will sooner or later come under Chinese rule again.
The WHO will have to answer many uncomfortable questions
According to last month's report by the Financial Times, Taiwan's health authorities claimed that, at the end of December, they had warned the WHO and the Chinese healthcare services about the Chinese doctors being infected, which was clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. The WHO, unfortunately, ignored the information. Now it's quite obvious that they put the political interest of its influential and powerful member, with global ambitions more and more expressed, over the public health of its other 194 members.
Stopping the pandemic is the absolute priority today. But when that battle is finished, the current WHO leaders will have to answer many uncomfortable questions to their member countries that are affected by the pandemic. And the most important question will be - should the international community fund and count on the health organization that serves as a political weapon of one powerful and secretive dictatorship in the most critical moments. The tweet from the beginning of the text will serve as an important reminder that these questions have to be asked.