8 ms·

I've been watching COVID-19 very closely since 2019 Dec it, I also witnessed how WHO responses to this Pandemic. If you were me, you will notice that WHO tried

I've been watching COVID-19 very closely since 2019 Dec it, I also witnessed how WHO responses to this Pandemic. If you were me, you will notice that WHO tried very hard to please China, rather than taking people's health into consideration. Many things they did: - Advice not to ban flight to China after China locked down hubei lockdown (yes, many country trust WHO, like Japan and Korea) - Met and praised Xi many times, admire how wonderful they did - Keep down playing how serious the problem can be, and didn't advice any action And recently, China suddenly donate $20M to WHO https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-outbreak-china-to-donate-20-million-to-who-to-fight-coronavirus-report-2191858 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-outbreak-china-t... For more details, please watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5VGPYtbTk8

allovernow 7y ago
Yes, I've been saying this from the start as well. Also note that they used China's severely misleading statistics from day 1 with no disclaimer. The WHO is incompetent and/or corrupt.
- lsd5you 7y ago
  This is a lot of media. Bizarrely no skepticism, just writing articles matter of factly using dubious (or at the very least opaque/unverifiable) figures from foreign governments.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    And a surprising lack of reporting on the dozens of side channel leaks from China - videos of dead bodies, videos from leakers including the young doctor who was admonished and succumbed to the disease... Yeah a lot of it was rumor and hard to verify but...nothing? You'd almost start to wonder whether our journalists were cooperating with the Chinese government or something in censoring everything. I struggle to come up with a legitimate excuse other than total incompetence. It was all over the internet and a lot of it (first hand accounts from Chinese citizens within China) would have been reasonably easy to verify for a journalist who knew a Chinese speaker.
- TheKarateKid 7y ago
  Many feel the same way. There's a petition with almost 500k signers calling for the WHO Director General's resignation: https://www.change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resignation-of-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-who-director-general https://www.change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resigna...
  - gentleman11 7y ago
    Random people signing an internet petition is not cause to remove an international health expert. The only legitimate votes could come from doctors or foreign affairs/other experts
    - allovernow 7y ago
      Well, NYT also accused him a few years ago of covering up 3 Cholera outbreaks in his home country of Ethiopia. Given the display across the world right now I don't know if the experts are that much more informed than the collective wisdom of online society at this point, at least for this matter.
      - gentleman11 7y ago
        The collective wisdom of some online societies is saying that Covid is being played up in a conspiracy to lose Trump an election. We should be skeptical or online wisdom
    - TheKarateKid 7y ago
      You mean the same foreign affairs experts that look the other way at human rights violations and other massive crime for the sake of politics? No thanks.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  Wer zahlt, schafft an. It's not as if they can just tell the Chinese to fuck off, is it? They have to stay on the good side of the Chinese, or they will get kicked out.
- cjhopman 7y ago
  In what way were China's statistics severely misleading. For a long time, they reported lab-confirmed cases and were upfront that this was limited by the amount of tests they could perform. In addition, they reported how many people were tested and how many tests were still being processed. Today in the US, the US is reporting only lab-confirmed cases. They are also upfront that this is limited by the amount of tests they can perform. Unlike China, the US is __not__ reporting how many people are tested or how many tests are being processed. They are also not upfront about the fact that testing is severely limited by a very strict policy on who to test.
- tensor 7y ago
  I'll take China's statistics (which I've not seen to be misleading) over the US's complete censoring of any information about the outbreak, and the CDC preventing people from getting testing. At this point, all flights from the US should be terminated. Your government is a danger to your own country and to the world.
Invictus0 7y ago
WHO is an organization with no real power; it was necessary to kiss China's ass so that they could gain access to the country and get early data on the virus. The alternative was that the rest of the world would have had to rely solely on the manipulated Chinese stats.
- parliament32 7y ago
  Why is gaining access a good idea? If China's being dishonest WHO should just recommend zero travel from/to China and let them stew in it -- they can manipulate their stats internally all they want.
  - sneak 7y ago
    Please remember that "China" is not one person, and that the dishonest actions of some in their government should not be used to condemn thousands of innocent others to danger or death.
    - parliament32 7y ago
      So we should, instead, condemn the rest of the world? How many lives could have been saved if travel to China was stopped months ago?
    - malandrew 7y ago
      Instead thousands of innocents not in China have been condemned to danger or death. Last I checked, there are way more people not in China than in China. The classic trolley car problem would have made the call easy: seal off China.
  - nocturnial 7y ago
    They need access because they need the data. Suppose the WHO did recommend a zero travel ban from/to China, what do you think would happen? Nothing would have changed. It's still in the hands of the politicians in those countries to enact it. And let's be fair, in each country there's at least one politician in the parliament, congress,... that mocked the current, mild, response to the outbreak. Some said they would, or did in fact, defy quarantine rules to stop spreading the disease. Countries are also running out of reagents to test for this virus so analysis of the situation is already going to be complex. If China is being dishonest, they'll see it in the data. If country X or Y are dishonest in reporting figures about infection, mortality rates and what not, they will also see it. To summarize and put it bluntly: 1) I doubt China was the only superpower on the planet that used political force on the WHO to change their messaging. 2) The virus is new and currently raw data in any form is more important than issuing a medical recommendation that will be ignored because of country specific politics.
parliament32 7y ago
This pandering-to-China really needs to stop. At first it was "just business" but now it's objectively costing us human lives, and that's not okay.
james-mcelwain 7y ago
This kind of Sinophobia is so unwarranted -- China has done the best to control this disease outside of maybe S. Korea.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  Suggesting the Who is partial to China is not sinophobia.
  - james-mcelwain 7y ago
    It's one thing to make a political critique of the WHO, it's another to suggest "The WHO Belongs to Communist China." The YouTube channel they linked to is full of similar racist bullshit like "The West is Becoming Like China - And We Do Nothing."
    - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
      Its not xenophobia, to resist the subversion of a totalitarian regime who goes back on there word every time and abuses its people as slaves. China has played the xenophobia card one time to many. Meanwhile - in china, they blame the foreigners for everything. Time to get a new propangda trick- this one is spend. Love the chinese people by the way, when programming there on a machine felt really welcome and met a lot of nice guys.
- ameen 7y ago
  Vietnam has done similarly well too. China deserves some blame for not having investigated complaints seriously and allowing it to have spread at least for a month before the alarm bells were rung.
- bschwindHN 7y ago
  What's Sinophobic about this?
  - james-mcelwain 7y ago
president 7y ago
The WHO also renamed the coronavirus to COVID-19 at the behest of China in order to better fit the CCP narrative that the virus did not originate in China.
- hellofunk 7y ago
  Not quite. It is standard policy not to name virus after specific places, as a courtesy, regardless of where those places are.
  - egeozcan 7y ago
    Totally, and also it is very important. In some Turkish-speaking forums I follow, some people already blame the "Chinese way of living" for such a disaster. This disassociation has been even too late, I'd say.
    - ash 7y ago
      Covid-19 virus originated in Wuhan "wet market", where freshly-slaughtered wild meat is preferred. It's a perfect setting to facilitate virus movement from animal to animal and from animal to human. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/coronavirus-closures-reveal-vast-scale-of-chinas-secretive-wildlife-farm-industry https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/coronavi... And it happened before, with SARS in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Outbreak_in_South_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
      - egeozcan 7y ago
        Even if it is so, Chinese way of living is not just that market and people are just being racist. If there is a specific thing wrong with that environment (I'm not the one to tell), it needs to be dealt as a single case, not by talking down the way of living of billions.
  - TheKarateKid 7y ago
    What about the West Nile Virus, Zika virus, Spanish flu, etc.?
rfoo 7y ago
Hello taiwanboy.
- dang 7y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here, and nationalistic flamebait isn't allowed either. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.
odiroot 7y ago
Republic of China (Taiwan) is ironically very lucky to be excluded from WHO. They acted on their own accord on made all the right decisions.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  What does being excluded from the WHO have to do with that?
austincheney 7y ago
You are diving into conspiracy theories of the world's second largest economy and a massive multi-billion dollar pandemic over just $20 million?
- devmunchies 7y ago
  its a very believable "conspiracy theory", given the circumstances.
beaunative 7y ago
Why would the WHO try to please China? It's an international organization. It's not a charity. It doesn't rely on donation. Its membership were to countries, it's operations were maintained based on membership dues. I find it revolting as the OP seems to be insinuating there were financial interest for WHO to please China, which is bizarre and outrageous based on how it's organized.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  Because China threaten them. If they don't bend over backwards for them, China will accuse them of "Sinophobia" and being agents of the CIA all the rest.
- grandridge 7y ago
  I find it revolting how naive people are that think ngo's, charities, and international organizations are somehow morally superior, uncorruptible utupian ententies.
  - beaunative 7y ago
    No one really said that. The reasons that international organizations are more trustworthy is that a heck lot more people are watching them and they are mostly composed of delegates from ideally all countries in this world.
  - dang 7y ago
    Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN.
- victorlin 7y ago
  If WHO doesn't want to please China, could you explain they follow China's will and block Taiwan all the time? https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronavirus-wuhan-virus-spreads-taiwan-no-say-who/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronaviru... Yeah, right? why would they, hmmmmm, I am wondering
  - deleted 7y ago
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
You want visas to go into china and research a pandemic? This is how it is done. Not by throwing people under the bus, but by maintaining a very narrow bandwidth of comment and showing appreciation to the powers that be, for allowing you to enter the country and go about your business. I appreciate Xi Jinping and other chinese official's efforts to contain the disease and assist the WHO on their research mission. That's all I have to say about that.

allovernow 7y ago

Yes, I've been saying this from the start as well. Also note that they used China's severely misleading statistics from day 1 with no disclaimer. The WHO is incompetent and/or corrupt.

lsd5you 7y ago
This is a lot of media. Bizarrely no skepticism, just writing articles matter of factly using dubious (or at the very least opaque/unverifiable) figures from foreign governments.
- allovernow 7y ago
  And a surprising lack of reporting on the dozens of side channel leaks from China - videos of dead bodies, videos from leakers including the young doctor who was admonished and succumbed to the disease... Yeah a lot of it was rumor and hard to verify but...nothing? You'd almost start to wonder whether our journalists were cooperating with the Chinese government or something in censoring everything. I struggle to come up with a legitimate excuse other than total incompetence. It was all over the internet and a lot of it (first hand accounts from Chinese citizens within China) would have been reasonably easy to verify for a journalist who knew a Chinese speaker.
TheKarateKid 7y ago
Many feel the same way. There's a petition with almost 500k signers calling for the WHO Director General's resignation: https://www.change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resignation-of-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-who-director-general https://www.change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resigna...
- gentleman11 7y ago
  Random people signing an internet petition is not cause to remove an international health expert. The only legitimate votes could come from doctors or foreign affairs/other experts
  - allovernow 7y ago
    Well, NYT also accused him a few years ago of covering up 3 Cholera outbreaks in his home country of Ethiopia. Given the display across the world right now I don't know if the experts are that much more informed than the collective wisdom of online society at this point, at least for this matter.
    - gentleman11 7y ago
      The collective wisdom of some online societies is saying that Covid is being played up in a conspiracy to lose Trump an election. We should be skeptical or online wisdom
  - TheKarateKid 7y ago
    You mean the same foreign affairs experts that look the other way at human rights violations and other massive crime for the sake of politics? No thanks.
heartbeats 7y ago
Wer zahlt, schafft an. It's not as if they can just tell the Chinese to fuck off, is it? They have to stay on the good side of the Chinese, or they will get kicked out.
cjhopman 7y ago
In what way were China's statistics severely misleading. For a long time, they reported lab-confirmed cases and were upfront that this was limited by the amount of tests they could perform. In addition, they reported how many people were tested and how many tests were still being processed. Today in the US, the US is reporting only lab-confirmed cases. They are also upfront that this is limited by the amount of tests they can perform. Unlike China, the US is __not__ reporting how many people are tested or how many tests are being processed. They are also not upfront about the fact that testing is severely limited by a very strict policy on who to test.
tensor 7y ago
I'll take China's statistics (which I've not seen to be misleading) over the US's complete censoring of any information about the outbreak, and the CDC preventing people from getting testing. At this point, all flights from the US should be terminated. Your government is a danger to your own country and to the world.

Invictus0 7y ago

WHO is an organization with no real power; it was necessary to kiss China's ass so that they could gain access to the country and get early data on the virus. The alternative was that the rest of the world would have had to rely solely on the manipulated Chinese stats.

parliament32 7y ago
Why is gaining access a good idea? If China's being dishonest WHO should just recommend zero travel from/to China and let them stew in it -- they can manipulate their stats internally all they want.
- sneak 7y ago
  Please remember that "China" is not one person, and that the dishonest actions of some in their government should not be used to condemn thousands of innocent others to danger or death.
  - parliament32 7y ago
    So we should, instead, condemn the rest of the world? How many lives could have been saved if travel to China was stopped months ago?
  - malandrew 7y ago
    Instead thousands of innocents not in China have been condemned to danger or death. Last I checked, there are way more people not in China than in China. The classic trolley car problem would have made the call easy: seal off China.
- nocturnial 7y ago
  They need access because they need the data. Suppose the WHO did recommend a zero travel ban from/to China, what do you think would happen? Nothing would have changed. It's still in the hands of the politicians in those countries to enact it. And let's be fair, in each country there's at least one politician in the parliament, congress,... that mocked the current, mild, response to the outbreak. Some said they would, or did in fact, defy quarantine rules to stop spreading the disease. Countries are also running out of reagents to test for this virus so analysis of the situation is already going to be complex. If China is being dishonest, they'll see it in the data. If country X or Y are dishonest in reporting figures about infection, mortality rates and what not, they will also see it. To summarize and put it bluntly: 1) I doubt China was the only superpower on the planet that used political force on the WHO to change their messaging. 2) The virus is new and currently raw data in any form is more important than issuing a medical recommendation that will be ignored because of country specific politics.

parliament32 7y ago

This pandering-to-China really needs to stop. At first it was "just business" but now it's objectively costing us human lives, and that's not okay.

james-mcelwain 7y ago

This kind of Sinophobia is so unwarranted -- China has done the best to control this disease outside of maybe S. Korea.

marmaduke 7y ago
Suggesting the Who is partial to China is not sinophobia.
- james-mcelwain 7y ago
  It's one thing to make a political critique of the WHO, it's another to suggest "The WHO Belongs to Communist China." The YouTube channel they linked to is full of similar racist bullshit like "The West is Becoming Like China - And We Do Nothing."
  - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
    Its not xenophobia, to resist the subversion of a totalitarian regime who goes back on there word every time and abuses its people as slaves. China has played the xenophobia card one time to many. Meanwhile - in china, they blame the foreigners for everything. Time to get a new propangda trick- this one is spend. Love the chinese people by the way, when programming there on a machine felt really welcome and met a lot of nice guys.
ameen 7y ago
Vietnam has done similarly well too. China deserves some blame for not having investigated complaints seriously and allowing it to have spread at least for a month before the alarm bells were rung.
bschwindHN 7y ago
What's Sinophobic about this?
- james-mcelwain 7y ago

president 7y ago

The WHO also renamed the coronavirus to COVID-19 at the behest of China in order to better fit the CCP narrative that the virus did not originate in China.

hellofunk 7y ago
Not quite. It is standard policy not to name virus after specific places, as a courtesy, regardless of where those places are.
- egeozcan 7y ago
  Totally, and also it is very important. In some Turkish-speaking forums I follow, some people already blame the "Chinese way of living" for such a disaster. This disassociation has been even too late, I'd say.
  - ash 7y ago
    Covid-19 virus originated in Wuhan "wet market", where freshly-slaughtered wild meat is preferred. It's a perfect setting to facilitate virus movement from animal to animal and from animal to human. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/coronavirus-closures-reveal-vast-scale-of-chinas-secretive-wildlife-farm-industry https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/coronavi... And it happened before, with SARS in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Outbreak_in_South_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...
    - egeozcan 7y ago
      Even if it is so, Chinese way of living is not just that market and people are just being racist. If there is a specific thing wrong with that environment (I'm not the one to tell), it needs to be dealt as a single case, not by talking down the way of living of billions.
- TheKarateKid 7y ago
  What about the West Nile Virus, Zika virus, Spanish flu, etc.?

rfoo 7y ago

Hello taiwanboy.

dang 7y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here, and nationalistic flamebait isn't allowed either. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.

odiroot 7y ago

Republic of China (Taiwan) is ironically very lucky to be excluded from WHO. They acted on their own accord on made all the right decisions.

vonmoltke 7y ago
What does being excluded from the WHO have to do with that?

austincheney 7y ago

You are diving into conspiracy theories of the world's second largest economy and a massive multi-billion dollar pandemic over just $20 million?

devmunchies 7y ago
its a very believable "conspiracy theory", given the circumstances.

beaunative 7y ago

Why would the WHO try to please China? It's an international organization. It's not a charity. It doesn't rely on donation. Its membership were to countries, it's operations were maintained based on membership dues. I find it revolting as the OP seems to be insinuating there were financial interest for WHO to please China, which is bizarre and outrageous based on how it's organized.

heartbeats 7y ago
Because China threaten them. If they don't bend over backwards for them, China will accuse them of "Sinophobia" and being agents of the CIA all the rest.
grandridge 7y ago
I find it revolting how naive people are that think ngo's, charities, and international organizations are somehow morally superior, uncorruptible utupian ententies.
- beaunative 7y ago
  No one really said that. The reasons that international organizations are more trustworthy is that a heck lot more people are watching them and they are mostly composed of delegates from ideally all countries in this world.
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN.
victorlin 7y ago
If WHO doesn't want to please China, could you explain they follow China's will and block Taiwan all the time? https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronavirus-wuhan-virus-spreads-taiwan-no-say-who/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronaviru... Yeah, right? why would they, hmmmmm, I am wondering
- deleted 7y ago

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

You want visas to go into china and research a pandemic? This is how it is done. Not by throwing people under the bus, but by maintaining a very narrow bandwidth of comment and showing appreciation to the powers that be, for allowing you to enter the country and go about your business. I appreciate Xi Jinping and other chinese official's efforts to contain the disease and assist the WHO on their research mission. That's all I have to say about that.