1. They blindly repeated the CCP’s claims that SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t seem to exhibit human to human transmission, as late as mid-January 2020. Remember, there were widespread reports of a pneuomonia-like illness in Wuhan in December. We later learned that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized as early as November. China’s own formal notice to WHO of the outbreak was done at the end of December. Around a week after the WHO provided broken guidance, China publicly announced that there is human to human transmission, and it still took the WHO a week past that to correct their guidance. I just don’t see how the WHO could possibly provide such broken guidance so late and for so long.
2. They allowed the CCP to escape accountability for over a year with their site visit in early 2021. I know they can’t force their way in and rely on UN member states for “power” but I feel like they were willing to happily ignore the possibility of a lab leak instead of pushing hard for a timely investigation on site (applying pressure publicly and seeking help from other nations). After their brief site visit in 2021, Tedros (head of WHO) seemed very ready to rule out a lab leak, and only a small set of brave scientists and investigative journalists have allowed this theory to return to legitimacy and receive the attention it deserves despite being shouted down by the “trust the science” crowd.
3. The WHO has not used their authority/weight as an institution in helpful ways. For example, they have pushed back against travel bans and other such measures that would at least buy countries time. At the end of January 2020, Tedros literally said there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”. More recently, the WHO has repeatedly claimed that countries seeking to protect their own people first are “hoarding” vaccines, which is absurd.
4. The WHO seems to be very deeply political. Whether it is about sparing the CCP from scrutiny or following “woke” protocol on how to name viruses and variants, they simply don’t feel like a neutral organization. The phrase “trust the science” is so overused that it is essentially meaningless, but the WHO is one of those very organizations that make me think that what we have come to call “science” is very prone to political corruption. They also seem to regularly put China’s interests ahead of the US, despite the US providing 15% of the WHO’s funding (China funds 0.21%).
5. There are other issues with WHO from before COVID. They were simply not as apparent since they didn’t affect Americans. Look at the 2014 Ebola outbreak and how the WHO handled it - by their own admission, they were completely incompetent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_African_Ebola_virus_ep...).
In the beginning of any outbreak of a new disease there is a scarcity of information and mistakes are always going to be made. You can already write part of the story here for the next pandemic in case you are so inclined.
That's pretty easy to criticize from the sidelines. At the same time: if the pandemic had been much milder you would be here ranting about how the WHO got it all wrong again and they cried wolf for no particular reason if only to grab more power, make money for big pharma with unused vaccines and managed to scare us all for nothing.
They can't do it right, it's always going to be too much or too little, and it's always the same groups complaining about this.
1. They blindly repeated the CCP’s claims that SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t seem to exhibit human to human transmission, as late as mid-January 2020. Remember, there were widespread reports of a pneuomonia-like illness in Wuhan in December. We later learned that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized as early as November. China’s own formal notice to WHO of the outbreak was done at the end of December. Around a week after the WHO provided broken guidance, China publicly announced that there is human to human transmission, and it still took the WHO a week past that to correct their guidance. I just don’t see how the WHO could possibly provide such broken guidance so late and for so long.
2. They allowed the CCP to escape accountability for over a year with their site visit in early 2021. I know they can’t force their way in and rely on UN member states for “power” but I feel like they were willing to happily ignore the possibility of a lab leak instead of pushing hard for a timely investigation on site (applying pressure publicly and seeking help from other nations). After their brief site visit in 2021, Tedros (head of WHO) seemed very ready to rule out a lab leak, and only a small set of brave scientists and investigative journalists have allowed this theory to return to legitimacy and receive the attention it deserves despite being shouted down by the “trust the science” crowd.
3. The WHO has not used their authority/weight as an institution in helpful ways. For example, they have pushed back against travel bans and other such measures that would at least buy countries time. At the end of January 2020, Tedros literally said there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”. More recently, the WHO has repeatedly claimed that countries seeking to protect their own people first are “hoarding” vaccines, which is absurd.
4. The WHO seems to be very deeply political. Whether it is about sparing the CCP from scrutiny or following “woke” protocol on how to name viruses and variants, they simply don’t feel like a neutral organization. The phrase “trust the science” is so overused that it is essentially meaningless, but the WHO is one of those very organizations that make me think that what we have come to call “science” is very prone to political corruption. They also seem to regularly put China’s interests ahead of the US, despite the US providing 15% of the WHO’s funding (China funds 0.21%).
5. There are other issues with WHO from before COVID. They were simply not as apparent since they didn’t affect Americans. Look at the 2014 Ebola outbreak and how the WHO handled it - by their own admission, they were completely incompetent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_African_Ebola_virus_ep...).