So, fun little fact to start us off with. One of my sources has been edited. Well, another one if you count the WHO’s little erasures within their Mythbusters page. Yeah, the New York Times article, which I had added to simply give a launching point for some of the topics, was edited most recently on May 12th. (2)
Now you may be thinking, “Shadow Bard, it’s an ongoing event and the article is a timeline. It makes sense that they would add to it!” And to that I say, you’re right. If that was all that had happened, I’d count my blessings since this whole thing spirals away from me by the hour. But no, this change pushed me over the edge in deciding how much of America’s crap I would dive into with this global look at what the WHO and others knew during this entire mess. They took something out.
Specifically, they removed the part where it explains that US President Donald Trump asked congress for a loan of $1.25 billion to secure PPE for hospitals and begin work on a vaccine on February 24th. Now, that is the sum of new money. Overall the bill would allow for $2.5 billion while pulling half out of other programs to direct the funds towards the biggest emergency the nation is facing right now. (3) For an emergency fund to get started, it sounds pretty substantial to me, but hey what do I know?
Not much according to the Politico article I found and all the lovely politicians quoted therein. And yes, I know that both the NYT and Politico are heavily biased. Every news source is, even someone like me who goes around and includes things taken from opponents’ perspectives and talks about them. That’s life. If you’re not in a coma, you’re not a neutral entity. The only difference is how you treat the opposition and I’ll get to that at a later date.
The point the article, written on the day of the request, hammers home is how horribly inadequate this action was. Trump didn’t do this soon enough, he didn’t ask for enough, trying to be moderately budget minded by getting half the funds from other programs is terrible and insulting and how dare he. It’s pretty straight forward. (3) You know, because we were falling behind with our 35 patients and no deaths reported by the WHO (1:35) or the 53 patients according to Politico (3). {I think that might be a typo you guys, let’s just stick with that for today.}
No matter the number of cases, the fact remains that Congress was unimpressed by the numbers and the seriousness which the president was showing. Then, because stigma was the greatest issue of this whole ordeal (1:35), or perhaps because primary members of the congress were out telling people to travel to their local China town to prove they weren’t racist instead of taking it easy on the unnecessary trips (4), {NOTE: It’s more an issue that she was telling people to go out during an event that she apparently thought would ravage the country, not where she told people to go.} it took congress until March 5th to come up with and pass an $8.3 billion bill in its place. (5)
This, of course, begs a very serious question… IF CONGRESS COULD PROPOSE AND PASS ITS OWN BUDGET WHY DIDN’T THEY? I mean the word of the moment is that Trump does everything terribly. Why didn’t they make a move prior to this if they were really concerned for the American people?
GOV 101
Buckle in kiddos, ’cause we’re taking a field trip back in time to government class/American history/ whatever other class where you were taught about the constitution that half of Americans seem to have slept through. For any non-Americans coming across this, I guess you can imagine going back to my government class for aesthetics.
The United States federal government is divided into three branches. The Executive run by the President, the Legislative run by Congress (both the House of Representatives and the Senate together), and the Judicial run by the Supreme court. (6) With me so far? Good. Guess which one is in charge of making and passing laws?
If you said anything besides Legislative, you’re why we’re having this little discussion. Congress makes the laws while the president approves and enforces them. The president can veto a law, but if the Congress can get 2/3rds of its members to agree that the law is good for the country, they can overrule that veto. (6) Since the eventual spending bill was passed 96-1, it’s safe to say they had that requirement in the bag (4).
A bill doesn’t need the president’s approval or involvement to be written up or proposed and there is even a clause stating that he can’t ignore it for more than 10 days without if automatically going into effect as long as Congress isn’t recessed. (7) So what, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, the HELL has everyone been whining about this whole time?
Surprisingly, the President of the United States isn’t a bloody king. Who would have guessed that the nation created by a group of men who felt betrayed and abandoned by a king and decided to do things their own way didn’t have one of those same kings in their uppermost position? The President is allowed to sign or veto laws, lead the army in a war, negotiate treaties (that Congress still has to approve afterwards) and appoint members to different stations. He can even issue an executive order to “direct executive officers or clarify and further existing laws” and pardon offenses. But you know what he can’t do? PASS A BUDGET! (8)
Another duty of the President is to keep Congress posted on things happening inside the nation. This is normally achieved through the annual State of the Union address(8) and, wouldn’t you know it, but the virus was mentioned there. Maybe if Pelosi had listened instead of pre-tearing her copy, she and others might have heard him and known to start thinking about this then. (9)
Too Much is Never Enough
I’m not going to call out average citizens, I think I made that clear in my article about a shooting last week, but I’ve seen people complain that Trump didn’t really address the coronavirus in the State of the Union. And granted, it was only a paragraph made in passing among other accomplishments and it’s not very informative. (9) Here’s the thing though; by February 4th, {when the speech took place} the United States had a whopping 11 cases. (1:15)
By that point we had established a COVID Incident Management Structure on January 7, placed entry screening at our airports despite the WHO saying they wouldn’t do much, engaged our emergency response and raised our travel alert,(1:3) and Trump had given a big middle finger to the WHO by deciding to close off travel to foreign nationals who had been to Wuhan on the 31st. (2) {Yeah, that’s still on the page and it’s the site I quoted in my last article addressing this. I think their little note about the total cases and deaths, ignoring that they were 99% China based, is new.}
The US only had 5 cases that day (1:10), and the President’s decision received a salvo of criticism. Joe Biden {or, let’s be real, whoever they pay to write coherent sentences on his behalf} called the move xenophobic, hysterical, and fear mongering. Bernie Sanders had a similar take. Many seemed to. Until all the European countries followed suite. (10)
Then, it was no longer racist to close the borders. No, that was now reserved for calling COVID-19 the Wuhan or Chinese virus, which had been perfectly acceptable up to that point. Not only that, but closing the boarders only to foreign nationals who had visited China in the last two weeks wasn’t good enough. Everyone who had cried foul at what he did do suddenly changed their tune to say it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t doing anything! He was Nero, fiddling while Rome burned. (10)
Hey Nancy, maybe you should have thought of that before you encouraged unnecessary travel. (4) Or any time from December 31, 2019 onward when you could have done what any congress member can do and propose a budget to start working towards an action plan for the virus. Which is YOUR job, not the president’s.(6)
Critique or Scorn
So, do I think everything Trump has done through this ordeal has been spot on? No, I don’t. Like through the rest of his presidency, there are times when I wish he would reign in his rhetoric. Or found better ways to convey ideas. Sometimes I feel it would be better if he had to wait 24 hrs to tweet or talk about something. But that’s small fries compared to most of the complaints I hear. Let’s take a look at a few more of the issues that people have pointed to during this event and see if they are worth getting worked up over.
Hypocrisy is a word heard all too often, and it has been thrown at the US President more times than I care to count. Specific to the corona epic, Trump has been called a hypocrite due to some of his early Tweets from the beginning of what we now know to be a pandemic. Specifically the pictured one from late January that I’ve included. I can’t say how many times I’ve seen it dropped as a sign of Trump’s incompetence, poor handling of the tragedy, hypocrisy and more. How can Trump now put so much blame on China when he initially praised them?
Well, if we completely ignore the fact that situations evolve over time and that no one was really worrying about questioning the WHO’s assertions until the numbers stopped adding up, there is still a very good reason why Trump would initially take the high road in dealing with China. It involves him displaying a trait that many of his opponents don’t often credit him with: discretion.
Around the time of the tweet, the US and China had just signed a new trade agreement. It was brought up in the State of the Union only about a week after the above tweet went out. In that speech he says “a few days ago” meaning that when the tweet went out, the ink would have barely dried. (9) Which seems more reckless? Praising someone who had just made a deal with you who we now know may not have been truthful, or scolding the very powerful man who had just made a deal with you who at most was just starting to seem suspicious?
Because, remember, or learn for the first time depending on where you get your news from, the ABC report claiming that Trump knew about the virus back in November and December 2019 have been completely discredited. Colonel (Dr.) R. Shane Day who is the Director of the National Center for Medical Intelligence in the Defense Intelligence Agency went so far as to release a statement, which he admits he rarely does, because he thought there was something just that harmful about this lie. (11)
And I still see people saying “mid December” in multiple contexts. The most concerning of which are news articles and celebrity twitters. An article by the New Yorker was going around, courtesy of a tweet from actor George Takei, claiming that a teen had launched a coronavirus website as early as December 29, 2020. (12) Here’s the problem with that… The WHO claims they didn’t even know about the virus until December 31 (1:1).
Now, say all you want about the President and his resources, but how exactly is the average seventeen year old with an above average set of coding skills supposed to make a tracking website before the information goes public? Ignoring that, as I mentioned in my first piece, the WHO didn’t start tweeting or posting articles until around January 10th and they didn’t start posting their situation reports until January 21st. Where is he supposed to get his information? The imaginary government contacts they say were informing the president?
This all wouldn’t be so bad if people didn’t believe it. Heck, I would even say it’s good to see stories like this if people would do their research and could start to see who is lying. But they don’t. Too many buy these lies wholesale and that is why the lies keep coming. If I hadn’t written down notes and double checked, I wouldn’t have known about the NYT article changing. (2) And anyone who caught the original story but not the follow up still believes that Donald Trump called the virus a hoax. Which has been debunked; he was talking about the Democrats blaming him being the hoax and even the Post admits that. (10)
This doesn’t even cover the hydroxychloroquine mess that I’ll talk about when we reach March. Overall, it has been a tiring and frustrating journey, this pandemic. The fighting, the arguing, all the lying. I wish we could all be a little more like California Governor Newsom, willing to put aside bias and pass issues to acknowledge when good things happen. (10)
Next time we’ll pick back up with the timeline. Until then, try to be healthy and be happy with the rest.
Every time I sit down to continue this series I wind up having to move the goal posts down. This is the second section in a row where I thought I could make it all the way to the pandemic announcement, but the facts and politics just keep lengthening the sections. My wordy writing style doesn’t help either, and I’m working on it, I promise. ; )
In the first part, I sorted through the WHO’s Situation Reports, travel guides, and a few other sources in an attempt to eke out what the organization knew, or at least what it claimed to know. There were a handful of inconsistencies that drew attention to themselves. In the second part, I continued to follow the timeline and we began to see how the WHO might have gained the reputation for favoring China over the rest of the world through their own actions. Today, we’ll cover early to mid February as the carefully laid plans of the WHO begin to show signs of undoing up until we reach the point where I’m still trying to figure out if I need to do the big Trump rant or if I can still set that aside for later. >_<
Alarm Bells Ringing
I know I’ve been a bit of a whiner through this, and I don’t want you to think that I’m saying everything the WHO has done up to this point has been useless. So before I dive into the way their lies and mishandlings began to catch up to them and fall apart to the detriment of nations, I thought I’d share a few of the little positives the WHO achieved.
Their plan of accelerating the diagnostic process, streamlining the search for therapeutics and vaccines, and their desire to combat misinformation are all noble. So is their warning to prepare for economic struggles that might stem from the infection. (1:16) In fact, I was happy to see that unlike some of the doctors and other ‘authorities’ that were given a presence on the news, the WHO put just as much emphasis on therapeutics as vaccines instead of ignoring the former and acting as if the later was our only hope of dealing with this illness.
When the WHO opened up a donation page for nations, and individuals, to fund 90% of their action plan, I first found myself wondering if it was due to them realizing no one was taking the situation seriously enough or if it was a desire on their part to be solely in charge. The plan’s budget of USD 675.5 million was meant to last from February 1 to April 30 for the purpose of helping the international community implement health measures including observation, training, and PPE management with an eye towards poorer nations(1:16). I personally prefer non-centralized solutions that allow nations to help each other directly, but greed can get involved in matters like these so I can understand the need for a more powerful intermediary. So I can’t say I completely fault them for wanting to help train and supply nations otherwise unable to help themselves, as long as we look at the intention and not how they used the money and where it ultimately came from.
OK, I said a few nice things now let’s take a look at how the early February slump speaks to the success of their opening tactics.
With a global research and innovation forum on the horizon(1:17), the WHO announced that someone finally thought of adapting SARS and MERS research to fill in the gaps in the knowledge about 2019-nCoV. (2:2/6) They also highlighted testing efforts and questioned if looking for new, different forms of testing for the virus might be a good idea(1:17). With the Diamond Princess cruise ship sitting in Japans’ waters(3) with a total of 20 cases already reported, that might be a good thing to spend some of those millions they’re seeking on(1:17).
February 7 reports gave me both a good laugh and a grim reminder of one of the reasons China has proven itself so monstrous over the years and in this particular event. The funny bit was reading the WHO whine in their situation report that out of the 72 countries that had implemented international travel restrictions, only 23– or 32%– had actually filed the correct paperwork. They knew this because apparently they paid someone to stalk the news and Twitter feeds of different nations which is where they found out. (1:18) The sobering news of the day was the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, supposedly of the virus, who was the doctor reprimanded by the CCP for warning his fellow doctors of the new virus that was beginning to spread(3). Though he died for his actions taken as a whistle blower, his bravery to speak out might have saved countless lives if only by forcing China to come forward with the information due to it being leaked. I feel this is an opportune time to remind you that the timeline and case counts are listed as they are reported by the WHO who are almost unquestioningly accepting them from China.
While people cried out in protest of this hero’s death, the repeated rounds of their education bullet points remained the primary concern of the WHO and the groups working with them. The infection prevention and control (IPC) global network met and renewed guidelines on healthcare. Isolation, precautions for carers, and control of as much of the environment as possible all make up the meat of their recommendations as the WHO laid out in their report. (1:19)
One recommendation in particular that has seen little adjustment since is that home health aides and those who are sick should wear masks, but the public as a whole shouldn’t bother with them. (1:19) Even if it’s only a possibility, knowing that asymptomatic people can have the virus (2:1/26) and that up to 80% of people have only a mild illness (2:1/28) that might not even lead to them seeking medical attention, it seems like a foolish recommendation to make as they do clearly expect there to be some benefit in containing the virus from them. And it seems I’m not the only one to think that as the Japanese government made their own decision and provided masks to the passengers on the Diamond Princess in an attempt to prevent the illness from further spreading among the ship’s inhabitants whenever they left their rooms during the two week quarantine imposed on them. (1:20)
As the WHO released online training courses for coronavirus response and healthcare workers(1:20), and announced the upcoming meeting for their research and development team(1:21) they quietly gave up constantly stating that they didn’t want people to stop traveling to and trading with China(1:20). That’s not to say they approved of a nation taking either step by any stretch of the imagination, but they stopped putting their less than suggestive advice at the end of every single report starting from that point. With this tiny concession, they continued to plow forward along the same path with a new rallying cry.
The official name of COVID-19, which was just an acronym of the disease’s classification, was announced at last(1:22). There was a small problem, though. By this point the many colorful names that the internet had given the virus to have something other than 2019-nCoV to call it, had come to the WHO’s attention. Apparently unlike Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, the Spanish Flu, or Lyme Disease, calling this virus the Chinese Virus, the Wuhan Virus, or the Bat Soup Virus was inappropriate and caused stigmatization which could lead to inaccuracies. (2:2/11)
Maybe they should have thought about that before oh, I don’t know, spending the first month and a half acting like this was something that only the people of China could get or spread. There isn’t anything inaccurate about saying that it came from China or Wuhan, and there are only so many times the world can hear about eating wild animals causing a major disease before they start taking exception to people who continue to eat them. In case you didn’t know, Ebola also likely started from consuming bats (4) or something bats came into contact with as did SARS and other coronaviruses (5).
Let me say something important here: I’m not condoning attacking foreign nationals or the citizens of China by any means. Whether the unsanitary conditions of the wet market in Wuhan, an under cooked piece of meat, or–for the sake of argument–a scientist from a nearby laboratory who didn’t properly wash his hands after touching the lab’s experiment animals and before picking something up on his way home from work, this is most likely an education problem and I put more blame on the government that has created an environment where families feel the need to turn to often diseased wild animals to sustain themselves. At the very least, a method of teaching people how to ensure foods are cooked all the way through would have greatly benefited the people.
And, in case you hadn’t heard because I know it’s been a sensitive subject, China and the WHO had admitted by this point that the Rhinolophus bat sub-species was likely the original carrier of the virus by looking at its genetic makeup. However, they suggest that another animal might have played intermediary between the bats and humans in this case as bats don’t typically get sold at markets but directly to restaurants. (1:22) I would think that might show up in the genetic code too, but we’re not going down that rabbit hole for now. The primary suggestion to come from this entire episode from the WHO about how to prevent something like this in the future? Maybe we should do a better job at keeping wet markets clean. (1:22) Yeah. Not close them forever, just make sure their sanitation is up to par. I don’t feel good about this going forward.
The next day the WHO attempted to mass shame governments via more indirect tweets about not wanting the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships to dock on their shores while also tweeting that 40 of the previous day’s 48 new cases were of passengers aboard the ship in question. (2:2/12) They also sent virologists to Mexico and Brazil to give them guidance in spite of the fact that there were no cases anywhere in Central or South America at the time. (2:2/12)
While that was going on, nations had begun to plan for how to get their citizens home from China and other viral centers. Ever the helpful ones, the WHO brought attention to their article about repatriation and quarantine that is so unbelievably nightmarish that I’m going to have to rip an entire quote from it in order to properly rant about it. (1:23)
“Evidence on travel measures that significantly interfere with international traffic for more than 24 hours shows that such measures may have a public health rationale at the beginning of the containment phase of an outbreak, as they may allow affected countries to implement sustained response measures, and non-affected countries to gain time to initiate and implement effective preparedness measures. Such restrictions, however, need to be short in duration, proportionate to the public health risks, and be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.” (6)
The World Health Organization
So, in other words, if you had told people not to go to China back on January 10th (when you made your first Travel Guide) or before, or had China locked down their nation immediately upon learning there was a new disease, then we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. Is that what you’re saying, WHO? Because that’s what I’m hearing.
But no, that would have been mean. And now there are stranded people, anger, confusion, and the lock downs. Now we need to load up planes full of PPE and medical personnel to go rescue citizens from China when everything has exploded out of control. Just make sure you are properly emotionally preparing the normal flight crew and screening passengers, with the advice being to ditch anyone with symptoms to their fates; because again forget about those asymptomatic patients who are also coming over so might as well bring everyone. Instead you are meant to treat those showing signs as if they are the only ones who matter and track every seat to ensure that if anyone gets sick they will know who was nearby if they are positive for the virus. (6)
And if no one gets sick? Well then apparently it’s fine to let them just go as long as you let them know where to go or who to call if they start to succumb. Don’t forget to tell them to keep track of every person they come into contact with and to tell those people to call and keep track of who they come into contact with just in case. Or, you know, quarantine them for two weeks. You lay out instructions for that in the guide too but no apparently we’re not so concerned still that we won’t let potential vectors have visitors without any test or waiting period (6).
Do I sound frustrated? I know it’s hard to tell through text so let me take a moment to say: I’m frustrated. The farther I read, the worse things get. And I find no comfort in the released Crisis Management Team roster the UN managed to cobble together(1:23).
“The CMT brings together WHO, OCHA, IMO (International Maritime Organization), UNICEF, ICAO, WFP, FAO, the World Bank and several departments of the UN Secretariat.”
World Health Organization on the UN’s CMT Member List
Because there isn’t a single organization on that list that has given people of the world reason to question or fear them. Nope, totally not. But hey, at least we know that it’s been very rare for someone who got sick outside of China to spread the virus to new locations and that it’s definitely only spread through small clusters and not through society as a whole. (1:23) But it’s not the Chinese virus you guys. It’s Not STop SaYing THAT!
In keeping with the everything’s fine nothing to see here theme of the pandemic that’s not yet a pandemic, on February 13 China had a sudden spike of 14K cases overnight(3). Basically, the doctors in Hubei province, who definitely have this under control haven’t you seen how the numbers up to this point have been leveling off, started x-raying patients’ chests and anyone with any sort of lung build up was considered infected. (1:24) Now the WHO didn’t add these to their overall count for China in the situation reports (but they did on their COVID-19 home page) pending more information. They instead stopped reporting on China’s suspected cases and waited for the lab results to confirm the clinical diagnostics. (1:24)
One of these things is not like the others… COVID-19 Dashboard
In the meantime we get the comfort of knowing from one of their tables that seven cases were contracted in Singapore (on February 13 the place with the most cases outside of China and the Diamond Princess) on January 22nd and spread it around to France right after. (1:24) A fun tidbit to learn the day before France’s first COVID19 death, the first in Europe(3). Almost as exciting as the first death in Japan with no direct ties to traveling to Wuhan. (1:25) So much for the virus not being as bad once it gets out of China.
Let’s see, what other little crises are boiling to the surface? Ah! How about this one? After not mentioning it at all after the initial announcement, suddenly we’re updated by learning that a slew of doctors and medical staff have died in China(2:2/15). I don’t know if we’re supposed to think that they all just died off like Raid doused ants or if we’re meant to extrapolate that they have gradually been falling sick and dying and China has reached the point where they no longer feel the need to hide it anymore. But I do know that the WHO is proud of China for buying the world time(2:2/15) and extremely peeved that other nations are taking steps without running it by them to be ridiculed first(2:2/15).
Because of these steps other nations are taking, it’s time for the WHO to link up with social media to sensor, I mean correct, any news or information about the virus that they deem fake.(2:2/15) While we’re at it, how about you guys throw in a theory bate tweet saying that you need to study the virus in more places and environments to learn more about it(2:2/16)? Awesome, don’t forget to remind everyone to submit all their data about how it spreads through jobs, hospitals, schools and all that(1:27). Great, and don’t worry. This is definitely not the first time I’ve read your reports and tweets and found that they came off sounding like you were letting things progress just to see how your monitoring equipment worked or how much control you could gain in a situation like this.
Let’s not focus on that for now, though. Instead, let’s focus on how China published a report on their 44k cases, including the clinical ones which are confirmed now(1:28), which should help the WHO with advising nations. It even gave them an idea of where the virus might be heading once held up alongside a map of the 600 cases and three deaths outside of China. (2:2/17) I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but by golly does it sound sinister. And hey, China also passed a law outlawing the consumption of wild animals (3) so maybe that’ll do something to prevent a new one from cropping up once we scrape our way out of this mess.
On the 18th a weird tweet was put out saying that it had now been one month since the virus had left China. (2:2/18) You can’t even peg this as them ignoring Taiwan; Thailand and Japan had their first cases on the 13th and 15th respectively so I don’t know who’s watching their calendar over at WHO headquarters (1:1). Hopefully not the same person who took to the Situation Report to inform the nations that they were too stupid to know how to ration PPE properly so take this guide to tell you how, and also you, not naming any names, are all terrible because export restrictions means we can’t do what we want as easily with moving supplies around and finding production places outside of China. Not that they aren’t crucial still, but maybe we should look into it. (1:29) Legal speak stops sounding polite and starts sounding passive aggressive really quickly, especially when I get a hold of it.
As the cruise ship Diamond Princess began to disembark passengers who had ended their quarantine(3), the WHO announced that its mathematics partners had finally determined that the incubation period was 0-14 days with the median being 5-6. (1:30) Just to be safe, the Japanese government encouraged the cruise passengers to wait another 14 days at home to ensure they don’t develop a fever or other symptoms. So that little saga came to its end after pushing global numbers outside of China over one thousand. (2:2/20)
And no list of the insane back stabbing admissions from the WHO would be complete without this little gem from the 31st Situation Report.
“Following the notification of the occurrence of cases of COVID-19 among travelers from Wuhan, China in early January, WHO set up a Global Surveillance System to collect and organize essential information to describe and monitor the extent of the global outbreak.”
-The World Health Organization
Monitor global extent? Provide early risk assessment once cases were detected in new countries?? Provide guidance on trends???(1:31) Um… Guys, pretty sure you were still saying this was something that wasn’t going to spread outside China apart from the direct travelers back in January. Or at least it sure felt that way with how you kept repeating that it was very rare and almost impossible to pass it along to anyone outside of China. (2:1/27,1/30)
Quick! Focus on the fact that South Korea had two days in a row of 50+ patients pushing them to the top of the not China infection slot! (1:30,31) Turns out there was an underground church in South Korea affiliated with China that was discovered as having contributed to their outbreak. The nation quickly shut down schools, nursing homes, and rallies to put a stop to this development(3).
So please, whatever you do pay attention to that. Don’t focus on the fact that INFOSAN is only just now trying to figure out if the pathogen that causes COVID-19 can be passed around on international food shipments. Because FFFFFfffafafFfasffadfRICk that might have been something nice to know back at the beginning. Especially since we already know that coronaviruses can live for up to two years while frozen and last on surfaces for a few days. But hey, SARS and MERS didn’t spread that way, so it’s probably fine. (1:32)
I mean, it’s not like you had to test every single little detail up to this point before deciding to make up your mind on it. But hey, those were ways to prevent the spread, so it was fine to assume they wouldn’t work and look into them while not taking steps to protect people in the event it might be true and waited for later to figure out if maybe the intermediary animal between bats and humans that you suspect might have helped introduce the virus to us might be something people other than desperate pangolin eaters at a wet market might be interested in (1:32). It’s fine.
Remember how they said it’s possible to spread the virus via fomites back in January? (1:4) Well they just published the protocol about how they want to go about testing for that on February 18th so it only took them about a month to get around to finalizing the process they would need to start doing it. : D (1:33)
No need to focus on all of that. After all, we’re kind of busy with the fact that South Korea’s count just went up by a third and Italy has started to close a few cities to deal with the looming crisis(1:34). Plus, the emergency committee decided that it might be too scawy to call it a pandemic yet, which I’m sure they won’t have to change after a week again(2:2/24). It’s not like South Korea is up to having 763 cases and 161 deaths at this point(1:35) and when China was near that with 830* cases they were already classified as very high(1:4). Not sure why we’re still at high and are postponing the pandemic talk but fine, I guess.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t see any problems that have come crashing down into a soppy mess on the floor that was then shoved under the rug of causing stigma with all the grace and subtlety of fruit laden Jello. We’re clearly not suffering the consequences of anything that was ignored up to this point and are definitely not setting up more by continuing to stay in denial and cover one dictatorship’s red starry butt. Join me next time to look even deeper into this mess. Maybe we’ll actually make it to the pandemic declaration this time! But be cautiously optimistic, more politics are starting to creep in and I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold myself back until I actually try to cover these topics. (=w=)
Until then… Strive to be healthy and be happy with the rest.
Welcome back for the next part of this saga of sorting through the WHO’s situation reports, Twitter page, and other communications. For this section I continue to follow the Situation Reports from January 22, 2020, tracing the starts of some heavy evidence for the belief that something was rotten in the international halls of this organization. I know it sounds like a vague summary, but trust me, it’s a complete story in its own right.
Just a minor head’s up before diving in; the situation reports are very repetitive. I will do my best to use the earliest possible date for when the report began talking about topics, seeing as how the point of this series is to cobble together a loose timeline of sorts, but if I don’t mention everything in a given report each day it’s because the information is mostly repeats of prior content.
A Taiwanese Mystery
I wish things became easier in this section but the questions only manage to get deeper and more tangled as time goes on. Every answer opens another three questions, so forgive me if this starts to wander a bit. To keep myself on some semblance of a track, I’ve picked out what I feel is the biggest, or at least most central, question to help guide the overarching narrative. This will be a bit tricky, seeing as how I lack the authority to draw any definitive conclusions, but I can speculate on the facts at hand and it’s not long before we see hints of potential answers in the texts.
What is the relationship between the WHO and the Chinese government^ in all of this? Specifically, has the WHO taken steps to put China’s image and success over the health and safety of the rest of the world? As favoritism can only be detrimental to the majority of nations who put their trust and funds into the WHO, it’s a serious allegation to lay against them. So grave would discovering a loss of the proper neutrality the organization was built to maintain during such crises be that many governments, in particular the US, have started to probe into the possibility.
To see what we can glean from the reports, let’s look at the cliffhanger from my last post. I gave you a hint that something I had already mentioned in the article might offer a clue as to why the WHO quietly changed their stance on person-to-person transmission in a tweet(2:1/19) the day before the two Guangdong province cases with only a sick family member to act as a source was announced(1:1). If you guessed the Taiwan case of dubious circumstances(1:2), then congratulations, you get internet cookies. (The imaginary ones that date me and my introduction to the internet, not the software ones everyone has to deal with.)
Without breaking focus too much let’s take a second to address the issue with Taiwan itself and how the WHO refers to the country. They mention Taiwan as if it were a part of China, not its own nation(1:2). There has been back and forth on the topic for years now, with many nations not wanting to go against the manufacturing powerhouse that is China and risk upsetting their own personal trade or starting conflict over acknowledging Taiwanese independence(3). Though I personally loathe the decision, I can’t say I hold the WHO solely or even primarily responsible for not breaking the pattern by continuing to refer to Taiwan in the way the US would refer to Ohio or Kentucky.
What I do take issue with is how Taiwan’s first case provides such an overarching example of the way evidence was presented early but not acted upon until far too late. The is not only a dating nightmare for the overall timeline, having her onset as January 11th but not reported until the 22nd, it also throws an ever expanding monkey wrench into the story of transmission as she had no history of contact with any wet markets, no interactions with live animals, no trips to the patients in Wuhan hospitals, or anyone else known to have the virus(1:2). So how did she get sick?
Most likely, not by an animal, a research study, referenced by the WHO in one of their situation reports and conducted in the UK, determined. Aside from the fact that less than 15% of new cases were linked to direct visits to the Hunanan market at the time; which would greatly limit the possibility of animal exposure(1:3) (because apparently closing down the offending wet market on the first of the month(1:1) didn’t do the trick), there was very little variation in the genetic makeup of the virus, suggesting that it was both very young and had made a single leap from humans to animals. It looks like all transmission of the virus may have occurred by some form of person-to-person means other than that first infection. (1:3) Oops.
With that statement on paper it’s hard to see why they paid such attention to the close nature of the relationships of the two Guangdong cases, giving a false impression such ties are necessary to spread the illness. (1:3) After all, if it was only family and friend ties that could spread the virus, I doubt confirmed cases would have jumped by 11% in one day up to 314* with sixteen healthcare workers coming down with the illness(1:2). This sudden spike in medical personnel cases is a bit disconcerting, two fifths of new cases and 5% of the total count, especially since the WHO considered 2019-nCoV to be not very active within hospitals when compared to MERS or SARS in the next report(1:3).
Theoretically this is one of the assessments the WHO should have been primed to change at any moment, especially seeing as how their favorite mantra is the Platonian mantra that all we really know for sure is how little we know about the virus. Not to worry though; figuring out the source, transmission, and best containment method was decided on as the focus for the emergency committee that met on January 23(2:1/23). The committee had originally been called together to determine if the novel coronavirus could yet be classified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern(2:1/21). They concluded that it was too early to call it much more than an alert for the global community and that China was still the primary focus of the disease(2:1/23).
The idea of containment and mitigation seemed to strike a chord with other nations that stepped up their own protocols for keeping new cases out and striving to get ahead of the spread from any infections already present in their countries. The US CDC, for example, continued with what seemed to be working and expanded their entry screening stations to include Atlanta and Chicago airports and took their own tests to Washington state to track down anyone who might have been exposed to the initial case. (1:3)
Seemingly in response, the WHO maintained that entry screenings were practically useless in their newest travel advisory report posted on January 24th. This advice was given on the same page where they indicated that a majority of cases known about outside of China were picked up via such methods. I wish I was making that up. So yeah, despite the fact that patients may throw off thermometers by taking a few aspirin on the way over, checking upon entry might still do some good. (4) With the fever intervention as their main case for why entry screenings are an expensive waste of time, while in the same breath and in later reports praising exit screenings as useful, I find myself asking: does China not let people take medicine for fevers until they get on an airplane?
You may be wondering why travel with China was still going on once person-to-person transmission had been confirmed and even our mystery girl from Taiwan was known about. Well, as far as the WHO was concerned, it was still safe– and important–to continue traveling to China for the holiday season that they helpfully recorded would cause an explosion in cases the day before it happened(4). But don’t worry, Wuhan won’t be holding any big events(4) which is the closest the WHO gets to admitting that China itself cut its losses and closed the entire city down on the 23rd(5). I don’t know about you but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more blatant yet underhanded way of saying that traveling to an area is a one way ticket to infection.
With only 587 cases and 17 deaths reported on the 23rd, China’s movement to shut down appears to be a quick and prudent call. Then you look at the second report from the UK that was referenced by the WHO and the doubts resurface. Using what they had seen, what they believed due to their assessment of its transmissibility, and an average period of ten days between infection and discovery of a case; the report estimated that as of January 18 there should have been anywhere from one thousand to nine thousand cases in China, with four thousand being the average. (1:3)
After the debacle of ‘two hundred thousand to two million deaths’ that took place here in America, I’ve learned to take these mathematical guesstimations with a grain of salt. Still, on the low end China could have had twice what they were reporting while on the high end it’s nearly twenty times the amount. Their quarantine shutdown sounds a bit less preventative and a bit more desperation at that point. But, assuming the math isn’t completely wrong, where are the other cases? Does it have anything to do with the Taiwan mystery?
The WHO and their team began asking new questions too, once there was too much evidence to deny that person-to-person transmission was possible and likely the primary means of spreading the virus. Recalling MERS and SARS again, they began to talk about the role droplets and fomites–aka contaminated surfaces–might play in the process. They redoubled their calls for cleanliness to limit further exportation and even sent masks to the people of Macau in an effort to slow the spread. (1:4) {Don’t get used to that!} However, they just as loudly disavowed any avoidance of travel or
trade with China. As long as you kept your germs to yourself, washed after touching anything, and immediately ran to the doctor upon getting sick to tell them you went to China during the outbreak because the WHO said you would be mean if you didn’t, they were confident the virus would be reigned in. The only other advice given for travelers was that anyone who came into contact with someone who had the illness needed to remain in isolated observation for fourteen days to wait out the incubation period. (4) Did I mention it’s definitely safe to go to China?
Really, it’s fine you guys. This is definitely not the point where I started having a hard time convincing myself to give the WHO the benefit of the doubt. Not at all. They certainly don’t seem like they’re encouraging dangerous travel by constantly reiterating that there was only one known case of person-to-person transmission to happen outside of China(1:5), as if a border might turn off that trait. And it totally doesn’t seem disingenuous to say that after the UK report suggesting that all the transmissions were person to person(1:3), which would make sense because it’s been OVER THREE WEEKS since the market that started it all was closed and there are still new cases coming forward(1:1). And I’m not at all suggesting it’s outright sinister to claim that the main goal at this point in the fight was to prevent further exports of the virus to other nations while also repeating on the daily that there should be no interruptions to international travel or trade(1:5), especially when some quick math of the numbers provided by China reveals a 3% death rate up to that point.
No, I’m not suggesting it. But it sure as hell has done a pretty good job of suggesting itself. Nothing seems to add up when it comes to the tweets and the reports. Two days after suggesting a fourteen day quarantine for anyone exposed to a visibly sick person(4), the WHO tweeted both that they estimated the incubation period to be two to ten days and that MERS was known to have asymptomatic carriers(2:1/26). And there we have our first potential answer, and my personal belief, on how the Taiwan case came about.
Up to this point, the emphasis has been strictly on patients with symptoms. The fever screenings, the respiratory signs, and the suggestions of isolation all center on patients who show symptoms of their illness. An asymptomatic and undiagnosed patient would leave a more susceptible person ill with no apparent reason why. It’s not the only possible answer, but once more it will be a distressingly long time before either one is brought up again. (That’s right, I already mentioned the other method. : P Can you guess before I bring attention to it?)
After mentioning that they don’t know what role asymptomatic carriers and patients within the incubation period play in the spread of the virus(1:7) and that scientific journals had agreed to forego their normal wait period and paywall on all articles involving the virus (2:1/26) the WHO announced that it was sending some of their highest members to China to speak directly with President Xi and those working on the front lines(1:8).
Can’t edit tweets! A look at a supposed typo of the WHO saying the global level was moderate when it was, in fact, meant to by high. The situation report had the same error.
Almost as if they were getting a new perspective on something, their attitudes began to change in a more serious and desperate direction after this meeting. At least as much as they could without coming out and nullifying everything that had been said up to that point. Economic problems and suggestions for mitigating them began to appear. An anonymized submission form database for nations to share data from any and all cases they discovered was finalized. (1:8) The Emergency Committee was called back after less than a week to see if they had maybe changed their mind about the PHEIC status of the virus (2:1/29). They even broke down and admitted entrance screenings could be of some use if utilized alongside other methods, though they should be limited to planes arriving from known hotspots for practicality (2:1/29).
Over night, while there were only 68 cases of the virus outside of China(1:9), and while the virus was still seen as a China problem and not a global one(2:1/29), the WHO had formed another committee, this time called the Pandemic Supply Chain Network(1:9). The purpose of the PANDEMIC supply chain network was to assess and plan for global PPE demand. I don’t know what I find weirder, them suddenly seeming to know that there is going to be a wild demand for PPE while there are only 6065* cases with 1239* hospitalizations and 132* deaths, the fact that they use the word pandemic before they have even admitted it’s an international health emergency, or the fact that they emphasize focusing on symptomatic travelers three days after bringing up asymptomatic carriers as possible contributors(1:9).
So the emergency committee sat down for their second meeting on January 30(1:10) to debate whether calling the situation a public health emergency of international concern was worth the fear that term would stir up(2:1/30). Yes, because I know my first thought while scrambling to secure PPE and prepare for something big that I’ve been ignoring for a month until seeing the first hand devastation is to consider whether Susan might get the vapors over learning this disease is something that could directly impact her life. During that very important meeting, that apparently took more talking than the five minute phone call it should have been, the WHO used the special focus section in their situation report to explain why they were still calling the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV and not a proper name. The answer was that apparently the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) {no, I don’t know where that acronym comes from} and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) needed to be part of the overall naming decision and that it couldn’t be finalized until the new book detailing diseases was officially published. (1:10) Because books can’t be edited or something.
To no one’s surprise, or at least no one would have been very surprised if they had been following along this closely at the time, the committee announced that this virus was, in fact, a PHEIC by January 31, 2020. They also handed down a tiny recommendation for the WHO to find a way to create a third step in the grading scale between PHEIC and no PHEIC without having to rewrite their entire rulebook. (1:11) Sounds like maybe this wasn’t being taken as seriously as it should have been after they decided it wasn’t that big of a deal last week.
With the decision finally being made, how did the WHO change their approach? Education seemed to become one of their focal points with the release of the EPI-WIN program to share targeted information with at-risk communities and the launch of a mythbuster campaign to combat false information about the virus. (1:11) I’m not sure if this is when the campaign was started, it may have been shown in the tweets before now, but as this is its first mention in the situation report I’m going to take a minute to cover the information here as accessed on 4/23/2020, so there might be a few newer ones that weren’t on the list in January/February.
When asked about treatment; they mention that there is no medicine to prevent or treat the coronavirus, specifically pointing out that antibiotics are for bacterial infections not viral ones(6).
When asked about who is at risk; they mention that anyone can become infected, though the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions are more susceptible(6).
When asked about at-home ways to prevent illness; they say that no matter what the alternative medicine guru on Facebook says, eating an entire garlic bulb and flushing with saline won’t keep you from getting it. And please for the love of all that is holy don’t douse yourself in alcohol or chlorine that will kill you(6).
They clear up confusion about the stages of the disease by mentioning that despite pneumonia being one of the worst outcomes of the virus, the vaccines currently available to protect against pneumonia won’t work(6).
When asked about UV lamps for sanitation they state those will just cause skin irritation, though the graphic doesn’t confirm or deny that the virus will die(6).
A series of their graphics deny any temperatures will help with defeating the coronavirus be it hot baths, cold weather, heat, or humidity(6).
When talking about transmission, they point out this is one thing mosquitoes can’t be blamed for(6).
There are others to be found but more importantly, there are some missing from the last time I went to the page about a week ago. Perhaps when they added that 5G isn’t the cause(6), they also pulled these ones, which were the ones I specifically was wanting to talk about. Luckily, there is no edit button on twitter and I got screenshots, though I don’t think they are very good at remembering to take down incriminating tweets so you might be able to find them.
On February 18 (again I don’t know when this was first added to their mythbusters) they posted as fact that “the risk of being infected… by touching coins, banknotes, credit cards and other objects, is very low.”(2:2/18) The other one that I wanted to bring up that I screen-capped from March 6 said “the new coronavirus cannot be transmitted through goods manufactured in China or by any countries reporting COVID19 cases. If you think a surface may be contaminated, use a disinfectant to clean it.”(2:3/6) I’ll definitely be adding those tweets to this post so I can show that I’m not crazy. I’m so glad that I capped them. It feels like I caught them with their pants down.
Why? Well, if you hadn’t guessed, this claim paired with how the WHO had become so demanding that trade and travel with China remain open at this point–even going as far as to say that restricting either (even as they warned countries to prepare for an onslaught of the virus in the same severity as what Wuhan had faced) was creating stigma and that nations who had shut their borders had 48 hours to provide scientific evidence to the WHO to back up their decision for them to decide whether they felt it was justified and that they felt it their right to advise nations to change their minds if they didn’t agree(1:11)–is my second guess for how the mystery Taiwanese girl got her seemingly unconnected infection. I know that sentence is a nightmare so let me break it down.
According to the US CDC, the coronavirus can live on surfaces for hours to days. Their article on sterilizing contaminated areas suggests that you can’t be sure an unsanitized surface is free of pathogens until a full seven days have passed. (7) Seven days seems like plenty of time to make it from the factory to the customer, especially in the era of express shipping. It also makes you want to avoid paying in cash and to wipe down your debit card after every use.
I feel safe saying the WHO already held their belief in the safety of money and goods in late January, even if the tweets are from later. If not for the constant calls for continued trade with China, then for the fact they dismissed asymptomatic patients as a significant carrier since they wouldn’t be coughing and sneezing their germs on everything(1:12). I guess the WHO members have never heard of a kiss, which now that I think about it might be half the reason why Europe took a gut punch on this one.
Speaking of Europe, things were starting to heat up there with France reporting the first European doctor succumbing and evidence that even non-Chinese sufferers could pass on the illness to others(1:12). Yeah, I don’t know why they felt the need to say that either. Maybe they were just so convinced everyone else is being racist about things that they made a racist statement that no one with half a brain cell would have otherwise entertained. Except maybe for the people who read the first 11 reports where the WHO seemed to have a vested interest in saying that all cases outside of China were travelers from China which made it less of a big deal or something. (1:1-11) And they want to know why people started calling it the Wuhan virus or, more epicly, Kung Flu.
If you’re keeping count, Situation Report 12 came out on February 1, 2020 and my eagle eyed American readers are likely on the edge of their seat waiting for me to go back and tackle the second half of my jumbled up run-on sentence. The half about the passive aggressive declaration when the WHO had dropped all pretenses of asking people to keep trading with China by threatening that nations MUST comply by submitting a report as to why they might close their borders(1:11). I thought this was in response to America on my first read through, both from unfortunate geographical bias and the late realization that the article was using information from the day prior so anything that happened on the day of the report couldn’t have been referenced. However, the US limited travel from China for all foreign nationals who had come from Wuhan or laid over there on the same day as the report so technically, it wasn’t directed at them. Yet. (8) This means the WHO was actually yelling at Russia, North Korea, and Mongolia who had all shut down their borders by the 30th(9). I wonder if their leaders had to put up with the opposition loudly declaring them racists. OH! Wait… Right. Russia and North Korea.
Scoldings aside, the first death outside of China took place in the Philippines and UNICEF and IFRC joined the WHO to plan outreach to poor and at risk communities to increase education(1:13). Their website also launched the virus dashboard to let the public easily track cases reported, their Pandemic network began to shift around their available commodities, and outbreak kits to assist countries with management were thrown together(1:14). Hard to believe the most cases in a single country outside of China is only 20 at this point.
After the EPI-WIN program contacted manufacturers directly about the PPE concerns they had(1:15), the WHO brought up part of their response plan which acknowledged at last that the tourism industry might suffer a bit if they didn’t start planning for how to make it safer(1:16). That should have maybe crossed their minds back on January 13 when the first exported case was reported, but they still don’t recommend closing down travel or anything so I can’t say them worrying about it sooner would have been much help. They don’t even have a plan for decontaminating or even letting products from hot zones air out because I guess having to admit person-to-person transmission was enough going back on their assertions for one month. (1:16)
Just… Is there any wonder we got into this mess? Getting them to admit they made a mistake is harder than pulling a loose tooth from the mouth of a hyper anxious child. But if you want the WHO to take an actual preemptive measure by advising nations to do something simple that may help before there is ‘strong evidence’, then you might as well be slicing their tendons out of their ankles because they’re not going to budge until an independent scientist takes a piece of data from weeks prior and explains to them it means they should have been advising people to take helpful steps before it became too late to help.
I’m going to cut part two here. Originally, I wanted to make it all the way to when they accepted we had a pandemic on our hands but that’s still a month away and I think the saga of the Taiwanese mystery case and the two big possibilities to explain it that the WHO ignored makes its own effective chapter. It’s not even that they ignored it really, they talked about both but kept pretending like it wasn’t a big deal all through the period of time it might have been useful advice to pay attention to. I wonder if someone is being held hostage and trying to get out the real information without pissing off the higher ups. On a less conspiratorial note, they need a better editor because they’re up to about six erratum corrections at this point; some with more attention brought to them than others.
^ I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will. When I’m talking about China in these reports, I’m talking about the Chinese government. Specifically the Chinese Communist Party lead by President Xi which is currently in power. The average citizen of China is as much a victim of the current regime as the rest of the world and I’m not trying to pick on them doing what they need to in order to survive.
* All counts are taken from the WHO reports as they were presented to them by China. We all know the counts are a lie, but for this series focused on primarily the information the WHO made available, I will still be using what is provided.
The job market is crashing. Debts are skyrocketing. The twin echo chambers called the mainstream and social media have crescendoed their inarticulate cries to a deafening cacophony bound to concern any intergalactic neighbors we may or may not have. While they contemplate whether to call the space police over to our place for a welfare check, a single question rises to the forefront of the din. Who knew what, when in this struggle with COVID-19?
I’ve seen fingers pointed every which way when it comes to this pandemic. This president should have acted sooner, that organization wasn’t being honest, entire dark governments were manipulating the world into a new world order. It was disheartening and the temptation to crawl into bed and curl up until my life and liberties could return to what they once had been was overwhelming. But I’ve always been too much of a control freak for that.
I’m not a doctor, or a scientist, so the amount I could achieve on the front line seems pitiably small despite my essential worker designation. Though, I reasoned, if I took the time to get my facts straight to help spread the truth in a sea of disinformation and accusations, that would be a good use of the anxious energy that I can no longer expend on three am trips to the local super center. Well, as it would turn out, researching while an event is unfolding and while everyone is still fighting over what qualifies as a fact means getting to the truth is almost as much wishful thinking as repeating the word solidarity and expecting wars, opposition, and suffering to evaporate.
Still determined, I went after the source that, at the time, had the least amount of conspiracy and speculation seeped into it. And let me just say for the record, I started at least two or three days before President Trump announced the US would be investigating the WHO’s actions during this crisis. Weaving through their tweets, situation reports, and travel guides I picked apart a timeline and gave myself several headaches as the tiny but undying flame of my optimism that somehow has survived all these years guided me forward and illuminated all the little red flags and curious details. So buckle in ladies and gentlemen for a sarcastic, possibly hindsight biased, look into the truth of what the WHO knew and when they knew it. In their own words, anyway.
Early Action is Key
The most common accusation I see being thrown around is that X, Y, or Z official didn’t take things seriously enough or act quickly enough early on in this series of events. As politicians can only act on the information they are provided with, what the WHO did as an international source of data for illnesses during the first weeks would have set the stage for the decisions that the governments who invest and trust in them would eventually make. The WHO claims that it was first notified of an unknown pathogen causing a cluster of pneumonia cases in China on December 31, 2019(1:1). The first Situation Report on what turned out to be a novel coronavirus was published on the WHO website on January 21, 2020. What happened in that first twenty days and how much impact did it have on where we are now?
According to the situation reports, all branches of the WHO had been alerted of the new pathogen by January 2. By January 3, forty-four cases of the illness had been identified in China. Impressively, the Chinese government claimed to have isolated this new virus, temporarily dubbed 2019-nCoV, by the 7th(1:1) and made their official announcement of the novel coronavirus on January 10(3).
Aside from alerting their various branches and communicating with the Chinese government (1:1), the WHO kept relatively quiet in those first ten days; making only a few tweets on January 9th. The tweets gave a generalized overview of what a coronavirus was: a class of pathogens that had already set SARS and MERS loose on humanity in the twenty first century. These particular illnesses are defined by their leap from an animal host into humans, but from there can range in severity and transmission– particularly whether they can pass from person-to-person– from case to case. They also pointed out that as global surveillance improves, scientists will likely discover new bugs more frequently. (2:1/9)
Right off the bat, if you’ve been keeping up with the news, a handful of keywords jump off the page and smack you square in the jaw. Having them included within the first round of tweets so casually seems oddly on the nose for how important of details they wound up being. Seeing the comparison to SARS and MERS, two deadly illnesses, also seems weird the more time that passes and you’ll see why by the end of this section.
The next piece published by the WHO was an International Travel Guide released on the same day as China’s public announcement. It explained that many of those found infected were vendors at Huanan Seafood Market(3). Later we learn that the Chinese government closed the market, located in Wuhan City, for cleaning on January 1(1:1): a remarkably quick response considering it took six additional days to isolate what was causing the people to become sick, if China is to be believed. Aside from identifying a potential ground zero for the illness, the guide also listed what symptoms to look out for, fever and difficulty breathing, and the observation that there seemed to be “no significant human-to-human transmission” as well as no infections among healthcare workers(3).
Everyone knows the saying, “hindsight is 20/20,” and reading over the guide the first time I had to talk down that inner conspiracy theorist that sits across from the my final hope for humanity and remind myself that just because we know something now, doesn’t mean they knew it at the time. Even if they had already acknowledged it as a possibility both on its own and by comparing it to two other illnesses that did transmit in that way. Time is that immovable ethereal concept that binds us in place no matter the inconvenience.
And the Chinese government was likely already drowning in time-based inconveniences as this novel coronavirus chose to make itself known in Wuhan, a hub of domestic and international travel, right on the cusp of the Chinese New Year; a tourism boom(3). With a limited amount of information, almost fifty cases identified in three days, and the looming comparison to SARS and MERS, what guidance did the WHO give to contain this new pathogen that as of yet was limited to only this one city? If you guessed “postpone your planned trip until the situation was better understood,” the we have a lot in common with one another. Unfortunately we think nothing like the WHO who recommended no travel restrictions of any kind, even to the point of outright advising against it.(3)
With the information they had from China the WHO felt, despite everything that was still unanswered, it was perfectly safe for all travel to continue to the metropolitan area during one of the busiest times of the year. As long as health clinics, travel agencies, and points of entry made a point of providing the public with the correct set of tools to protect themselves, everything was predicted to turn out fine. The tools: avoid anyone who seemed sick, wash your hands frequently, don’t touch animals–dead or alive–and cough into your elbow or a tissue(3). Simple steps that we’ve all heard before that can prevent the interruption of travel plans or the flow of commerce.
There were a few more tips in the guide. Travel agents were to encourage travelers to seek medical attention immediately if they started to feel sick, remembering to alert their doctors of where they had been recently. Okay… And if air crew members noticed a passenger on their craft starting to display signs or symptoms of an acute respiratory infection, they should register their information and submit the report to the proper health authorities. : ) That report would be used alongside a passenger locator to obtain their contact information should any sick passengers need followup contact. 8 ) (3)
Hey, WHO… Are you SURE it’s safe to go to Wuhan? Because you sound like a scientist trying to hide that you let a head crab loose into the Locked Doors and Ventilation Shafts museum. And while your tweets on January 12 praising China for their transparency and willingness to share their knowledge speak of your trust of the regime, to the point that you released the now infamous tweet denying person-to-person transmission(2:1/12), I am having a bit of trouble extending the same trust to you after reading that China informed you that the virus started at the seafood market on the 11th and 12th(1:1) after you wrote about it on the 10th(3) after they closed it down for deep cleaning and environmental sanitation on the 1st(1:1). That seems like… maybe… you’re having a tiny bit of trouble keeping your story straight.
No, wait, I need to focus. Let’s not jump to conclusions, we’re only half way between the WHO finding out and sharing their first situation report and, as they themselves admit, there is still too much we don’t know and more research to be done. At least in this point in the game it’s still only in Wuhan with no reports elsewhere. (2:1/12)
Until the very next day when when Thailand imported their first case in a traveler from Wuhan(1:1). The message seemed to be received by one party since the 14th saw China ignoring the WHO’s assertions that entrance and exit screenings offered little practical use(3) and installing infrared thermometers at airports, train stations, and bus stops around the city(1:1). The WHO spent that day commenting on the statuses of concerned individuals who had seen a Reuters article tweeted out claiming that there might actually be person-to-person transmission of the virus(pic) and that there was a patient in Wuhan who was a frequenter of a completely different wet market than the one at the center of the the outbreak(2:1/14).
The added safety measures ultimately weren’t made soon enough to stop another case from arriving in Japan on the 15th(1:1) but it seems like an impressively fast response time for the CCP government. Though when you peek ahead and see that on January 22 the WHO reported a case in Taiwan, referring to them as little more than a city of China, whose symptoms would have begun on January 11(1:2), it starts to look as suspect as the lack of reporting of China’s new measures until the situation report seven days after they were put into place. Whether or not you are of the opinion this case was known about sooner than it was reported, it had become clear that it wouldn’t take until a holiday for the new malady to make its way around the world(2:1/16) and I feel it might have been more useful to start issuing the situation reports or update the travel guide as opposed to simply restating that they knew nothing for certain other than that they need more research(2:1/16).
Thailand followed in China’s footsteps in ignoring the WHO’s wishy-washy guidelines and set up their own entry screening points on the 17th(1:1). It isn’t until the 23rd that the WHO mentioned the United States, in addition to the CDC establishing a COVID Incident Management Structure on January 7, set up entry screening points at the three biggest airports to check anyone who had come from or laid over in Wuhan at the same time(1:3). What they did tweet in this time frame was a series of tips for how to stay safe in wet markets (none of which were to stay far away from them as humanly possible) and a reminder that it wasn’t safe to eat animals that were sick or had died of disease(2:1/18).
Just like how it had managed to worm its way into different nations, the 2019-nCoV virus was caught leaving the confines of Wuhan for different regions of China(2:1/19). In a blink and you’ll miss it tweet the same day, the WHO mention that–while animals were still considered the primary source of the illness–there was starting to be limited signs of person-to-person transmission between close contacts(2:1/19) Two days later with the release of the situation report it becomes evident that their change in attitude might be due to two cases found in the Guangdong province who had no personal history of traveling to Wuhan, though a close acquaintance had(1:1). However, these cases were supposedly identified on the 20th(1:1), one day after the tweet, meaning something else might have been in play. (Here’s a hint for part two, I already brought it up.)
January 20 seemed to be the day to get the ball rolling as the first case arrived in South Korea(1:1) and an emergency committee was announced to be in the works for the purpose of deciding whether China’s little problem was shaping up into a international matter of public health(2:1/20).
Most importantly, by the time the first Situation Report was posted early on January 21, 2020 there were 278* confirmed cases of this illness and six deaths(1:1). Later that day the US announced their first case(2:1/21). This prompted the CDC to enact the emergency response system the same day, raising the alert for travelers to level two with an advisory to the elderly and those with compromised systems, the primary suffers of the disease(1:3).
That’s a lot of information packed into (mainly) two reports and two-thirds of a month of tweets. I decided around page four of my outline that this would need to be more than one part and the spaces in between those lines of text that seem to scream out additional information don’t make it any easier. Even if that’s just an overreaction, what isn’t are the two big patterns being set up that continue through this entire saga. I’ll leave you with these to mull over for the next part.
Pattern one
The WHO makes a claim about the virus based on China’s research.
The WHO distances themselves by claiming limited understanding.
Something happens that proves the claim wrong.
The WHO alters their statement as little as possible to fit these new parameters (i.e. changing from ‘little evidence supporting’ to ‘some evidence in limited circumstances’).
Pattern Two
The WHO makes a suggestion to the nations for how to combat the virus.
The WHO words and repeats their suggestion to not be a suggestion.
Listening to the suggestion has terrible consequences for nations.
Nations make their own decisions about how to proceed.
The WHO sulks and belittles their decision with all the tact of a teenager vague posting on Facebook.
It’s a lot to take in, and even more to stomach, but I hope you’ll come back for the next part of this deep dive. I’d appreciate the companionship in this ever-evolving headache.
Research Posts from a Shadow Bard 