https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/04/14/left-guidance-mers-specialist-says-suspected-community-spread-december/WHO Left The Guidance Out? MERS Specialist Says She Suspected Community Spread In December, Said So; Update: GOP Senators Demand Explanation From WHOED MORRISSEY Posted at 12:01 pm on April 14, 2020
If Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove suspected MERS-like transmission of the emerging COVID-19 outbreak in China, then why did the World Health Organization explicitly cast doubt on the risk of human-to-human transmission two weeks later? In a WHO briefing yesterday, a reporter asked WHO’s representatives to answer criticism from the White House that WHO was “late to the game†on the coronavirus’ pandemic potential. ...
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... So with regards to the human-to-human transmission question ... from the first notification that we received on the 31st of December, given that this was a cluster of pneumonia. I’m a MERS specialist, so my background is in coronaviruses and in influenza, so (I) immediately thought, given that it’s a respiratory pathogen, that of course there may be human to human transmission.
... when we started to put together our technical guidance for our member states, we put guidance that focused on how this virus could be transmitted. And what we focused on was droplet and contact transmission, ... That guidance is still in effect. The guidance that we put up was on the 10th of January.
That timing becomes verrrrry interesting, because it was just three days later that WHO officially advised the world that they had no evidence at all of a risk of community spread. ...
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On December 31, 2019, Taiwan sent an email to the International Health Regulations (IHR) focal point under the World Health Organization (WHO), informing WHO of its understanding of the disease and also requesting further information from WHO. Given the lack of clarity at the time, as well as the many rumors that were circulating, Taiwan’s aim was to ensure that all relevant parties remained alert, especially since the outbreak occurred just before the Lunar New Year holiday, which typically sees tremendous amounts of travel. To be prudent, in the email we took pains to refer to atypical pneumonia, and specifically noted that patients had been isolated for treatment. Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease. ...
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Update: Axios reports this morning that seven Senate Republicans have sent a demand for answers from Tedros and WHO, and made it clear that their response will matter when it comes to funding decisions. They apparently suspect that some WHO officials might be on the take:
The article is fairly longish, touching at least four major points:
1. Experts within WHO thought human-human transmission likely;
2. Experienced people in Taiwan warned WHO's healthcare professionals that human-human transmission might be happening;
3. WHO ignored both Taiwan and its own experts in its public communications;
4. Some US Senators are asking very pointed questions of WHO, directed at WHO's reliance on China and reasons for that reliance.
The recently update China timeline linked below in my signature shows how over 2-3 weeks, WHO simply repeated what Wuhan health officials claimed.
