A technical lead, now referred to as top-ranking, of the World Health Organization, warned about the human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus on January 14 at a conference in Geneva. Unfortunately, at the same time, and on the same day, the World Health Organization’s main account tweeted that China found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the Wuhan Virus (which is what they call it in China).
The excuse now as to why the main WHO Twitter account tweeted on January 14 that there is no clear evidence of contagion is that they wanted to “balance the coverage.” They also refer to Van Kerkhove as a “top” scientist and the person who called for the tweet as “middle-ranking.” Of course, they don’t say who the “middle-ranking” person is.
Since this has just come out and it is an attempt to explain the six-day lapse reported by the AP, you might want to regard it as rewriting history.
In any case, it was more than six days, Taiwan warned WHO in December, and all the WHO director Dr. Tedros cared about was calling President Trump a racist.
Five days after the US government stopped flights from China, the WHO officially objected, issuing this statement: “We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions inconsistent with International Health Regulations. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little health benefit.”
It’s hardly balanced when the head of WHO is tweeting against one researcher’s opinion.
DROP THE MIC🎤
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove #WHO knew of human to to human transmission on the 31 Dec. Then went on to say on the 14 Jan they alerted the world.
On the 14 Jan they tweeted the exact opposite. They should of cautioned on the safe side.
Incompetence and negligence! pic.twitter.com/8WjIzOajZM
— Damo Pelham🦈 (@DamoPelham) April 15, 2020
WHO KNEW
The WHO tweeted that the Chinese government had “found no clear evidence” on the same day as the head of the WHO’s emerging diseases warned about the potential for a rapid “super-spreading” event.
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The official Twitter account for the World Health Organization, which has over 7.4 million followers, tweeted: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”
On Jan. 14, the same day as the WHO’s “no human-to-human transmission” tweet, the agency’s technical lead on coronavirus was cautioning everyone about the potential of mass human transmission. In other words, WHO knew and chose to mislead the public.
“This is something on our radar, it is possible, we need to prepare ourselves,” Kerkhove said at a news conference in Geneva on Jan. 14.
So, they probably knew but President Xi wanted that stopped in all likelihood. They had to distance themselves and make it seem as if they were just discovering the contagious nature of the illness.
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020
NICE TRY
“Concerned that her briefing conflicted with the initial Chinese findings, a middle-ranking official told the social media team to put out a tweet to balance the Van Kerkhove briefing,” wrote Julian Borger in The Guardian. “In so doing, the WHO exposed itself to the charge of contributing to an air of complacency. But the tweet was factually true and does not appear to have been part of a deliberate strategy.”
Middle ranking??? Factually true? Balance the coverage? Nice try.
President Trump has redirected WHO funds to U.S. charitable organizations, and one might ask, why were we sending them hundreds of millions of dollars in the first place.
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