[FabHK]

Hindsight. At the time, nobody had travel restrictions. Were they all influenced by China? No, with the then current information travel or trade restrictions didn’t make sense.

This is the same lazy argument as with the 737 MAX - why wasn’t it immediately grounded? Well, you can’t just shut down the world at any sign of trouble. You have to make an informed judgement call with the information you have at the time. Sometimes, ex post, it will turn out to have been the wrong call. Doesn’t mean you need to revise or impugn the decision procedure.

[victorlin]

Well, allow me to remind you the timeline

> On 23 January 2020, the central government of the People's Republic of China imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province in an effort to quarantine the epicentre of an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Hubei_lockdowns

What do you mean nobody had travel restrictions? The report from WHO date was on 30 January 2020, when they saw this and yet suggest not to put any restrictions?

[lovemenot]

Imagine if Israel had taken the opportunity to lock-down West Bank in the name of health, specifically prevention of novel coronavirus.

My artificial example is perhaps not accurate on its face, but I hope you can see the principle. WHO was trying to prevent unnecessary border restrictions in the world, until such time as they became justified for health reasons. In China that was already the case.

[victorlin]

If you have no idea how bad it already was when WHO suggest not restrictions needed, than I would suggest you watch this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-nv7j9HEgY

Many of the footage are before the Jan 30 WHO announcement, like the many body moving in front of hospital.

WHO probably already know what's really happening there, but still given wrong advice, so that many countries, like Korean, Japan follow the instruction by WHO, not imposing the restriction on China. And now people in these countries are suffering from the misinformation provided by WHO.

Another evidence WHO is controlled by China, that is when Taiwanese people want to join WHO to get latest update about the virus and help from the world, Chinese government doesn't want this to happen.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/china-health-coronaviru...

So basically Taiwan was excluded from the global health system for long time because that.

I am from Taiwan, I don't feel surprise at all that WHO is controlled by China, as they have shown it that way long time ago on the issue of excluding people from Taiwan. So that's obviously political over people's health in the world.

[eric-hu]

The 737 Max is actually a great analogy, but you and I come to different conclusions. The FAA shot themselves in the foot by not grounding the Max after the second crash. They were previously so trusted that their standards were the default for other countries. The widespread trust made it easier and faster for American planes to go to market. That trust took decades to build up and will not be easily restored.