[dragonwriter]

> They could have stopped it right at the start by quarantining China from the rest of the world

No, they couldn't.

For one thing, WHO doesn't regulate international travel and couldn't quarantine anyone if they wanted to.

(Now, various governments—including the US government which had intelligence on it before China announced anything publicly—could have stopped travel from China, but that's...not the WHO.)

[GekkePrutser]

No they don't regulate international travel but they could have publicly come out and said this would have been necessary. Any government sidestepping them would have taken a huge political risk if they had been wrong (and they would have been!). It's a big thing for a government to overrule the WHO.

I'm sure that they would have done it if they had been about science and not about politics. All the knowledge of how serious this was, was there at the start.

I think the discussion of how it came to spread worldwide is even more important than how it emerged in the first place. In particular because we keep making the same mistakes with these variants. The failure to contain the British (Alpha) variant should have been enough warning to up that game. If Delta hadn't spread to Europe and US we would have been in a great situation with current vaccination levels because Alpha was not that dangerous after all.

I'm just worried we will make the wrong choices again for the next one which may be even more destructive. For Delta we're too late. For whatever is next we may not be.

[vagrantJin]

I think you overestimate how well the WHO is run. It has to be political because it is a multinational political entity whether they call themselves that or not.

They don't have willy nilly use of their funding either, and they sometimes have to deal with very difficult heads of state. It's to be expected for an organisation that big, with that size scope to be in a state of semi-chaos no different than a huge multinational.

[GekkePrutser]

I totally understand the way they are and how they have become like this. The current political stance has been perfect for the challenges the WHO has dealt with during its lifetime until now. Promoting research, finding funding for affordable medication programs in the third world, things like the COVAX programme that they are promoting now. Some small outbreaks that needed some international coordination and funding. These are the things they used to do and their organisation is perfect for. Until COVID I'm sure not many people had ever even heard of it and that was fine for the work they did which was mostly behind the scenes.

However this crisis requires a different leadership, much more outspoken, more authoritative and quick acting. They could have stepped up to the task but they didn't. The WHO that we have had until now (and has done a great job at what they did) is not the WHO we need now to deal with this massive crisis that is spanning the globe. Just like with climate change this is not something you can leave to individual governments if you are to solve it, because they will only serve their own interests in the end.

I'm sure they will evolve over time. But stronger leadership would have recognised the threat, taken some risk and evolved already. Probably appointed a very visible crisis manager (e.g. an ex-president or other very high-profile executive), and set up a task force with high visibility, strong media communication etc. It would be much harder for governments to ignore and as such much more effective.

I wish they were only as political as a multinational because those do react to threats much better than a truly political organisation does. I'm not saying they're bad at what they do. I'm just saying the WHO we have now is not what we need.