The conclusion of the WHO, which essentially took China's word for it with no independent oversight or real investigation into the lab, and big organizations that proselytized the results of the "investigation" to justify accusations of conspiracy theory thinking, are irrelevant.
The WHO or any other "big organization" is as much an expert as anyone in the respective field. In fact the likelihood of political influence correcting scientific results is much higher, especially in the case of the WHO.
That does not mean that everything the WHO is false or a conspiracy. But it certainly should not be seen as a sole authority on anything really. And it also has the task to keep everyone at the table that trumps scientific accuracy. That is a compromise that is needed to keep nations cooperating.
One may note that, but you seem to imply that «big organization»s are authoritative. That is "not how it works". Entities have boundaries - in general "political", in terms of policies of caution towards other powers.
Edit: the article seems a valid journalistic effort, and - specifying just in case - is richer in information than just mentioning a couple of opinions.
That is not necessarily my opinion - I never expressed that.
You opposed «only [only] the opinion of one doctor (or two)» vs «some official conclusion by the WHO or other big organization»: does that mean that you can trust «big organizations» more? Organizations, «big» or «intermediate», live on funding. They are not free entities by nature. Their space of action is what is allowed to them (their margins may be broad or narrow, depending).
At least with big or medium organizations it's easier to get a track record )good or bad). With individual doctors, it´s more difficult to be sure if she is a genius or a crackpot.
No health association in any other country has the investigatory capability necessary to definitively determine what happened in China at the beginning of the outbreak.
The WHO has displayed in stunning detail, how they are incapable of independent thought and how they are utterly unwilling to challenge any of the Chinese government various blatant lies. I think at this stage they are just lackeys to China. I think Trump was right to cut their funding.
Why do people think the WHO is the world police, able to hold negligent countries to account? It isn't, and it can't.
It's an international health agency that is entirely dependent on and beholden to UN member states, as it was designed from the start to be an avenue for voluntary co-operation and the setting of norms. It has no enforcement authority and no legal right to intervene in or investigate countries. It has no independent control over either its leadership or its budget, both of which are determined to an extremely granular level by UN member states.
The US cutting the WHO's funding was petulant and performative, because it just hurt people on the receiving end of valuable WHO assistance programmes and reduced the US's influence in global health debates. As a tactic, that sort of thing only works if you can induce the organisation you're withholding funds from to reform itself, but all of these controversial aspects of the WHO are external to it and come from its nature as an agency run by the world's countries in all their dysfunction.
So no, it's not the WHO's job to 'prove' that China isn't telling the truth, nor does it have any such powers. That sort of evidence would need to be obtained by other countries and used to build cases that allow them to use other mechanisms for a punitive response.
As a contrast, look at the IAEA, which is given broad investigative power through the UN Security Council.
The upside though is that the co-operative nature of the WHO means that overall when it does provide information, norms, or similar, they're usually reliable and have broad support. We'd be worse off without it. But we really need to improve civic education and people's understanding of what role international institutions can and can't play.
Yes. That seemed pretty objective to me, not a political decision.
"The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain and share information in a timely and transparent fashion."..."The WHO failed to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts,"
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj0016