"Covid pandemic was preventable, says WHO-commissioned report"

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The power of hindsight.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The power of hindsight.

The WHO piffled about until mid March before announcing a pandemic and now they want to blame everybody but themselves for their incompetent reticence. Heads should roll in that unelected body.

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One of those governments also include China.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51364382

Dr. Li sent warnings on December 30th regarding the virus, and was threatened by police to stop. It was until January 20th that China finally declared the pandemic an emergency.

China suppressed and/or downplayed warnings from doctors for three weeks before declaring the pandemic a crisis. Three weeks is not "a few days".

Yes: many governments had far worse responses to the pandemic; the U.S. was incomparably worse. However, China is far from blameless and their actions were irresponsible, driven by a need to preserve their global image.

It is true, however, that once China acknowledged the pandemic, it's efforts to contain it were much more effective than most western governments.

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You sound exactly like a Trump supporter defending his attempts to silence Dr. Fauci.

Dr. Li was far from an "alarmist doctor". The fact that he is now celebrated as a "hero" is proof of that. China has no excuse here.

Furthermore, it wasn't just one lone doctor; there were at least 8 other doctors being silenced by the Chinese government; this fact alone probably lead more doctors who agreed with Li to keep quiet as well. China's actions had nothing to do with prudence; it was a deliberate attempt at suppressing information, from the nation that already suppresses news and internet access from it's citizens.

If you want to brag that China's post-coverup actions better contained the pandemic than western governments, fine.
But threatening multiple doctors with legal action, just for warning the public about a subject which they have years of training and expertise in, is utterly indefensible.

The “problem” is that most countries could not have taken the actions that the Chinese government took.

In most countries the lockdowns have come with protest, etc. And weighing up of national needs vs individual responsibility vs human rights. And that’s with gradual lockdowns and ever worsening situations.

If you just lock up whole cities in the US or Europe, before actual consequences are happening, you’ll get revolt (and generally speaking, quite rightly so). In many other countries it wouldn’t be so much different.

I posted about this in January 2020 on this forum. The thread was called: are we all going to sneeze to death.
I presume it can still be found.

In it I commented on the start of the crisis. I’m not sure if it was in that post or a next one that I commented on the Wuhan lockdown; I can’t remember the name of my follow-up thread.

The basic thought was: what is happening there for a “flu-like” disease to lead to these measures and: something is not being said.

It’s not for me to know if the Chinese government wasn’t saying something or that other governments weren’t saying something. But the danger of the virus was certainly known and acted upon by the Chinese authorities and for some reason most other governments did not respond similarly.

Now, that they couldn’t lockdown whole cities is nearly a given, but they could have, at the first signs of the virus being in the country, have went about matters very differently (stopping public transport, etc.).

All hindsight.
And luckily the pandemic isn’t as dangerous as it could have been.
Lots of lessons to be learnt from the disease, the responses, etc.

Interesting lessons as well: even though the Chinese authoritarian approach to life is horrible, in an emergency it can be effective. How to deal with that contradiction within the Western framework?

How to deal with anti-vaxxers.
How long can emergency situations last, before the populace starts cracking (in other words demonstrating and undermining national efforts).
How to balance political needs and experts’ advice on such matters.
How to roll out vaccines on a global scale (quite a fail and something that will have to be bettered).

Interesting times indeed!

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Is Taiwan democratic?
Dunno.

However, I’m pretty certain Taiwan’s tactics would lead to mass civil unrest in many Western countries.
A 33.000 dollar fine? I can just see that happening in Rotterdam.

Nope. Would not work.

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Just how big an idiot are you duchess?
Are you claiming that the WHO are a foreign country?
Unlike China the UK government will have to face the consequences of their mishandling of the pandemic to the extent that the UK electorate judge them to have mishandled the pandemic.
What consequences are being visited upon the WHO for waiting until March 20 to declare a pandemic whilst pointing the finger at everyone else for not doing enough in February. If it wasn’t so serious a failing it would be laughable.

Why people feel the compulsion to blame each other for elementals is beyond me.

It's a virus. You can mitigate its effects, but you can't destroy it (except with a vaccine, I suppose). It's like looking around for someone to blame for a hurricane.

Look at Singapore now going back into lockdown.

It should be obvious to everyone by now that, except by vaccination, you can only postpone COVID; you can't stop it.