The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) lashed out Thursday at what it claims was the slow response to its warnings of the threat posed by coronavirus, rejecting criticism of its work while urging pandemic disbelievers to heed the “corrected narrative” of events.
The W.H.O. voiced its frustration at people marking the second anniversary of the pandemic commencement as March 11, 2020, instead insisting the real alarm came six weeks earlier on January 30, 2020, when, outside of China, fewer than 100 cases and no deaths had been reported. — but nobody was listening to it, the U.N. organization claimed.
W.H.O. emergencies director Michael J. Ryan used a video conference to excoriate the non-believers.
“People weren’t listening. We were ringing the bell and people weren’t acting,” he lamented during a live interaction on the W.H.O’s. social media channels.
A man is tested for the novel coronavirus as a medical worker takes a swab sample in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on April 16, 2020. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty)
“What I was most stunned by was the lack of response, the lack of urgency in relation to WHO’s highest level of alert in international law, as agreed by all our member states. They agreed to this!”
He claimed the declaration of a pandemic was simply stating the obvious once it had already happened — and insisted countries had plenty of advance notice, although he made no mention of the fact it was the W.H.O. itself, citing Chinese Communist Party officials, advising the world the “human-to-human” transmission threat level was low.
“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,” said the W.H.O. on January 14, 2020.
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
No mention was made either of the fact Taiwan sought to advise the W.H.O. of the dangers posed by the Wuhan virus as early as December, 2019, only for it to be roundly ignored in the interests of appeasing the Chinese Communist Party.
The facts regarding Taiwan’s email to alert WHO to possible danger of #COVID19#email內容 #TaiwanCanHelp #TaiwanIsHelping @WHO
英文新聞稿：https://t.co/AvyHulhrlU pic.twitter.com/nYvmY4R2ao
— MOHW of Taiwan 衛生福利部 (@MOHW_Taiwan) April 11, 2020
Instead Ryan continued to deliver his version of events.
“There’s a lot of people in the media and everywhere have this big argument, W.H.O. declared a pandemic late. No!” said Ryan. He added:
The world was well warned about the impending pandemic.
By March, I think there was such frustration that it was, ‘OK, you want a pandemic, here’s your pandemic’.
Johns Hopkins University reported Monday the global Chinese coronavirus death toll has passed six million – with close to one million deaths taking place in the United States.
The grim milestone comes as the U.S. nears the two-year anniversary of former President Donald J. Trump declaring a national state of emergency on March 13, 2020, as cases first started to climb in America.
Tedros Adhanom, Director General of the World Health Organization, (L) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People, on January 28, 2020 in Beijing, China. (Naohiko Hatta – Pool/Getty Images)
Maria Van Kerkhove, the W.H.O.’s technical lead on coronavirus, also scolded those who ignored the organization’s official version of events.
Two years on, she said that this Friday, people would be marking the “wrong anniversary” and the world should be warned that another catastrophe is entirely possible.
“It is fundamentally incorrect,” she insisted.
“You hear the frustration in our voices because we still haven’t corrected the narrative.
“It will happen again! So when are we actually going to learn? More than six million people have died, that we know of. I don’t think we’ve even begun to grieve this, at a global level.”
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