Thread by @JeremyKonyndyk

Getting a few questions about IHR article 9, which allows WHO to consider reports from non-state sources, and article 10:4, which provides narrow parameters for sharing info without state consent. Good questions, but I don't see them changing what happened here.

https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1251355977485635586

In conjunction, these two articles do create a narrow means for WHO to share disease info without state consent. But there is a high bar - ONLY (and this is key) if the state is flat refusing to cooperate. That didn't happen here.

It's exceedingly rare that this authority is triggered, but it does happen. Last year WHO learned of potential Ebola cases in Tanzania, and TZ refused to share info about them. WHO went public with the reports only after being repeatedly stonewalled by TZ. who.int/csr/don/21-sep…

Important differences:

-Tanzania stonewalled completely; China cooperated, albeit slowly and inadequately
-Ebola was a declared PHEIC when WHO did this; COVID was unknown and the risks weren't yet clear

So TZ's behavior unambiguously violated IHRs; China's was more ambiguous.

In retrospect it is clear that China knew more than it was sharing with WHO. But that was not sufficiently obvious at the time to enable WHO to treat it as an IHR violation, especially given that China was going through the motions of cooperating.

And importantly - it wouldn't have changed much. Triggering this *still* doesn't give WHO a unilateral authority to investigate on their own.

In the TZ case, they just sent a team to the country office to help TZ authorities investigate "if requested."

And beyond that they can basically issue a warning sharing the info they've been able to validate. Which is what they did here in any case, with China's input.

So again, if all this is frustrating - the solution is to reform the IHRs, not whack WHO for adhering to them.