Thread by @Heritage

COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan in late November or early December. Chinese authorities reacted by suppressing details of the disease and punishing doctors who tried to alert the public and the world.

China did not inform the WHO about the virus until Dec. 31, weeks after it had detected the disease.

Even after informing the @WHO, Beijing continued to suppress information about human-to-human transmission of the disease.

@WHO The lack of transparency by Beijing directly enabled COVID-19 to spread.

The mayor of Wuhan admitted that as many as 5 million Chinese had left the city before imposition of a lockdown, allowing infected individuals to travel abroad well into January.

@WHO On 1/14 @WHO declared, “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

A week later, on 1/22, the WHO reversed its position and confirmed that there was “evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

@WHO Despite this evidence, however, @WHO strongly opposed travel restrictions.

@WHO On 1/23, WHO tweeted:

“For the moment, WHO does not recommend any broader restrictions on travel or trade. We recommend exit screening at airports as part of a comprehensive set of containment measures.”

@WHO In February, after the U.S. imposed travel restrictions on China, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly chastised countries for adopting the policy.

@WHO It was not until mid-February— after weeks of negotiations with Beijing—that a WHO expert team was allowed to travel to Wuhan to examine the situation first-hand.

@WHO By this time (mid-February) 28 countries had #COVID19 cases, and deaths from the disease had surpassed the total from the 2003 SARs outbreak—an earlier coronavirus which also originated in China.

@WHO There is no disputing the fact that China bears primary responsibility for the COVID-19 disaster besetting the world.

But China is not an open society, nor does it feel obliged to follow international norms.

@WHO If it had felt such an obligation, it would have provided timely and transparent notification to the WHO about the potential outbreak and cooperated fully to assess the risk.

@WHO These commitments are clear under the International Health Regulations—which were amended in 2005 after China’s previous lack of cooperation and transparency in the SARS outbreak.

@WHO After visiting China in late January, Tedros announced that Beijing had set “a new standard for outbreak control” and praised Chinese actions that “bought the world time, even though those steps have come at greater cost to China itself.”

@WHO Beijing blocked a WHO expert team visit for weeks thereafter.

@WHO Worse, @WHO may have facilitated the spread of the disease by ignoring a warning from Taiwan about human-to-human transmission in December because the WHO does not recognize Taiwan due to Chinese objections.

@WHO Such is the corrupting influence of China that @WHO holds it to a different standard than it does the organization’s biggest funder—the U.S.

@WHO After all, the WHO felt free to criticize the U.S. government for calling COVID-19 a “Chinese virus” and called on governments not to politicize the disease after President Trump criticized the organization’s credulousness in echoing Beijing.

@WHO Meanwhile, China, Russia, and Iran orchestrate propaganda and disinformation campaigns asserting that the “novel coronavirus is an American bioweapon.”

@WHO If there is one benefit to the disastrous COVID-19 pandemic, it is that it has forced governments to confront the implications of Chinese influence in international organizations—and its manipulative foreign policy.

Read @BrettDSchaefer herit.ag/2YmVz87