The WHO chartered something called the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, and yesterday they released their second report. It's not too long, so I read the whole thing to judge for myself how bad the headlines are. Here's my summary of its contents:

  • The whole world was totally unprepared

  • Measurements like the Global Health Security Index turned out to be bullshit

  • Social media has created an infodemic

  • Inequalities everywhere have been exacerbated

  • Poorer countries are unjustly being left without access to PPE and vaccines

  • Precarious and informal workers in wealthy countries are suffering disproportionately

  • "Public health containment measures should have been implemented immediately in any country with a likely case. They were not."

  • Some countries (unnamed) sacrificed public health and lives to make the line go up

  • Overall, the Asia-Pacific countries and the Africa CDC have been doing a decent job

  • The global supply chain is weak

  • The WHO should have used the term "pandemic" sooner than March

  • The WHO is underfunded and forced to waste too much time fundraising

Also buried in the report is this single criticism of China:

Public health measures could have been applied more forcefully by local and national health authorities in China in January.

Guess which parts the Western media chose to focus on?

Business Insider: An elite panel of world leaders has called out China for its bungled coronavirus response

CNN: China and WHO acted too slowly to contain Covid-19, says independent panel

Forbes: China, World Health Organization Failed To Act Quickly At The Start Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Report Finds

The Week: Independent panel slams China and WHO over Covid-19 response

AP: China, WHO should have acted quicker to stop pandemic

Sydney Morning Herald: 'Signal was ignored': Independent inquiry criticises China and WHO over COVID

Seattle Times: Panel: China, WHO should have acted quicker to stop pandemic

Remember when the imperialist media was criticizing China for acting too aggressively and authoritarian with its lockdowns? Lmao

  • TankieTanuki [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Isn't it amazing how all of these "independent" news organizations from around the anglosphere all seem to come up with the exact same take on this news story?

    Some years ago before the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of Russian journalists came to Britain and the United States, and they were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching all the television, that all the opinions were the same on all the vital issues.

    "Now in our country," they said to their host, "to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What's the secret?"

    Well the secret, of course, is that propaganda in liberal democracies, like America and Britain, is much more thorough than in dictatorships and totalitarian states. No imprisonment is required, no loss of fingernails is called for. There is another, far more effective way. Unlike totalitarian states, the conformity of information and opinion is insidious, its sameness implicit, ingrained, and even celebrated.

    ---John Pilger