I am neither Taiwanese or Chinese and have no dog in that fight except as it pertains to avoiding pandemics.

Taiwanese friends tell me that during the SARS outbreak, China refused to share data with them which it shared with every other country. Taiwan was hit very hard because they were flying blind. This led them to establish independent monitoring and early warning systems since they have extensive trade and cultural links with China and large numbers of travelers.

The current VP of Taiwan is an epidemiologist who was the health minister during the SARs outbreak and their current response has been one of the most effective (108 cases, 1 death).

Every country would want to work with Taiwan on this issue not ostracize them like the WHO. They are like a monitoring and early-warning system for these kinds of pathogens coming out of China.

Since China didn't share that information with Taiwan, i'd believe it's not the same country and they proved it by behaving like this.

And all sources that put Taiwan as a province of China should change it.

( Won't happen though)

Probably relevant, about how others should treat Taiwan, especially how WHO is treating Taiwan:

A journalist asked World Health Organization’s assistant director-general Bruce Aylward whether the UN body would reconsider Taiwan’s membership, got “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear your question… let’s move to another one then…”; and when the journalist asked to comment on Taiwan’s effort, got “we’ve already talked about China.”

[1]: https://twitter.com/emilyrauhala/status/1243905923048976384

(Which is supporting your “Won't happen though”.)

After that interview, Bruce Aylward has now been removed from the WHO website https://twitter.com/anangbhai/status/1243947028582993921

Shows how much they kowtow to China that even being asked about Taiwan and not answering gets him delisted.

> [...] their current response has been one of the most effective (108 cases, 1 death).

While I generally agree with your overall point, this statistics is severely out of date. As of this post, the current numbers are 283 cases and 2 deaths[0][1].

[0] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En

[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html; numbers can lag by a day or two.

Thank you for the correction. The source I found was current as of early last week, perhaps it referred to community spread and not imported cases.

Is the WHO even relevant? The WHO is not a sovereign authority, and has proven to not be independent too. They have been lying the entire time. Their statements

1. No evidence of human to human transmission

2. No need to ban travel from China. Ineffective

3. It is not a pandemic

4. Some twitter threads who WHO adding traditional chinese medicine in their list of medicines for COVID-19 in their chinese language posts.

5. Masks do not work.

If the WHO can't be independent, can't say things truly, and they never had any sovereign authority to begin with, what good exactly are they?

The WHO is relevant because every national, state and local medical authority and doctor has been trained and conditioned to trust them over the past decades. Even now you will find, infectious disease doctors citing WHO guidance in articles and on twitter. There is a level of faith in WHO which seems no longer warranted.

These organizations are useless and full of functionaries.

RKI (Robert Koch Institut) in Germany is the same. Incompetent, unable to produce proper graphs or measurements, but great at making press conferences televised by the state television bureaucrats.

Could you provide links for those statements?

1. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1...

3. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/health/who-coronavirus-not-pa...

Can't comment on 4.

5. it's a little bit complicated as I believe they are just not recommending masks unless you are sick or caring for the sick.

1 is a Chinese statement, who are just re-reporting...

#2 does not support original commenter's claim.

#3 obviously every pandemic was not always a pandemic.

TIL: The head of the WHO, "Dr" Tedros is not a medical doctor but has a Ph.D. in health. He was previously the health minister of Ethiopia and China was instrumental in getting him elected. Fun fact: He tried to get Robert Mugabe elected as a goodwill ambassador for the WHO.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-helped-put-man-...

No paywall: http://archive.md/cQl0E

Aside: perhaps FT could chip in with the rest of the world here by making any of their articles about coronavirus open access...

Edit: curious about downvotes - it’s my first time circumventing a paywall. Disclaimer: I would describe myself as a capitalist hippie.

That’s because they were busy praising China for getting so efficient at oppressing their population.

This is incredible, and shows how much China has now pushed over the WHO. I'm almost certain Chinese pressure on the WHO also influenced a lot of their statements.

The WHO is under the UN, which recognises the PRC as the "real China". How much of this is the UN's fault vs one of its agencies?

Maybe you're right, but it's completely infiltatred by China.

,,Tedros overlooked the Chinese government's early attempts to suppress information but offered "effusive praise" for its containment efforts instead''

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom#Head_of_the_Tig...

Wow. I'm really sorry that you're voted down (me too), and really thanks for the link at the same time.

The comment was correctly downvoted because it broke several of the site guidelines, such as:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

That means keeping the facts and dropping the name-calling and flamebait.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Would you mind reviewing them as well? Note this one at the end: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Thanks dang. Moderation on HN keeps it an island of sanity. Really appreciate the job you are doing.