>What exactly did they do?

I think that was the point. They didn't do anything of real substance, so was it better than doing nothing?

To me, it appears equivalent to doing nothing, and that's not better than doing nothing...

So their wrongdoing was to tweet their current status?

Yes easily misinterpreted short-phrased tweets are bad. Thanks to US president, we learned that.

I don't think they did anything necessarily wrong with that tweet. Just that it wasn't substantial.

It was leading people to think that human transmission was unlikely.

The equivalent yet still factually correct statement is "covid maybe transmits between humans". When you add uncertainty to a statement, it becomes factually correct.

In this case, doing nothing would have been better.

But does it justify to cut their funds?

They published a status of non-knowledge, easily misinterpreted. And sometimes later they published more alarmist statuses. It is quite normal to be wrong sometimes, even in science-related establishments.

Well if you want my opinion, I don't think they're particularly at fault for others inability to interpret what they meant by that tweet. I find that tweet to be pretty clear, but also nothing noteworthy. Don't see how we're better off than had they simply not tweeted it. Again, I don't think we're necessarily worse off, just not better off.

I was just responding to the comment above mine, which asked "what did they do", and tried to show that was probably the point the poster above that was making.

As to the main topic? I mostly think this is just more petty distraction, deflection, and pointing fingers. But, I do think it's worth considering what the WHO's purpose is and whether or not it's serving that purpose sufficiently. As to how I feel about cutting funds, I'm not sure yet...

In this case, the situation is that they communicate a lot and most of their communications are frankly beneficial to the world. Some of their publications are not, as we saw here. Considering the whole, it is better than nothing.