No, that's wrong. WHO essentially never encourages travel restrictions, their whole philosophy is that open international collaboration is crucial (that's why the W stands for "world"!). At the height of the Ebola epidemic, they didn't call for travel restrictions to Africa either.

There are legitimate arguments that travel restrictions are counterproductive, so you should argue against those, not against some perceived double standard that doesn't actually exist.

> travel restrictions are counterproductive

That's a very strong and very stupid claim.

The fact that WHO made the same claim and the fact that it's disputed by most actual experts around the world, hence ongoing travel restrictions, is a pretty good example of why there can't ever be one arbiter of 'truth' in a free society.

Italy was one of the first countries to ban travel from China.

South Korea never banned travel.

>That's a very strong and very stupid claim.

Alright, show us some peer reviewed studies, preferably a meta-analysis, that shows it's stupid.

edit:sp

Do you see the asymetry here? It makes no sense to "argue" for travel restrictions after the genie is out of the bottle. There is no "going back" to a restricted state.

If they had started with the strong restrictions and then loosened it up after more information/debate/evidence of safety, then things would be better. But instead they let it go and claimed that "absence of evidence" is the same as "evidence of absence". Completely irresponsible. This is why the WHO's response to it is so infuriating.

There are constant new outbreaks, at the rate of several per year. (If you want to try to keep up, see here: https://promedmail.org/ ) The vast majority fizzle out, and for the rest, travel restrictions are not often useful or necessary. Recent examples of this include SARS, MERS, swine flu, Zika, several hemorrhagic fevers, and resurgences of diseases like measles and plague. If the WHO responded to all of these with a call for a global travel ban, travel would never be allowed.

> responded to all of these with a call for a global travel ban

No. There is no call for a "global travel ban". Are you deliberately misunderstanding what I am saying?

The call is (or better, it was, now is too late) for a restriction of mobility in the place of an outbreak, until they either "fizzle out" or are controlled/understood/resolved by development of treatment and/or vaccine.

If an outbreak is likely to "fizzle out", then the restriction will be for a short time and localized to the source and chances of spreading around the globe is reduced. And in case the outbreak is highly contagious like this one, an early and swift restriction would prevent the pandemic in the first place, or at the very least slow down things as much as possible to avoid exponential explosion of cases.

THAT IS THE KEY POINT! The WHO should be asking for an early local lockdown so that we wouldn't have to act later in a global one.

Instead of being rude why don't you find some examples of the WHO recommending travel restrictions?

How many pandemics did we have since WHO was founded, not originated in China, with such speed of contagion and long incubation period which allows for infected people to get infected in one city and be on a plane to infect the other side of the world in less than 24 hours?

Hard to find a counterexample when n=0.

My "being rude" is due to the fact that the WHO's actions and directions have been mostly politics washed up in science instead of properly looking for guidance for the well-being of people. It has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

They should've asked for restrictions. They should tell people "wearing a mask may not help you, but not wearing is certainly worse, so go ahead and get masks." All we get instead is CYA and bureaucratic responses. They need to be held responsible for their part in this mess.

You could surely find recommendations (should they exist) for unilateral imposition of rules in relation to recent epidemics like Ebola. After all your argument above was:

If this virus had come in some African country, they would have no problem in closing everything out - as anyone that understands tail risks would. But because it's China, then the recommendations for actions come after the evidence can not be hidden anymore. It is immoral.

Now I agree the coronavirus situation is without precedent, but if you're going to make assertions that they would have done X here while only doing Y there, you need to back it up with some evidence for your claims about X.

So your objection to what I am saying is that I claim some double standard when there is no instance where they applied one of these standards? Is that it?

Ok, fine. Never mind the fact that this is also a mistake of conflating absence of evidence for evidence of absence. Your objection does not invalidate what I am saying regarding the biggest problem with the WHO: their failure in defending early action and in showing themselves to be a political-bureaucratic organization more preoccupied with its own existence than in achieving the goals it was supposed to.

Swine Flu. There, n=1. Go on now, you have your counterexample.

Swine Flu originated in the US, right? Wouldn't that be another case of an outbreak starting in a country that is rich and powerful enough to make the WHO look the other way instead of doing its job to mitigate the risk of a pandemic?

Flying to non-Wuhan China in mid-February was about as okay as driving to the next town over in the US, in early-March. An incredible majority of cases were in Wuhan.