https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/20/coronavirus-sp...

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳.

There is nothing false or misleading, and they updated the public as new information came to light.

I can't emphasis enough how correct this behaviour is for a scientific organisation.

And for the sceptics who will claim China was covering something up: why didn't they shut down Wuhan until 23 Jan?

Their co-lead on COVID-19 even went so far as to hang up on a journalist[2] who asked about Taiwan.

If this is your idea of "correct behaviour" for a scientific org, I cringe to imagine your vision of a poorly run one.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi....

[2] https://youtu.be/fASh2_RzMuE

Your link says (about the Dec 31 email): "Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease. However, because at the time there were as yet no cases of the disease in Taiwan, we could not state directly and conclusively that there had been human-to-human transmission."

That's no different to what China or the WHO were saying in this timeframe. The constant "no confirmed human transmission" were because everyone was watching for it.

Again, there is no evidence China hid anything here, and Taiwan doesn't say anything different.

Here's more background:

Dr. Li Wenliang's email warning colleagues about the outbreak was sent on December 30th. Multiple Taiwanese doctors were working in Wuhan at that time. Taiwan's very early and very small outbreak was from people evacuated from Wuhan. The CDC warnings weren't about what was seen in the Covid positive evacuees in Taiwan. The warnings were based on direct experience in Wuhan and they did suggest human-to-human transmission.

There was no hard proof, but there was a great deal of circumstantial evidence. Yes, it's possible Taiwan's CDC was overly suspicious due to memories of how SARS was covered up in 2003. However, given the way epidemics spread, the wiser course is to take circumstantial evidence of transmission very seriously.

I agree with this entirely. But I don't think there is any evidence that the WHO - or China - thought otherwise.

I'd note that the WHO bulletins from both Jan 5[1] and Jan 12[2] mentioned "Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported." (Jan 12, Jan 5 was similar).

Now this turned out to be wrong, but that doesn't indicate a cover-up. As your link from Taiwan said, no one definitively knew.

I'm very aware of the messages (not emails) shared by the doctor. I know he was forced to retract them by the regional government, and later exonerated by the central government. I think the dates here are important - as you mentioned it was Dec 30 he sent them, and by Jan 20 the central government had taken over. I do think the Wuhan regional government did try to minimise news of the outbreak, and I think criticism of that is fair - but needs to be tempered by acknowledgement that the central government acted relatively quickly and didn't try to hide things.

I think it's likely that external pressure from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and elsewhere made it clear to the central government that they needed to intervene.

[1] https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...

[2] https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...

The WHO is a politically captured organization lead by a man who covered up three separate cholera outbreaks in his own country. I have little respect for or interest in them.

They were talking about it a lot then: they had daily situation reports on the WHO website. I know because I was reading them!

Ok then!