What about WHO?: on failures of containment of COVID-19

In a bid to cover up his own failures in COVID-19 containment and limit the number of deaths in the country, U.S. President Donald Trump has been accusing China of “secrecy, deception and cover-up” in the outbreak and the World Health Organization of being “China-centric”. Mr. Trump could not have known it, but there is now evidence that WHO had not been fully transparent during the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, and China had indeed been more opaque than already known. If WHO gave an impression that on December 31 China had alerted it, the June 29 revised timeline of the world body clarifies the facts to a great degree. WHO’s country office in China had apparently been alerted by a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission about cases of viral pneumonia. It got the same news from another independent source too. China confirmed to WHO of the cluster of cases of ‘viral pneumonia of unkno