Dr. Birx was asked today on The View whether she believes the WHO mismanaged the pandemic back in January:
At first I thought Dr. Birx as going to make excuses for the WHO, but that’s not what she did at all. In fact she did the opposite, suggesting that there is even more responsibility to get things right on the outset of a pandemic:
In the beginning of every pandemic…you have to increase your level of reporting and transparency. Because it’s a new disease, every word and every experience you have becomes very critical for the global public. I think once this is over we’ll be able to look back and see, did China and the WHO say and do everything to alert the rest of the world to the nuances of this virus?
Because when it first explodes someone had to have known that there was human to human transmission. I see how this has moved through the United States and I can see how you can can from one or two cases to hundreds of cases with a high, high doubling rate… That’s not subtle and so you really have to go back and ask yourself why wasn’t there this level of transparency when this virus exploded. I think people would have prepared differently if they had known the transmissibility of this virus.
She makes a great point. When even tens of people start getting the virus quickly, it has be to be obvious that the virus is spreading human to human. And what proves this point, other than the obvious, is that Taiwan knew it near the end of December.