Could Taiwan have saved the world from Covid-19?
A closer look at an e-mail from the Taiwan CDC 'warning' the WHO about the virus' dangers debunks claims of a Chinese coverup
by
May 6, 2020
Many people in the West – apparently led on by the US government – believe that the
information regarding the initial extent of the Covid-19 epidemic in China. Some asserted that the death toll in China was actually orders of magnitude higher.
When that could not be proved, some took to the notion that China kept data regarding human-to-human transmission from the world. The supposed evidence? An e-mail Taiwanese authorities sent to the World Health Organization on December 31.
This e-mail has often been presented as evidence that Taiwan learned of and warned the WHO about human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, but that the WHO ignored it. But as it turns out, the e-mail did not make any such assertion. No one has been able to present evidence of an e-mail from Taiwan to the WHO reporting any information about human-to-human transmission.
The Taiwan Centers for Disease Control has now
indicating the “facts” about that e-mail. As it turns out, Taiwan concedes now that when it sent out the e-mail, it did not have any evidence about what was happening in Wuhan other than “online sources” and “rumors that were circulating.”
The Taiwan CDC insists, however, that because the mainland authorities had used the term “atypical pneumonia,” which was also used in the case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, Taiwan authorities had speculated that human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, was a possibility.
Well, of course transmission was considered a possibility. However, epidemiology and public policy are not about speculations.
No one wants a repeat of the H1N1 fiasco of a few years ago. (See, for example,
;
;
.) What is needed is evidence to inform a commensurate response. This is what the Chinese experts and authorities worked so hard to figure out.
Evidence would soon come forth. Chinese researchers would determine a novel coronavirus to be the cause of these new pneumonia cases on January 8. On January 11, they would publish the sequence to the world. And on January 20, they would confirm human-to-human transmission. (For a detailed review of the Chinese early response, see for example
.)
The allegation that Taiwan provided early warning of human-to-human transmission that China had covered up thus simply does not hold up to scrutiny.
In the crucial early days of the outbreak, Taiwan did not do work relating to the virus and did not contribute any knowledge to the world regarding the virus. It could not have had “insider” knowledge about human-to-human transmission that would take health workers on the ground another three weeks to obtain.
Below are
of Taiwan’s supposedly smoking gun email on China’s cover-up of Covid-19 (Chinese followed by English translation).
新华社北京4月17日电 国台办发言人朱凤莲17日应询向媒体表示，民进党当局声称，台防疫部门曾于去年12月31日向世卫组织发函“示警”新冠肺炎病毒“人传人”，世卫组织未向全球公开这项信息。这些说法完全不符合事实。
Xinhua News 4/17: PRC Taiwan Affairs spokesman Mr Zhu [Fenglian] responding to journalist questions regarding Taiwan’s recently alleged that Taiwan had sent in an e-mail on 12/31 to the WHO to warn of human-to-human transmissions and that the WHO has yet to disclose.
朱凤莲指出，新冠肺炎疫情发生以来，我们及时向世卫组织以及有关国家和地区通报疫情信息。去年12月31日，武汉市卫生健康委在官方网站首次对外发布《关于当前我市肺炎疫情的情况通报》，通报了27例病例，明确说明已采取隔离治疗措施。这既是向社会大众、也是向国际社会公布疫情信息，体现了我们对待疫情公开、透明、负责任的一贯态度。世卫组织当天也获悉有关情况。可以说，武汉卫健委公布的信息，为世卫组织立即决定自1月1日在该组织三个层级组建事故管理支持小组，并进入抗疫紧急状态发挥了关键作用。
Mr Zhu has pointed that since the inception of Covid-19, we have notified the WHO as well as other relevant nations and authorities regarding the epidemic. On 12/31, Wuhan CDC announced on its website the then most up-to-date information regarding 27 mysterious pneumonia cases and clearly detailed the quarantining measures being taken. The reports were presented to the public as well as to the international community and constituted our effort to a transparent and responsible. On the same day, we also sent a report to the WHO. WHO would soon set up IMST (Incident Management Support Team) across the three levels of the organization, putting the organization on an emergency footing for dealing with the outbreak.
