frankv:

Good article. The word I have difficulty with is "minimal". Whilst there's no doubt that WHO could have done much better than it did, I think that there's also no doubt that things would be *much* worse if there were no WHO at all.

I think my use of the term "minimal" was unduly harsh, and "Questionable" would have been better.

It is an interesting hypothetical situation regarding if there was no WHO. I do feel they communicated valuable information, but in the absence of their recommendation to not restrict travel, countries would have sort to prevent the spread out of china much more quickly.

It is difficult to tell if this would have contained the spread, or simply sped up the spread as people fled ahead of travel restrictions (as was the case at a regional level in Wuhan and Italy).

I should note that the WHO's position is to avoid undue economic harm to the origin country of a pandemic, hence reducing the risk of countries trying to conceal future serious pathogens. Noble, but doesn't always lead to the best short term response.