You can constrain your statements to only objectively true things and still be confusing and ambiguous. This is a perfect example of that. It warrants criticism.
I've probably seen this tweet 50 times now in the last week. Before that, not even once. It's easy to criticize now with 3 months of additional information and to cherry pick an instance of a few hundred characters out of all the statements the WHO has made. 99% of the criticism of this tweet that I've seen so far comes nowhere near the nuanced criticism you make here. In aggregate, the level of criticism this tweet has received has not been warranted.
It’s partly because around a week ago we discovered evidence that Chinese leadership was well aware of person to person transmission on the day that tweet was sent.
> This mission-driven WHO would not have brazenly tweeted, as late as January 14, that “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.” That claim was false, and known by the authorities in Wuhan to be false.. Taiwan had already told the WHO of the truth too. On top of that, the day before that tweet was sent, there had been a case in Thailand: a woman from Wuhan who had traveled to Thailand, but who had never been to the seafood market associated with the outbreak—which strongly suggested that the virus was already spreading within Wuhan.
I've watched criticism of that tweet since the day they posted it. Luckily Taiwan and HK ignored the WHO. And alot of people in Singapore also ignored and have been wearing masks since Jan.
I was referring to the tweet on human-to-human transmission.
Masks are a different story and I'm aware of the early criticism there. Although I think they provided a fairly reasonable argument for their position, especially given suppy constraints.
I'm referring to the tweet about human-to-human transmission. When that tweet happened it got alot of criticism. And despite the tweet we continued to wear a mask knowing the benefits of doing so.
