Timeline

如今人們的忘性，和我自己的忘性比，大概只能說大同小異。
一個明顯的例子是東航那架在廣西失事的客機。都快不記得了吧。

Marc Siegel 醫生的這本書裏，有一段，列出了2020年初發生的一系列事情。

如果，大家天天都關注那些傳來傳去的“新奇”的消息，那麼前兩年發生的事，恐怕也被忘得差不多了吧。

Check out this timeline:

January 14: Tweet from WHO citing Chinese health officials who claimed there had been no human transmissions of the novel coronavirus within the country yet.

January 21: According to German intelligence sources, per the newspaper Der Spiegel, Director Tedros received a call from Chairman Xi of China urging him to delay warning the world and to conceal evidence of person-to-person transmission of the novel coronavirus.

January 23: WHO Director General Tedros issued a statement that the novel coronavirus was a regional problem only.

January 28: After meeting with Chairman Xi, Tedros gushed that “it is admirable that the Chinese government has shown its solid political resolve and taken timely and effective measures in dealing with the epidemic.”

January 30: Tedros said, “the Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken. I left in absolutely no doubt about China’s commitment to transparency.” Tedros added that they had set “a new standard for outbreak response.”

February 3: After visiting Beijing, Tedros continued to praise Chairman Xi’s commitment to stopping this outbreak. He also said it was okay to go on with international travel and trade (President Trump was restricting travel from China since January 31) Meanwhile, Chairman Xi was banning internal travel from Wuhan, yet allowing international travel to Europe where the coronavirus quickly spread.

February 7: Dr. Li Wenliang, age 34, opthalmologist in Wuhan, died of coronavirus. Warning in a chat room post on December 30th of the new virus, saying it resembled Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), he was visited by the police and forced to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.

February 10: Tedros, “But for now, it’s only a spark.”

February 15: Munich securities conference: Tedros, China’s attempt to control this outbreak has “bought the world time.”

March 7: The WHO was still not calling it a pandemic—Public health officials in the U.S., including me, were already calling it a pandemic.

March 11: WHO finally called it a pandemic. A University of Southampton study suggested that China could have reduced the number of coronavirus cases by 95 percent had they moved to contain it just three weeks earlier.

May 14: Dr. Ren Minghui, Assistant Director-General of the WHO in charge of Communicable Diseases, had been a public health official in China for 30 years—tweeted that the “COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the need to urgently increase services for #MentalHealth or risk a massive increase in mental health conditions in the coming months.”

作者評論道：
I responded on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News that though I completely agreed with this sentiment, on the other hand, had the WHO done what they were supposed to do and warned us rather than aiding and abetting the spread of the virus around the world, perhaps we wouldn’t be in such mental health trouble with enormous damage to the world’s psyche.