Yeah, that's a given.

It's always easy to use hindsight to criticise.

WHO would have been in a difficult position whatever happened because it relies on countries to inform it when there are outbreaks of disease.  China did not recognise there was a problem until late December and Italy put late years deaths amongst the elderly down to pneumonia and severe flu when we now know Covid was spreading there.

Initially China told WHO that they didn't think the disease was spread from human to human and it wasn't until the last week of January that this was proven.

Also no-one knew or suspected that many people spreading Covid had absolutely no symptoms and had no idea they were vectors for the disease.

Could the Covid pandemic have been prevented?  I very much doubt it. The asymptomatic would have spread the disease across the world before anyone realised there was a problem.

I agree with you totally! But the US wants a scapegoat and China is their favourite. It is totally political and not science based. It reminds me of people you lent money too who then prefer not to meet you and turn into your enemies!

US scientists and of other countries have worked in and with the Wuhan labs and surely will go on doing so. - I get really bored with all that hypocrisy.

 "But the US wants a scapegoat and China is their favourite. It is totally political and not science based. "

The awful Trump certainly wanted a scapegoat and there still are questions to be answered by China. However, scapegoating is not the right way to go about investigating a new disease. It would be far more sensible for every country and WHO to improve their disease 'early warning system'.

I note that the Indian Gov has ordered that the 'Indian' Variant not be referred to as Indian, so there is a lot of sensitivity about being a vector for the disease.  Mind, naming the variant after its place of detection helps us all sort out which variant we're talking about because the variants are proliferating.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said:

The director-general of WHO says there has been a "premature push" to rule out the theory that the coronavirus might have escaped from a lab,

I doubt we'll get to the bottom of this one.  

I honestly think the simplest explanation is a lab worker got infected, then went for lunch at the local wet market.

But China refuses to be scrutinized.

"But China refuses to be scrutinized."

Unlikely to change.

The plus side is that in future all our countries will be much more careful.  We will store PPE, masks, anti-virals and have policies that can be activated as soon as a nasty virus is reported.