Second anniversary of WHO’s infamous tweet on Covid-19 reminds of social media’s retentive memory

Social media has got a strong retentive memory as data stored over servers have a long shelf life. The magnitude of users and their ability to consume and store content complements it at the same time.

An example of this virtue of social media was seen in a recent global campaign that was observed on January 14 and 15 to celebrate the second anniversary of the (in)famous tweet made by the WHO, supporting the claims of the Chinese government that “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel Coronavirus”.

On January 14, 2020, the WHO had tweeted – “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.”

Just after two months of tweeting this, the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic and began receiving criticism from health experts and global leadership for its failure to contain the pandemic and assisting China to ensure deniability.

According to a story titled “Exclusive | Coronavirus: China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17” by South China Morning Post, the Chinese Communist Party government knew about the spread of the disease and its nature of human to human transmission – weeks or months before the tweet was made by the WHO.

Additionally, several doctors and whistleblowers from China later came out in public to make revelations about China’s role in spreading the pandemic and launching disinformation campaigns to shield itself.

Talking to the US press, prominent virologist Li-Meng Yan revealed that China knew about the virus and deliberately misguided the world on origins and nature of the virus. Yan, who was also one of the first doctors to work.

On the pandemic, was pressurised by her seniors at her University/WHO Reference Lab, as well as the Chinese Communist Party authorities against disclosing the findings of the research. Later, she had to flee her country.