It’s feeling more and more like The Dead Zone every week 
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“Lancet” is incorrect, Trump’s letter in fact never says that “Lancet” published reports in December, it only says that “Lancet” published reports [date unspecified] regarding a situation in Wuhan in December.
“Lancet” should issue a retraction. I’d also recommend enrolling in a basic reading comprehension class.
Wrong.
Trump claimed that the Lancet (and unnamed others) wrote about ‘credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier’ .
They did not write about that. Basic reading comprehension, indeed.
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Indeed it is. The name of the journal is the Lancet.
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If Trump’s letter is merely saying that after China and the WHO’s announcement of human transmission there were “credible reports” of human transmission, how is this a criticism of the WHO? The WHO didn’t “ignore” or “fail to investigate” those reports. The WHO facilitated those reports in the first place!
This work is funded by the Special Project for Emergency of the Ministry of Science and Technology (2020YFC0841300) Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (CIFMS 2018-I2M-1-003), a National Science Grant for Distinguished Young Scholars (81425001/H0104), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC1200102), The Beijing Science and Technology Project (Z19110700660000), CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (2016-I2M-1-014), and National Mega-projects for Infectious Diseases in China (2017ZX10103004 and 2018ZX10305409). We acknowledge all health-care workers involved in the diagnosis and treatment of patients in Wuhan; we thank the Chinese National Health Commission for coordinating data collection for patients with 2019-nCoV infection; we thank WHO and the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC) for sharing data collection templates publicly on the website; and we thank Prof Chen Wang and Prof George F Gao for guidance in study design and interpretation of results.
It is obvious that the intended reading of the line is that there were Lancet reports in December, or at least prior to the official announcement on Jan 20. It would be impossible for those reports to “conflict directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts” otherwise.
“We didn’t put the pieces together until January, obviously in retrospect the virus was spreading before that” is the official line after all. Nobody claims the virus magically came into existence when the CCP became aware of it.
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No, the letter simply says that reports about the virus spreading in Wuhan in December were ignored by the WHO. The letter does not mention the publication dates of the reports (including The Lancet’s).
Admittedly, the phrasing in the letter is not perfect but it still should not have taxed basic reading comprehension skills of the editorial board of a prestigious scientific journal IMHO.
Repeating this doesn’t make it true. Your interpretation of the letter is flat out nonsensical. How did the WHO ignore a report from that supports a position they already went public with, that is funded by the Chinese government, that uses their data collection guidance? What is the basis for saying they didn’t investigate these reports, when it looks like these reports, when still unpublished, were actually exactly the basis of their public statement released just prior to the report?
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It’s just what Trump’s letter says. What I’m saying is correct not because of repetition but because it reports a fact. As such, it’s not debatable.
The phrasing of that part of the letter could be better, yes.
Did they not teach you to look at the context of a sentence to determine what the intended meaning of an ambiguous statement is? Is that not part of basic reading comprehension skills where you are?
The situation here is that is that “in early December 2019 or even earlier” is a dangling modifier, a situation that is inherently ambiguous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier What you are supposed to do is use the wider context the sentence is in - here, the emphasis in the letter of the WHO failing to act independently of the Chinese when the letter claims they could have acted earlier - to disambiguate.
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As I said, it’s clumsy. But should not have been such a parsing problem for a scientific journal. They unnecessarily jumped the gun and made themselves look a bit silly. There is no “there” there, dangling modifiers or otherwise. Hope they are more competent where it really matters, i.e. medicine.
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That’s not how a pandemic works. Guaranteed, the US mishandling of the pandemic has had an affect on your life, even if it wasn’t direct, unless you are a hermit on a mountaintop getting free WiFi from the Mt. Everest Base Camp Starbucks.
Please tell me how that is not parroting US right-wing talking points. Because I would really like to know.
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No. I tend to think incompetence ought to be pointed out and stamped out (if possible), esp. in a place like medicine, let alone a world’s leading medicine journal. Posting memes is not substantive rebuttal, incidentally. If you have no rational argument, just don’t post.
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And that is why so many people are trying to point it out to YOU.
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So you’re posting here, because…
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Because I thought a rational person could read that letter with a modicum of understanding. Let me just finish this off by saying there will be generations of future PhD theses analysing this period in history.
