> As I just explained, the WHO's recommendations on travel restrictions are based on the International Health Regulations (2005).

General recommendations! Not a playbook from 2005 you pull out for dealing with an upcoming pandemic!

> the WHO is supposed to be concerned with the economy. It's not supposed to overreact and tank the world economy.

It is also not supposed to underreact and tank the world economy. What would the world economy look like if China had reported their real numbers, and these real numbers had triggered a safety threshold and banned/heavily restricted travel from China for the 2 months December and January?

Probably a lot different from the world economy now: All Western countries show decline, and just China showed economic growth in 2020.

> The WHO is also not supposed to punish countries that suffer outbreaks, because everyone recognizes that if you start doing that, countries will simply lie and hide outbreaks.

Instead, China simply lied and hid their outbreak. And they got a compliment for it. Weird tactic if everyone recognizes this.

> Closing the barn door after the horse has bolted is useless.

This is a barn with over a billion horses, not a single horse. Close that damn door!

> By the time the US stopped inbound travel from China, there was already community spread inside the US.

Yes, it is not waterproof, but shields against the rain. And if you say economic concerns play a major role in deciding travel restrictions, then this measure should also be judged accordingly. China was pushing for travel from a political/economical interest. US pushed back from a political/economical interest.

> By the time anyone (including the Chinese government) realized that the new coronavirus was a big deal

The WHO had to learn about this pandemic from open source information gathering! The Chinese government tried to save face, and lost control. By the time the rest of the world was notified, it was already months too late to act.

Some scientists have actually put a human life number on this delay. By the time people in power knew, efforts were started to cover it up.

> The US' travel ban in late January was a political stunt, but it had little practical effect on the development of the pandemic in the US.

It can be both. Political pushback against China playing politics. It had some practical effect, and it is completely in line with common sense and science that travel bans help curb outbreaks.

> This is false. The first detection of a SARS-related coronavirus in a patient was on 27 December 2019.

According to you this is false. You seem to be following the official timelines. According to my timeline, the first doctors fell ill early December. Wuhan expats were told by Chinese doctors in the middle of December, that their hospitalizations in November were due to viral pneumonia SARS. But officially, many of those doctors, patients, and expats, dissapeared.

> What? Testing lets you know what's actually happening.

CDC and intelligence agencies know what's happening without the need for tests. You throw tests at the problem and find 10k people in New York, instead of "projections of multiple community spreads". How your tactics change with this news? How does the public reacts to those numbers?

We know the barn is on fire! Testing only shows where. What would have helped would have been neighbor China warning about a starting fire.

> put enough resources into contact tracing

By then it was already way too late for contact tracing efforts. Like you said it was already community spreading. Contact tracing would only have been an option if China had shared early information.

> But only finding out that you have an outbreak when hospitals start filling up is the absolute worst thing that can happen.

The CDC was well aware of the outbreaks. The hospitals were already planning for 450k deaths with 5 cases. They don't need tests for that. They have OSINT solutions for that, and can hook into US government data collection too. Like said, it is how the WHO was notified about COVID. They had to find out by mining social networks in China, and polling hospital admittance.