I agree that the WHO bears some responsibility, however much stems from the fact how they are funded. Because they rely on essentially "donations" from member countries, they can't effort to offend anyone. There was immense pressure from many countries not to declare a pandemic because of the economic implications.
We have actually seen similar patterns in many countries. Strong resistance to measures because of the fear of economic effects and pressure from industry. Only when it was really too late did they implement measures. Similarly as soon as things looked up again they opened everything way too quickly which caused the inevitable second and third waves.
Take Germany for example, while they had a good initial response, much of that advantage was squandered because they did not really investigate how the virus spread and wanting to keep the economy (especially the large companies) running at all cost. This lead to measures like being very harsh about only few people meeting outside, but at the same time many factories etc, keeping to work without significant distancing, likely a much larger spread vector.
This is especially big factor as it originated from China and they can be pretty difficult on things so WHO is extra careful not to offend them. Everybody saw the interview "... and what does WHO think about Taiwan's response" "Well, we already talked about China" "Yes, but what about Taiwan?" "What I can't hear you the connection is really bad"
We have actually seen similar patterns in many countries. Strong resistance to measures because of the fear of economic effects and pressure from industry. Only when it was really too late did they implement measures. Similarly as soon as things looked up again they opened everything way too quickly which caused the inevitable second and third waves.
Take Germany for example, while they had a good initial response, much of that advantage was squandered because they did not really investigate how the virus spread and wanting to keep the economy (especially the large companies) running at all cost. This lead to measures like being very harsh about only few people meeting outside, but at the same time many factories etc, keeping to work without significant distancing, likely a much larger spread vector.