This article of Dr Wolfgang Pape is about Taiwan, but we invite you to read it as a global proposal in times of growing unilateralism. Shall we go back to multilateralism or instead consider omnilateralism?

“A pandemic[1] was announced by the WHO on March 11, 2020, describing the global spread of the COVID-19 virus. However, as early as the beginning of December last year, health officers in Taipei were checking passengers from Wuhan for symptoms before they left their plane. As a result, by the end of December 2019, the WHO had already received from Taipei an early warning about the risk of this new coronavirus.[2]

However, the WHO could not officially share this warning with its members. Precious time to prepare for prevention worldwide was lost. Why? In simple terms, because the alert came from a society that is not an official member of the WHO nor its parent body, the UN. As its name suggests, the United Nations accepts only “nations” as its formal members.”

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