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I spent a few minutes looking at social media transmission of WHO Jan 14 tweet " https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152" purely as a meme. Original tweet went almost entirely unnoticed both at time and until March 17-18 when it was memed by right-wing US commentators.
2/ on January 14, there were only 8 retweets, which had only 12 onward RTs. One of the 8 Jan 14 RTs gave oppoite interpretation to recent spin, stating that "WHO says new China coronavirus could spread, warns hospitals worldwide", additionally citing Reuters article
3/ the Reuters article https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-pneumonia-who/who-says-new-china-virus-could-spread-its-warning-all-hospitals-idUSKBN1ZD16J of Jan 14 headlined a warning to hospitals. They quoted senior WHO official who distinguished "limited" and "sustained" human-human, but caveat that very early yet.
4/ another of the Jan 14 retweets was by Ian Mackay, a specialist who was carefully watching the outbreak with concern, understood that the tweet was not a green light, observing that "words matter",
5/ there was a single RT on Jan 16 and again on Jan 17 (neither onward RTed) and then no RT whatever through March 13.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FWHO%2Fstatus%2F1217043229427761152%22%20until%3A2020-03-13%20since%3A2020-01-15&src=typed_query
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FWHO%2Fstatus%2F1217043229427761152%22%20until%3A2020-03-13%20since%3A2020-01-15&src=typed_query
6/ there were singleton RTs on Mar 13 and 14, neither of which attracted any attention
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FWHO%2Fstatus%2F1217043229427761152%22%20until%3A2020-03-15%20since%3A2020-03-13&src=typed_query
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FWHO%2Fstatus%2F1217043229427761152%22%20until%3A2020-03-15%20since%3A2020-03-13&src=typed_query
