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WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise agai

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

gruez 7y ago
>they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. >At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation. but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to "delayed infection by a few days". https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-travel-ban https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...
- emptysongglass 7y ago
  This doesn't make any sense if I step through it mentally. If you're a carrier of a virus and you have to hoof it to my end of the world, it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The faster vectors you give to something to transport a thing, that thing will move to its destination that much faster. You don't need science to grok this.
  - duckMuppet 7y ago
    It's vox. Don't look for intellect from such sources.
  - CamelCaseName 7y ago
    A few passages from the article: > But the trouble is, they don’t appear to be helpful. At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay the spread of disease but don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Instead, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved. On the H1N1 travel bans: > Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop disease spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.” So, why? > It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country, the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined. --- The article gives a number of examples as well.
    - staticautomatic 7y ago
      How can a ban only on nonessential travel affect aid workers and experts, who are clearly essential?
      - throwanem 7y ago
        Have you never seen a bureaucracy in a hurry? It is not, to borrow a word, agile.
        staticautomatic 7y ago
        I don't understand what your point is. Are you saying the bans are not limited to non-essential travel? Because everything I've read about them thus far has said they are.
        topmonk 7y ago
        How about in a nearly empty airport?
      - diffeomorphism 7y ago
        Because now they have to go through all the paperwork, waiting and hassle to document that they "clearly" are essential... several times. Bureaucracy is never, ever frictionless.
        staticautomatic 7y ago
        That may well be the case. I don't have any firsthand knowledge of the process. Do you?
        throwanem 7y ago
        Do you have a strong prior for large bureaucracies, especially at their interfaces with one another, not being sluggish? If so, how do you come by it? If not, whence comes the doubt whose benefit you seem so anxious to give?
  - gruez 7y ago
    >it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The article doesn't deny that. One study found exactly what you've claimed. >A study looking at [the arrival of H1N1 swine flu in 2009] found [travel restrictions] “only led to an average delay in the arrival of the infection in other countries (i.e. the first imported case) of less than three days.” The problem with quarantines seems to be that their effects are minimal unless you lock everything down AND somehow find and quarantine the already infected who got in, which no country has ever done.
- feanaro 7y ago
  There are many variables when it comes to travel restriction. "Travel restriction" is simply not a binary category which you either have or do not have. Hence, I'm unconvinced by a universal conclusion of "travel restriction does not work" from a few retrospective studies of a few heterogeneous cases of past travel restrictions. I maintain that we should not give in to the conclusion that global spread of infections is simply inevitable, except by chance, and write off restricted mobility completely.
  - duckMuppet 7y ago
    While it's true you cannot prevent with certainty every possibility of the virus coming here, but by implementing travel restrictions you do inhibit and create barriers of it's spread. This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals. That sounds nice in theory, but there's no literature backing this up.
      - feanaro 7y ago
        On the other hand, there simply cannot be literature to back it up unless it is tried systematically. These two things are in direct opposition. In any other experiment, we wouldn't treat the presently available level of evidence as indicative of the final state of knowledge on the matter.
- chaostheory 7y ago
  Other studies say travel restrictions delay infection by 2-3 weeks which is precious extra time for vaccine development and rollout. An extra month matters
  - gruez 7y ago
    Where are these "other studies"?
    - chaostheory 7y ago
      They’re on google. This took me less than a minute to find: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ That WHO post argues against travel restrictions, yet: “In one simulation, border controls preventing 99.9% of cases entering any given country delayed epidemic spread by up to 35 days.” 35 days is a lot of time, assuming a vaccine rollout is inevitable and successful There are other papers which are proponents for controlling and restricting travel.
      - feanaro 7y ago
        Thanks for this. Another excerpt I found particularly interesting: > Internal travel restrictions in England, Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom were predicted to have minimal impact on the magnitude of the peak and in delaying the spread of the epidemic – possibly because there are some densely populated urban areas and relatively high levels of population movement. However, in a recent review, it was estimated that a combination of internal and international travel restrictions could help to stagger the impact of a pandemic within a country such as the United Kingdom, by desynchronizing localized outbreaks. This is exactly the kind of unforeseen interaction effects I had in mind a few comments above when I said I'm not convinced we are able to conclude that "travel restrictions do not work" from the present studies. This particular effect will quite obviously also depend on epidemiological factors such as the length of incubation period, whether the disease is transmissible during the incubation period and so on. There are far too many variables to account for and far too little experimentation has been done so far to conclude anything firmly.
reaperducer 7y ago
WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. I wonder if they don't want to piss off China and make it say, "Fine, we're not going to cooperate with you. We'll handle it ourselves." From what I've read, China, and especially the Chinese government, doesn't seem to respond well to the sort of light criticism that people and governments in the west would blow off.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  True, China doesn't respond well to criticism. I don't often see them taking clearly stupid actions in response, though.
- fasthandle 7y ago
  This was my interpretation also. From non-reporting through December to rapid change at the end of December to lockdown of any social venue from museums to restaurants throughout the country since Jan 25th, WHO are giving support to the policy awareness change. Source: Live in China. Watching the group in Imperial College closely as they've been giving closest analysis so far.
totalZero 7y ago
Restrictions on trade and travel discourage nations from being forthright about their infection and death data.
MockObject 7y ago
> WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. This was my favorite: > "The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious.
- Anon84 7y ago
  > Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious. Yes and no. The guidelines for declaring a (Phase 5) outbreak is to have person to person transmission in 2+ regions of the world. https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_phase_descriptions_and_actions.pdf https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p... So, yes, it is about what's happening outside China.
- dugditches 7y ago
  What about the next line? "Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it." I'd call it simply stating their reasoning rather than 'tip-toeing' or 'artificial praise'.
m_alexgr 7y ago
Some recent virus science for you: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.... "Notably, the new coronavirus provides a new lineage for almost half of its genome, with no close genetic relationships to other viruses within the subgenus of sarbecovirus. This genomic part comprises also half of the spike region encoding a multifunctional protein responsible also for virus entry into host cells[30, 31]. The unique genetic features of 2019-nCoV and their potential association with virus characteristics and virulence in humans remain to be elucidated." Hmmm... interesting. Edit, full title of article. "Full-genome evolutionary analysis of the novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event"
jdlyga 7y ago
You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit for it. The WHO wants to stop the spread of the virus. If buttering up China and praising them in public gets this done, then so be it.

gruez 7y ago

>they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. >At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation. but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to "delayed infection by a few days". https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-travel-ban https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...

emptysongglass 7y ago
This doesn't make any sense if I step through it mentally. If you're a carrier of a virus and you have to hoof it to my end of the world, it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The faster vectors you give to something to transport a thing, that thing will move to its destination that much faster. You don't need science to grok this.
- duckMuppet 7y ago
  It's vox. Don't look for intellect from such sources.
- CamelCaseName 7y ago
  A few passages from the article: > But the trouble is, they don’t appear to be helpful. At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay the spread of disease but don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Instead, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved. On the H1N1 travel bans: > Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop disease spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.” So, why? > It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country, the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined. --- The article gives a number of examples as well.
  - staticautomatic 7y ago
    How can a ban only on nonessential travel affect aid workers and experts, who are clearly essential?
    - throwanem 7y ago
      Have you never seen a bureaucracy in a hurry? It is not, to borrow a word, agile.
      - staticautomatic 7y ago
        I don't understand what your point is. Are you saying the bans are not limited to non-essential travel? Because everything I've read about them thus far has said they are.
      - topmonk 7y ago
        How about in a nearly empty airport?
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      Because now they have to go through all the paperwork, waiting and hassle to document that they "clearly" are essential... several times. Bureaucracy is never, ever frictionless.
      - staticautomatic 7y ago
        That may well be the case. I don't have any firsthand knowledge of the process. Do you?
        throwanem 7y ago
        Do you have a strong prior for large bureaucracies, especially at their interfaces with one another, not being sluggish? If so, how do you come by it? If not, whence comes the doubt whose benefit you seem so anxious to give?
- gruez 7y ago
  >it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The article doesn't deny that. One study found exactly what you've claimed. >A study looking at [the arrival of H1N1 swine flu in 2009] found [travel restrictions] “only led to an average delay in the arrival of the infection in other countries (i.e. the first imported case) of less than three days.” The problem with quarantines seems to be that their effects are minimal unless you lock everything down AND somehow find and quarantine the already infected who got in, which no country has ever done.
feanaro 7y ago
There are many variables when it comes to travel restriction. "Travel restriction" is simply not a binary category which you either have or do not have. Hence, I'm unconvinced by a universal conclusion of "travel restriction does not work" from a few retrospective studies of a few heterogeneous cases of past travel restrictions. I maintain that we should not give in to the conclusion that global spread of infections is simply inevitable, except by chance, and write off restricted mobility completely.
- duckMuppet 7y ago
  While it's true you cannot prevent with certainty every possibility of the virus coming here, but by implementing travel restrictions you do inhibit and create barriers of it's spread. This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >This can mean The difference between multiple cities being ravaged by a disease instead of smaller groups of infected individuals. That sounds nice in theory, but there's no literature backing this up.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      On the other hand, there simply cannot be literature to back it up unless it is tried systematically. These two things are in direct opposition. In any other experiment, we wouldn't treat the presently available level of evidence as indicative of the final state of knowledge on the matter.
chaostheory 7y ago
Other studies say travel restrictions delay infection by 2-3 weeks which is precious extra time for vaccine development and rollout. An extra month matters
- gruez 7y ago
  Where are these "other studies"?
  - chaostheory 7y ago
    They’re on google. This took me less than a minute to find: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/92/12/14-135590/en/ That WHO post argues against travel restrictions, yet: “In one simulation, border controls preventing 99.9% of cases entering any given country delayed epidemic spread by up to 35 days.” 35 days is a lot of time, assuming a vaccine rollout is inevitable and successful There are other papers which are proponents for controlling and restricting travel.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      Thanks for this. Another excerpt I found particularly interesting: > Internal travel restrictions in England, Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom were predicted to have minimal impact on the magnitude of the peak and in delaying the spread of the epidemic – possibly because there are some densely populated urban areas and relatively high levels of population movement. However, in a recent review, it was estimated that a combination of internal and international travel restrictions could help to stagger the impact of a pandemic within a country such as the United Kingdom, by desynchronizing localized outbreaks. This is exactly the kind of unforeseen interaction effects I had in mind a few comments above when I said I'm not convinced we are able to conclude that "travel restrictions do not work" from the present studies. This particular effect will quite obviously also depend on epidemiological factors such as the length of incubation period, whether the disease is transmissible during the incubation period and so on. There are far too many variables to account for and far too little experimentation has been done so far to conclude anything firmly.

reaperducer 7y ago

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. I wonder if they don't want to piss off China and make it say, "Fine, we're not going to cooperate with you. We'll handle it ourselves." From what I've read, China, and especially the Chinese government, doesn't seem to respond well to the sort of light criticism that people and governments in the west would blow off.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
True, China doesn't respond well to criticism. I don't often see them taking clearly stupid actions in response, though.
fasthandle 7y ago
This was my interpretation also. From non-reporting through December to rapid change at the end of December to lockdown of any social venue from museums to restaurants throughout the country since Jan 25th, WHO are giving support to the policy awareness change. Source: Live in China. Watching the group in Imperial College closely as they've been giving closest analysis so far.

totalZero 7y ago

Restrictions on trade and travel discourage nations from being forthright about their infection and death data.

MockObject 7y ago

> WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. This was my favorite: > "The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious.

Anon84 7y ago
> Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious. Yes and no. The guidelines for declaring a (Phase 5) outbreak is to have person to person transmission in 2+ regions of the world. https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_phase_descriptions_and_actions.pdf https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p... So, yes, it is about what's happening outside China.
dugditches 7y ago
What about the next line? "Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it." I'd call it simply stating their reasoning rather than 'tip-toeing' or 'artificial praise'.

m_alexgr 7y ago

Some recent virus science for you: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.920249v1.... "Notably, the new coronavirus provides a new lineage for almost half of its genome, with no close genetic relationships to other viruses within the subgenus of sarbecovirus. This genomic part comprises also half of the spike region encoding a multifunctional protein responsible also for virus entry into host cells[30, 31]. The unique genetic features of 2019-nCoV and their potential association with virus characteristics and virulence in humans remain to be elucidated." Hmmm... interesting. Edit, full title of article. "Full-genome evolutionary analysis of the novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event"

jdlyga 7y ago

You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit for it. The WHO wants to stop the spread of the virus. If buttering up China and praising them in public gets this done, then so be it.