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Just a reminder that this is coming from an organization that 1. Receives part of it's funding from China 2. Has been using China's clearly manufactured numbe

Just a reminder that this is coming from an organization that 1. Receives part of it's funding from China 2. Has been using China's clearly manufactured numbers since day 1 3. Has yet to officially call this a pandemic though it has met the criteria for weeks ($425MM in pandemic bonds would default) [0] 4. Is led by a man (the very director being quoted) who was accused by the NYT of covering up no less than 3 cholera epidemics in his home country of Ethiopia. [1] So you're telling me China shut down it's entire economy [2] and put 700MM people under lockdown and/or travel restrictions because of something about as dangerous as the common flu? Note that the Chinese economy is still not back online - don't believe me? Check real time pollution maps for yourself. The air is still cleaner than it has been in decades. The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself. Hell, 8% of Iranian parliament members are infected. Look at the chaos gripping Iran, Italy, and SK. This is not the flu and I'm astounded that not only are official organizations misleading the public to this degree, but people are buying it en masse. Finally, after a mass petition, a number of journals released all 2019ncov literature from paywall. You can find estimates for mortality and R0 from many sources, and I don't think I've seen a single one below 2. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was at 2. Of course take these with a grain of salt as they may be oversampling severe cases, but they all point to the same grave conclusions, and you can read them yourself. Do not rely on these agencies to digest this information for you when you have unprecedented access to the same information. 0. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-bond-debate-inside-look-world-bank-coronavirus-relief-investment-2020-2-1028906657?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pandemic-bon... 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-director-general-ethiopia-cholera-outbreaks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-dire... 2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/at-least-two-thirds-of-china-s-economy-to-stay-closed-next-week https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/at-least-...

mrow84 7y ago
I find your point 3 confusingly worded: the trigger conditions for the pandemic bonds are specific and essentially transparent, but have not yet been met. They are independent of any statement the WHO may or may not make about whether a particular outbreak can reasonably be called a "pandemic". This independence should be unsurprising, because investors want some kind of "clarity" about what it is they are investing in. Whether or not the trigger conditions are too stringent for the bonds to be useful in dealing with the targeted crises, and whether or not the additional "clarity" provided by having well-defined trigger conditions is sufficient to manage risk for investors, are both separate concerns.
BoiledCabbage 7y ago
Point #3 on the Bonds doesn't seem relevant. From the Bloomberg article you linked: > Funds can only be released from the PEF for non-flu epidemics 12 weeks after the "start of the event," according to a World Bank document. The novel coronavirus strains were first reported on in late December, leaving funds locked up until late March.
Shank 7y ago
> The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself. In a case like this, where you're basically saying that two massive government organizations are broken, and one of which is an international organization which is _designed_ to transcend national borders (and thus includes different member countries, including China), the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. As a general response: of course the WHO is going to use China's numbers. If you don't establish some baseline for reporting then what are you going to do? Guess? The WHO does not have people to drop into China and start testing everyone. If China is under-reporting numbers then that's a great shame the world needs to deal with, but in typical situations involving bad data, you exclude the bad data entirely. Are we to exclude all of the numbers reported by China? Multiply by a scale factor to adjust? Pick a random number? There are many problems in the world and the WHO is not free of problems. Every director of every organization has some random set of things people don't like about them. In cases like this, again, it's important to provide evidence to support your claims (even if that's just basic links to overviews by reputable sources). From there, people can make informed decisions and judgement calls. I don't particularly think you're lying or telling the truth, I just think that not making evidence backed decisions is dangerous, especially in times like these.
- Shank 7y ago
  Replying to my own comment because the author has retroactively added citations. Cheers!
function_seven 7y ago
Regarding your #3: Wouldn't WHO gain that $425MM if they triggered the default on those bonds? > If certain criteria are met, the bonds' principal is transferred to the World Bank's Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) to fund containment and relief efforts. To me, that seems like quite the incentive to declare this a pandemic. If doing so would unlock that funding. But, there's details. Just declaring "pandemic" isn't enough. The bonds have numerical thresholds that must be met. (e.g. 20 deaths in 2 or countries).
- allovernow 7y ago
  They have clearly been met. Read the article. People stand to lose money in default conditions. The question is who? As I posted elsewhere, the first class of bonds default after 2500 deaths in one country and at least 20 in another. China and Iran have long met that condition. So what's going on?

mrow84 7y ago

I find your point 3 confusingly worded: the trigger conditions for the pandemic bonds are specific and essentially transparent, but have not yet been met. They are independent of any statement the WHO may or may not make about whether a particular outbreak can reasonably be called a "pandemic". This independence should be unsurprising, because investors want some kind of "clarity" about what it is they are investing in. Whether or not the trigger conditions are too stringent for the bonds to be useful in dealing with the targeted crises, and whether or not the additional "clarity" provided by having well-defined trigger conditions is sufficient to manage risk for investors, are both separate concerns.

BoiledCabbage 7y ago

Point #3 on the Bonds doesn't seem relevant. From the Bloomberg article you linked: > Funds can only be released from the PEF for non-flu epidemics 12 weeks after the "start of the event," according to a World Bank document. The novel coronavirus strains were first reported on in late December, leaving funds locked up until late March.

Shank 7y ago

> The WHO and CDC are lying to you. You can verify all of this for yourself. In a case like this, where you're basically saying that two massive government organizations are broken, and one of which is an international organization which is _designed_ to transcend national borders (and thus includes different member countries, including China), the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. As a general response: of course the WHO is going to use China's numbers. If you don't establish some baseline for reporting then what are you going to do? Guess? The WHO does not have people to drop into China and start testing everyone. If China is under-reporting numbers then that's a great shame the world needs to deal with, but in typical situations involving bad data, you exclude the bad data entirely. Are we to exclude all of the numbers reported by China? Multiply by a scale factor to adjust? Pick a random number? There are many problems in the world and the WHO is not free of problems. Every director of every organization has some random set of things people don't like about them. In cases like this, again, it's important to provide evidence to support your claims (even if that's just basic links to overviews by reputable sources). From there, people can make informed decisions and judgement calls. I don't particularly think you're lying or telling the truth, I just think that not making evidence backed decisions is dangerous, especially in times like these.

Shank 7y ago
Replying to my own comment because the author has retroactively added citations. Cheers!

function_seven 7y ago

Regarding your #3: Wouldn't WHO gain that $425MM if they triggered the default on those bonds? > If certain criteria are met, the bonds' principal is transferred to the World Bank's Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) to fund containment and relief efforts. To me, that seems like quite the incentive to declare this a pandemic. If doing so would unlock that funding. But, there's details. Just declaring "pandemic" isn't enough. The bonds have numerical thresholds that must be met. (e.g. 20 deaths in 2 or countries).

allovernow 7y ago
They have clearly been met. Read the article. People stand to lose money in default conditions. The question is who? As I posted elsewhere, the first class of bonds default after 2500 deaths in one country and at least 20 in another. China and Iran have long met that condition. So what's going on?