4 ms·

Seriously what the hell is this, can someone please explain? I don't understand why there is this smear campaign against the WHO in which people keep saying thi

Seriously what the hell is this, can someone please explain? I don't understand why there is this smear campaign against the WHO in which people keep saying this. They do important shit, especially now, and it isn't their freaking job to point blame during an ongoing pandemic: it's their job to stop the problem from getting worse, and as far as I can tell they're doing a pretty good job. And, once it's over, maybe then we can all do the blame game if we need to figure out a root cause and stop it from happening again. Until then, it is completely counterproductive. (This is similar to how WHO doesn't try to extrapolate mortality rates until the dust settles: even if it is by some coincidence accurate, it doesn't tell us anything we need to know right now). This is a community full of software developers - a world where bugs get released into production on a regular basis. We should all understand _at least_ that.

andrenth 7y ago
Telling countries they shouldn't close their borders for fear of "creating stigma" is doing a pretty good job? The situation today is much worse than it could be because the WHO is more worried about doing politics than about health.
- cjhopman 7y ago
  > Telling countries they shouldn't close their borders for fear of "creating stigma" That's a huge misrepresentation of why WHO made those recommendations. The main point is that closing borders is ineffective and so you end up with only the negatives of doing that (and WHO stressed more the negatives around how it affects global supply chains and such for medical things).
  - andrenth 7y ago
    'World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that widespread travel bans and restrictions weren’t needed to stop the outbreak and could "have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."' [1] Of course now pretty much every country has closed their borders or at least severely restricted travel, and they did that because it works. But we have lost weeks without using a major tool to prevent virus spread, because of this virtue signalling that has cost lives. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quaratine-travel-110750 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quarati...

andrenth 7y ago

Telling countries they shouldn't close their borders for fear of "creating stigma" is doing a pretty good job? The situation today is much worse than it could be because the WHO is more worried about doing politics than about health.

cjhopman 7y ago
> Telling countries they shouldn't close their borders for fear of "creating stigma" That's a huge misrepresentation of why WHO made those recommendations. The main point is that closing borders is ineffective and so you end up with only the negatives of doing that (and WHO stressed more the negatives around how it affects global supply chains and such for medical things).
- andrenth 7y ago
  'World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that widespread travel bans and restrictions weren’t needed to stop the outbreak and could "have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."' [1] Of course now pretty much every country has closed their borders or at least severely restricted travel, and they did that because it works. But we have lost weeks without using a major tool to prevent virus spread, because of this virtue signalling that has cost lives. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quaratine-travel-110750 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quarati...