4 ms·

Who should we believe, then, the WHO? They told us China had it under control, and not to wear masks

empath75 7y ago
The math. We had the fatality rate and r0. As soon as it was obvious that it spread out of control on China, it was just a matter of time. You didn’t need to be an epidemiologist, you just needed a high school maths education.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  The thing is, it didn't quite spread out of control on China. There were a heck of a lot of cases in Wuhan and Hubei, and markedly fewer cases elsewhere. We might guess that this is perhaps just a side-effect of exponential dynamics, but I'm not quite sure about that.
  - makomk 7y ago
    At a guess, this is perhaps a consequence of the fact that the entire rest of China has been treating everyone from Hubei like a plague carrier since January regardless of whether they've even been there in years. Any country that didn't, at the very least, quarantine people who'd been in Hubei plus their close contacts back then probably can't expect the same results, and even that plus contract tracing and testing plus social distancing only seems to hve delayed the inevitable.
- elchief 7y ago
  Which math to believe, the 4.8% CFR, or the 19% deaths/completed?
knzhou 7y ago
The WHO has been urging everybody to get prepared for 10 weeks now, while constantly giving the same good advice (test, trace, lockdown, social distance). People are pretending this is all WHO's fault because they said some wrong stuff in early January, when the correct conclusions were not at all obvious. And they've been completely correct and transparent since late January. It's almost April now. At this point, it's just a worn out excuse.
- adnzzzzZ 7y ago
  They literally just posted this a few days ago https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1243171683067777024 https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1243171683067777024 when we know it's false and that masks do offer some level of personal protection on top of making everyone around you safer, given that you can infect others while asymptomatic.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    Okay, yeah, the mask thing absolutely blows my mind. I have absolutely no idea what their motivation for saying this is, when just about every expert in every east Asian country disagrees.
    - temp-dude-87844 7y ago
      That tweet and the attached video are entirely true. It's just that individual people may wish to not chance it, and wear a mask nonetheless, and masks will end up allocated by luck and purchasing power instead of need and risk profile. There's also some evidence that widespread usage of masks may be effective in lowering the risk for such a disease, but deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale is nigh-impossible right now, so it's counterproductive to focus on it. Distancing is achievable instead, and leads to a similar result.
      - zozbot234 7y ago
        > deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale is nigh-impossible right now You don't need high grade medical masks to significantly reduce the amount of transmission. Any sort of fabric-based covering on your face can help, just make sure you can comfortably breathe through it. Fabric is cheap and ubiquitous, it's literally everywhere.
        dariusj18 7y ago
        That doesn't seem right. If the mask doesn't prevent droplets from penetrating doesn't it actually act as more of a trap for potentially viral-laced droplets to gather and get inhaled?

The math. We had the fatality rate and r0. As soon as it was obvious that it spread out of control on China, it was just a matter of time. You didn’t need to be an epidemiologist, you just needed a high school maths education.

zozbot234 7y ago
The thing is, it didn't quite spread out of control on China. There were a heck of a lot of cases in Wuhan and Hubei, and markedly fewer cases elsewhere. We might guess that this is perhaps just a side-effect of exponential dynamics, but I'm not quite sure about that.
- makomk 7y ago
  At a guess, this is perhaps a consequence of the fact that the entire rest of China has been treating everyone from Hubei like a plague carrier since January regardless of whether they've even been there in years. Any country that didn't, at the very least, quarantine people who'd been in Hubei plus their close contacts back then probably can't expect the same results, and even that plus contract tracing and testing plus social distancing only seems to hve delayed the inevitable.
elchief 7y ago
Which math to believe, the 4.8% CFR, or the 19% deaths/completed?

knzhou 7y ago

The WHO has been urging everybody to get prepared for 10 weeks now, while constantly giving the same good advice (test, trace, lockdown, social distance). People are pretending this is all WHO's fault because they said some wrong stuff in early January, when the correct conclusions were not at all obvious. And they've been completely correct and transparent since late January. It's almost April now. At this point, it's just a worn out excuse.

adnzzzzZ 7y ago
They literally just posted this a few days ago https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1243171683067777024 https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1243171683067777024 when we know it's false and that masks do offer some level of personal protection on top of making everyone around you safer, given that you can infect others while asymptomatic.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Okay, yeah, the mask thing absolutely blows my mind. I have absolutely no idea what their motivation for saying this is, when just about every expert in every east Asian country disagrees.
  - temp-dude-87844 7y ago
    That tweet and the attached video are entirely true. It's just that individual people may wish to not chance it, and wear a mask nonetheless, and masks will end up allocated by luck and purchasing power instead of need and risk profile. There's also some evidence that widespread usage of masks may be effective in lowering the risk for such a disease, but deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale is nigh-impossible right now, so it's counterproductive to focus on it. Distancing is achievable instead, and leads to a similar result.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale is nigh-impossible right now You don't need high grade medical masks to significantly reduce the amount of transmission. Any sort of fabric-based covering on your face can help, just make sure you can comfortably breathe through it. Fabric is cheap and ubiquitous, it's literally everywhere.
      - dariusj18 7y ago
        That doesn't seem right. If the mask doesn't prevent droplets from penetrating doesn't it actually act as more of a trap for potentially viral-laced droplets to gather and get inhaled?