6 ms·

The WHO has been spreading misinformation from the start, including claims that covid does not spread from human to human after it was abundantly clear that it

The WHO has been spreading misinformation from the start, including claims that covid does not spread from human to human after it was abundantly clear that it does[0], claims that travel bans would be unnecessary to halt its spread[1], and claims that people should not wear masks[2]. These are not mere edge cases. We have structured our public organizations in a way that gives credentialed "experts" enormous amounts of power, but without making sure they are _actually good at what they do_. This move by youtube further enshrines credentials on top of the grave of competence. This is how you end up with the FDA banning covid tests for more than a month, how you end up with a completely ineffective CDC, or (to return to the topic at hand) the WHO spreading nonsense. The fact of the matter is that the twitter shitposters I follow were far ahead of all the major health organizations on this topic, but if they mention covid in a tweet they'll get their account suspended now. This censorship is not about censoring bad info, it's about censoring any "non-official" info regardless of its veracity. [0]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUN7LIXUMAY_2DI.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUN7LIXUMAY_2DI.jpg [1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVCIDfoWAAc-mq0.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVCIDfoWAAc-mq0.jpg [2]: https://www.who.int/images/default-source/health-topics/coronavirus/masks/masks-2.png https://www.who.int/images/default-source/health-topics/coro...

glenstein 6y ago
So far as I can tell, your extremely confident, categorical interpretations of your own citations are basically mistaken, across the board. As I read [0] it is not, in fact, a blanket declaration about transmissibility. As I read [1] it is not in any way an inaccurate statement (see [3]). When read [2] it's clear that it is not a blanket declaration not to wear masks. Meanwhile Youtube is going to take down videos claiming 5g caused the coronavirus, which are obviously wrong and obviously causing harm. And instead of looking at cases of obvious misinformation the policy targets, you would rather we go down a rabbit hole of idiosyncratic disputes about the the meaning of WHO statements, all while keeping up blatantly inaccurate misinformation. Tying ourselves up in that frivolous debate would let misinformation flourish. [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-travel-ban https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...
- freehunter 6y ago
  Is it appropriate to flag HN comments that are so blatantly wrong like the one you replied to? If YouTube is taking down misinformation, is HN doing the same?
  - knzhou 6y ago
    There's an endless flood of these bad comments. I'm just going through them (a new one posted every 2 minutes) and making the same rebuttal. People are stupid -- especially people who think they're smart contrarians.
    - ColanR 6y ago
      > I'm just going through them and making the same rebuttal. > People are stupid -- especially people who think they're smart contrarians. Speak for yourself.
      - knzhou 6y ago
        I'm being completely earnest here. You might not believe this, but some "contrarians" are so braindead that they get their news from 4chan. It's a serious problem.
        ColanR 6y ago
        As I mentioned in a few posts elsewhere in this page, 4chan was a better source of information than the WHO back in January. You might be in earnest, but you're behaving like a contrarian who thinks they know more than they do. "You have become the very thing you sought to destroy."
        dependenttypes 6y ago
        That does not seem much worse than using NYT for example.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
knzhou 6y ago
> The WHO has been spreading misinformation from the start, including claims that covid does not spread from human to human Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.
- nraynaud 6y ago
  I would add that WHO requires nations to inform them of the measures they are intending to take so that WHO can do some coordination, and nations don’t tell them and WHO has to do catch up by reading the newspapers.
- rglullis 6y ago
  They did say though that flying to China was still okay in as late as February. For what? Fear of CCP? If this virus had come in some African country, they would have no problem in closing everything out - as anyone that understands tail risks would. But because it's China, then the recommendations for actions come after the evidence can not be hidden anymore. It is immoral.
  - knzhou 6y ago
    No, that's wrong. WHO essentially never encourages travel restrictions, their whole philosophy is that open international collaboration is crucial (that's why the W stands for "world"!). At the height of the Ebola epidemic, they didn't call for travel restrictions to Africa either.
    - rglullis 6y ago
      That is a well-polished turd of an argument you are trying to sell there. Not recommending travel restrictions due to "promoting international collaboration", really? I don't need to be an expert in medicine to understand that if an epidemic breaks out in an area, the first thing authorities should do is to avoid getting more people in that area. Even more so when the cause/methods of transmission and speed of transmission is unknown.
xster 6y ago
> claims that covid does not spread from human to human after it was abundantly clear that it does There's evidence that human to human transmission was documented on January 14? That would be the first time I hear about it. Do you have a source?
- throwaway_jobs 6y ago
  Yes Dr. Li contracted the virus on January 8 when he returned to the hospital in Wuhan where the first patients were identified in December 2019. Dr. Li made social media posts about the virus which Chinese authorities forced him to take down and sign a written confession and promise not to do it again. Now the question is do you have a source that shows the exact steps, if any, the WHO took to verify the “preliminary investigation” as reported by the Chinese authorities? Because from the sound of it, Chinese authorities reported these claims to WHO and WHO turned around and published the Chinese claims without performing any independent investigation (they certainly didn’t know about Dr. Li at the time).
  - xster 6y ago
    This is a huge non sequitur from my question on "spread from human to human after it was _abundantly clear_ that it does" But I will respond to your goalpost shift as well in defense of Li Wenliang who's a celebrated individual in China but turned into a cartoon meme in the west. Li, an ophthalmologist, has no first hand knowledge of the virus nor was he trying to "whistleblow". He received a private group message within the hospital from ER department director and he simply re-shared the message to other private groups with his classmates. The ER director, Ai Fen, was the source of the hypothesis that some patients in the hospital had, incorrectly, SARS and she was the right channel to escalate in the first place. And her escalation was successful when 1 nurse was observed to have been infected on January 11th. The only piece of new information Li brought to the world was on January 30th when he tested positive.
    - throwaway_jobs 6y ago
      You can’t answer the most basic questions: -why did Chinese police get involved and force Dr. Li to remove social media posts about the virus and sick patients? -who were the Chinese Authorities, by name, who represented their “preliminary investigation” -what steps did WHO take to independently verify what they were told by Chinese Authorities about person to person transmission before posting this information to the public on Twitter? Edit: No offense but you seem like one of China’s paid trolls, throughout this thread you are accusing everyone who mentions facts of “moving the goal posts” and otherwise attacking “the West”. The West didn’t give the WHO knowingly false information and use their political power to have the WHO tweet the falsehoods to the public with #TheWest
Angostura 6y ago
>including claims that covid does not spread from human to human. That's how you interpret 'no clear evidence from preliminary investigations' is it? Why bother attempting to twist the WHO's words? What does it get you?
- bobcostas55 6y ago
  Yes, that's how I interpret 'no clear evidence from preliminary investigations'. The relevant timeline: Li Wenliang (a doctor in Wuhan) blew the whistle on Dec 30. 4 days later he was harassed by the Chinese police for "spreading rumors". On Jan 8 Li Wenliang was infected. On Jan 12 he was put in the ICU. On Jan 14 WHO denied human-to-human transmission. Li unfortunately passed away in early February. And by the way, there were warnings from Taiwan about human-to-human transmission very early on, which the WHO ignored: https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6...
  - allannienhuis 6y ago
    Just regarding your first statement: isn't 'no evidence of X' entirely different than 'evidence of no X'? Seems to me they were saying the first, but you're interpreting it as the second?
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      The vast majority of laypeople (inclusive of people who would be getting their information from the WHO's Twitter account) would readily interpret "no evidence of X" to be equivalent to "we shouldn't be worried about X". To pretend otherwise betrays a misunderstanding of how laypeople think. If the WHO had a more nuanced stance, they should've made that clear - e.g. "We don't have evidence yet that the #coronavirus spreads human-to-human, but it's possible".
      - La1n 6y ago
        But the thing is, that was their stance. I agree that their tweet might show a lack of scientific communication skills or scientific education of the general public, the official recommendations have been very clear. Countries and public health organisations don't base decisions on a tweet. They go to the official guidance. A Jan 1st interim guidance: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/surveillance-case-definitions-for-human-infection-with-novel-coronavirus.pdf?sfvrsn=2cc7104e_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/surveil... The first thing they recommend: "The primary objectives of surveillance are to: 1. Detect confirmed cases/clusters of nCoV infection and any evidence of amplified or sustained human-to-human transmission;" Then on Jan 10th: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330374/WHO-2019-nCoV-laboratory-2020.1-eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330374/WHO-... "As information about the etiology, clinical manifestations and transmission of disease in the cluster of respiratory disease patients identified in Wuhan is limited, WHO continues to monitor developments and will revise these recommendations as necessary."
La1n 6y ago
Stuff like this is what really annoys me with Hacker News, imagine a public health official reading programming recommendations, not understanding half and making declarations that it's misinformation. You claim they claimed it does not spread from human to human, but the tweet talks about preliminary research. If you don't understand how science works, don't make such rash opinions on it.

glenstein 6y ago

So far as I can tell, your extremely confident, categorical interpretations of your own citations are basically mistaken, across the board. As I read [0] it is not, in fact, a blanket declaration about transmissibility. As I read [1] it is not in any way an inaccurate statement (see [3]). When read [2] it's clear that it is not a blanket declaration not to wear masks. Meanwhile Youtube is going to take down videos claiming 5g caused the coronavirus, which are obviously wrong and obviously causing harm. And instead of looking at cases of obvious misinformation the policy targets, you would rather we go down a rabbit hole of idiosyncratic disputes about the the meaning of WHO statements, all while keeping up blatantly inaccurate misinformation. Tying ourselves up in that frivolous debate would let misinformation flourish. [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-travel-ban https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavir...

freehunter 6y ago
Is it appropriate to flag HN comments that are so blatantly wrong like the one you replied to? If YouTube is taking down misinformation, is HN doing the same?
- knzhou 6y ago
  There's an endless flood of these bad comments. I'm just going through them (a new one posted every 2 minutes) and making the same rebuttal. People are stupid -- especially people who think they're smart contrarians.
  - ColanR 6y ago
    > I'm just going through them and making the same rebuttal. > People are stupid -- especially people who think they're smart contrarians. Speak for yourself.
    - knzhou 6y ago
      I'm being completely earnest here. You might not believe this, but some "contrarians" are so braindead that they get their news from 4chan. It's a serious problem.
      - ColanR 6y ago
        As I mentioned in a few posts elsewhere in this page, 4chan was a better source of information than the WHO back in January. You might be in earnest, but you're behaving like a contrarian who thinks they know more than they do. "You have become the very thing you sought to destroy."
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        That does not seem much worse than using NYT for example.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

knzhou 6y ago

> The WHO has been spreading misinformation from the start, including claims that covid does not spread from human to human Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.

nraynaud 6y ago
I would add that WHO requires nations to inform them of the measures they are intending to take so that WHO can do some coordination, and nations don’t tell them and WHO has to do catch up by reading the newspapers.
rglullis 6y ago
They did say though that flying to China was still okay in as late as February. For what? Fear of CCP? If this virus had come in some African country, they would have no problem in closing everything out - as anyone that understands tail risks would. But because it's China, then the recommendations for actions come after the evidence can not be hidden anymore. It is immoral.
- knzhou 6y ago
  No, that's wrong. WHO essentially never encourages travel restrictions, their whole philosophy is that open international collaboration is crucial (that's why the W stands for "world"!). At the height of the Ebola epidemic, they didn't call for travel restrictions to Africa either.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    That is a well-polished turd of an argument you are trying to sell there. Not recommending travel restrictions due to "promoting international collaboration", really? I don't need to be an expert in medicine to understand that if an epidemic breaks out in an area, the first thing authorities should do is to avoid getting more people in that area. Even more so when the cause/methods of transmission and speed of transmission is unknown.

xster 6y ago

> claims that covid does not spread from human to human after it was abundantly clear that it does There's evidence that human to human transmission was documented on January 14? That would be the first time I hear about it. Do you have a source?

throwaway_jobs 6y ago
Yes Dr. Li contracted the virus on January 8 when he returned to the hospital in Wuhan where the first patients were identified in December 2019. Dr. Li made social media posts about the virus which Chinese authorities forced him to take down and sign a written confession and promise not to do it again. Now the question is do you have a source that shows the exact steps, if any, the WHO took to verify the “preliminary investigation” as reported by the Chinese authorities? Because from the sound of it, Chinese authorities reported these claims to WHO and WHO turned around and published the Chinese claims without performing any independent investigation (they certainly didn’t know about Dr. Li at the time).
- xster 6y ago
  This is a huge non sequitur from my question on "spread from human to human after it was _abundantly clear_ that it does" But I will respond to your goalpost shift as well in defense of Li Wenliang who's a celebrated individual in China but turned into a cartoon meme in the west. Li, an ophthalmologist, has no first hand knowledge of the virus nor was he trying to "whistleblow". He received a private group message within the hospital from ER department director and he simply re-shared the message to other private groups with his classmates. The ER director, Ai Fen, was the source of the hypothesis that some patients in the hospital had, incorrectly, SARS and she was the right channel to escalate in the first place. And her escalation was successful when 1 nurse was observed to have been infected on January 11th. The only piece of new information Li brought to the world was on January 30th when he tested positive.
  - throwaway_jobs 6y ago
    You can’t answer the most basic questions: -why did Chinese police get involved and force Dr. Li to remove social media posts about the virus and sick patients? -who were the Chinese Authorities, by name, who represented their “preliminary investigation” -what steps did WHO take to independently verify what they were told by Chinese Authorities about person to person transmission before posting this information to the public on Twitter? Edit: No offense but you seem like one of China’s paid trolls, throughout this thread you are accusing everyone who mentions facts of “moving the goal posts” and otherwise attacking “the West”. The West didn’t give the WHO knowingly false information and use their political power to have the WHO tweet the falsehoods to the public with #TheWest

Angostura 6y ago

>including claims that covid does not spread from human to human. That's how you interpret 'no clear evidence from preliminary investigations' is it? Why bother attempting to twist the WHO's words? What does it get you?

bobcostas55 6y ago
Yes, that's how I interpret 'no clear evidence from preliminary investigations'. The relevant timeline: Li Wenliang (a doctor in Wuhan) blew the whistle on Dec 30. 4 days later he was harassed by the Chinese police for "spreading rumors". On Jan 8 Li Wenliang was infected. On Jan 12 he was put in the ICU. On Jan 14 WHO denied human-to-human transmission. Li unfortunately passed away in early February. And by the way, there were warnings from Taiwan about human-to-human transmission very early on, which the WHO ignored: https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6...
- allannienhuis 6y ago
  Just regarding your first statement: isn't 'no evidence of X' entirely different than 'evidence of no X'? Seems to me they were saying the first, but you're interpreting it as the second?
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    The vast majority of laypeople (inclusive of people who would be getting their information from the WHO's Twitter account) would readily interpret "no evidence of X" to be equivalent to "we shouldn't be worried about X". To pretend otherwise betrays a misunderstanding of how laypeople think. If the WHO had a more nuanced stance, they should've made that clear - e.g. "We don't have evidence yet that the #coronavirus spreads human-to-human, but it's possible".
    - La1n 6y ago
      But the thing is, that was their stance. I agree that their tweet might show a lack of scientific communication skills or scientific education of the general public, the official recommendations have been very clear. Countries and public health organisations don't base decisions on a tweet. They go to the official guidance. A Jan 1st interim guidance: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/surveillance-case-definitions-for-human-infection-with-novel-coronavirus.pdf?sfvrsn=2cc7104e_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/surveil... The first thing they recommend: "The primary objectives of surveillance are to: 1. Detect confirmed cases/clusters of nCoV infection and any evidence of amplified or sustained human-to-human transmission;" Then on Jan 10th: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330374/WHO-2019-nCoV-laboratory-2020.1-eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330374/WHO-... "As information about the etiology, clinical manifestations and transmission of disease in the cluster of respiratory disease patients identified in Wuhan is limited, WHO continues to monitor developments and will revise these recommendations as necessary."

La1n 6y ago

Stuff like this is what really annoys me with Hacker News, imagine a public health official reading programming recommendations, not understanding half and making declarations that it's misinformation. You claim they claimed it does not spread from human to human, but the tweet talks about preliminary research. If you don't understand how science works, don't make such rash opinions on it.