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Some members of the public disseminated factual information. Other members disseminated dangerous lies. On balance, I think the WHO is more likely to get it ri

Some members of the public disseminated factual information. Other members disseminated dangerous lies. On balance, I think the WHO is more likely to get it right than the general public. At least their message is more consistent.

leadingthenet 6y ago
I think the WHO preferring a consistent message above a nuanced and factually more correct one is exactly the problem many people have with them as an organisation. They've chosen the easy path at every step, and it's come back to bite them in the ass.
microcolonel 6y ago
WHO was literally saying that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, well after evidence was presented to them. There was nothing consistent about their messaging, nor was there nuance, they had the worst of both worlds. It would be one thing for them to say nothing on the matter, while sorting through conflicting reports, but instead they presented a narrative that they are unlikely to have sincerely believed at the time; that is, they were probably not just wrong, but lying. That is, given what we know now, they probably did not believe what they were saying to the public (though their lower-level expert disclosures were generally fine). At the top of the WHO, there is a hot-headed political activist who lashes out at people for criticizing him, rather than addressing the criticism. He has a well-documented political and ideological bond with the Communist Party of China, and a history of mismanaging outbreaks that is as long as his tenure at the WHO. The WHO was not consistent. It is clear, to anyone who went back and compared notes, they got it wrong more often than the popular sources in the general public. To put it bluntly, if you got your information about this outbreak from Joe Rogan (comedian podcaster), rather than the WHO, you would have had a more consistent perspective on the outbreak, and gotten there as much as a month earlier.

leadingthenet 6y ago

I think the WHO preferring a consistent message above a nuanced and factually more correct one is exactly the problem many people have with them as an organisation. They've chosen the easy path at every step, and it's come back to bite them in the ass.

microcolonel 6y ago

WHO was literally saying that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, well after evidence was presented to them. There was nothing consistent about their messaging, nor was there nuance, they had the worst of both worlds. It would be one thing for them to say nothing on the matter, while sorting through conflicting reports, but instead they presented a narrative that they are unlikely to have sincerely believed at the time; that is, they were probably not just wrong, but lying. That is, given what we know now, they probably did not believe what they were saying to the public (though their lower-level expert disclosures were generally fine). At the top of the WHO, there is a hot-headed political activist who lashes out at people for criticizing him, rather than addressing the criticism. He has a well-documented political and ideological bond with the Communist Party of China, and a history of mismanaging outbreaks that is as long as his tenure at the WHO. The WHO was not consistent. It is clear, to anyone who went back and compared notes, they got it wrong more often than the popular sources in the general public. To put it bluntly, if you got your information about this outbreak from Joe Rogan (comedian podcaster), rather than the WHO, you would have had a more consistent perspective on the outbreak, and gotten there as much as a month earlier.