5 ms·

This is so, so stupid. The world has a limited number of fragile, deeply flawed but utterly necessary coordination mechanisms. To throw one of them aside in a f

by czzr 6y ago

This is so, so stupid. The world has a limited number of fragile, deeply flawed but utterly necessary coordination mechanisms. To throw one of them aside in a fit of pique is the act of an angry toddler, smashing things he doesn’t understand.

ericzawo 6y ago
Very on brand for the sitting President, I would say.
esaym 6y ago
How in the world can you really say or think that? This was the WHO's official stance in January 2020: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan" If that isn't clear evidence that they are beyond useless, then I don't know what is.
- iron0013 6y ago
  The WHO declared coronavirus a global health emergency in January. Meanwhile Trump said “We have it totally under control” in January. Which of those perspectives proved true?
- dylan-m 6y ago
  Taking that quote at face value: at the time, they trusted the Chinese authorities. This isn't terribly unreasonable. I think in retrospect we can say, yeah, they obviously shouldn't have trusted the Chinese authorities then, and they definitely shouldn't trust them in the future. But at the time, the idea that trusting them was a bad idea was more a thing people said than something backed by solid evidence. Alas, sometimes large bureaucracies take a while to catch up with common sense. (See also, fax machines). There actually is solid, undeniable evidence now, which is great! Let's see how they apply that in the future.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Do we have evidence though, still? Remember, this is a hoax, Right? Someone didn't listen to common sense and the available Intelligence also.
    - TMWNN 6y ago
      >Do we have evidence though, still? Remember, this is a hoax, Right? Trump did not call COVID19 a hoax. He called what Democrats said about his administration's response to the pandemic a "hoax", akin to the "impeachment hoax" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/joe-biden-trump-coronavirus-hoax-claim https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/joe-biden-trum...).
      - loopz 6y ago
        A somewhat fair point, but it was also mixed with poor choice of words and general inaccuracies at the time: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...
      - robotron 6y ago
        Are you saying there wasn't a campaign to call the virus a hoax?
  - smileypete 6y ago
    'Health officials in Taipei said they alerted the WHO at the end of December about the risk of human-to-human transmission of the new virus but said its concerns were not passed on to other countries.' https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... [paywalled - but going via a google search gets round it] 'Wuhan virus probably is spreading between people (2020-01-04) Wuhan officials also said on Friday that no evidence of human to human transmission has been found so far. But Ho said it is possible that the virus can be passed from person to person, and this is likely to have already happened in the Wuhan outbreak.' https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1500994-20200104.htm https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1500994-20200104.h... 'Wuhan pneumonia: what we know about the new virus and how you can stop yourself getting sick (2020-1-9) Dr Ho Pak-leung, from the University of Hong Kong, said the new coronavirus was believed to be spread through droplets. "The public should wear disposable surgical masks in crowded places," Ho said. "They should also clean their hands frequently." https://today.line.me/hk/article/Wuhan+pneumonia+what+we+know+about+the+new+virus+and+how+you+can+stop+yourself+getting+sick-PoWrD5 https://today.line.me/hk/article/Wuhan+pneumonia+what+we+kno... 'Q&A with HK microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung who helped confirm coronavirus' human spread Tell us what you saw in Wuhan (on 17th Jan). Let me tell you what I think is the truth. All the places we visited in Wuhan looked like they were putting on a show. Whatever we asked them, they answered as if they had prepared hard with well-thought-out replies. However, Zhong Nanshan was extremely sharp - he kept asking follow-up questions, like: "Is there anything else?" "Are there any more cases?" "Is it really like you're saying, just that many cases?" Eventually, under pressure, they relented and told us it seemed that there was one patient in the neurosurgery department who had infected 14 medical workers. But they also said those medical staff had not had their diagnoses confirmed. ... We met a deputy-level national leader and officials from the National Health Commission. They were all quite frank. Our expert group reported that the situation was severe, and there must have been cases of human transmission, and that preventive measures needed to be taken immediately.' https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/exclusive-qa-with-hong-kong-microbiologist-yuen-kwok-yung-who-helped-confirm https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/exclusive-qa-wit...
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Suppose you made a list of all of the scandals or dumb things that a given state government or federal agency had been involved in, and then said it should be abolished. That's not a normal thing; nobody would take you seriously.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  You have to go with the evidence you have at the time. That’s the way it works.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  You can only act on the evidence and information you have, and they were wrong in early January. Being wrong isn't necessarily a sign of uselesness, even the most useful are sometimes wrong. But on January 30th, WHO said there was human to human transmission, and it was dangerous, officially declared a public health emergency. At what point would you say CDC started taking it seriously?
  - LyndsySimon 6y ago
    It was clear based on the Chinese response much earlier that it was spreading widely. > At what point would you say CDC started taking it seriously? I’ll let you know.
    - jrochkind1 6y ago
      The WHO isn't an intelligence agency who has analysts reviewing "based on the Chinese response, we think something is going on other than what they say, and should alert the world to it." That's not what their job is, they should not be faulted for not doing it. The alarm was not being widely sounded by anyone but the WHO before then either. (Actual nation states DO have intelligence agencies who could have been analyzing this threat, btw). However, on January 30th when they did sound the alarm -- countries that paid attention to this and took the threat seriously then are, still, doing much better than countries that waited months to take it seriously, or which still aren't taking it seriously. This shows that the WHO in fact did something useful. The U.S. pulling out of the WHO is meant to distract from the fact that U.S. didn't take it seriously even when the WHO did sound the alarm, somehow blaming the WHO for the U.S. ignoring the WHO. Eliminating the WHO and having no world health organization at all wouldn't fix this problem, and would harm rather than help the global capacity for pandemic response. Perhaps they should have sent out an alarm earlier and not doing so was some kind of incomptency (I'm not convinced, but perhaps), but they still in fact played an important role and did send out the alarm far far before the U.S. paid any attention to it; sending out the alarm earlier wouldn't have made much difference for the US, we would have just had more time to ignore it. I mean, I guess if the U.S. took the money they were giving to the WHO and instead spent it on re-funding the infectious disease monitoring and research in China that we used to fund but stopped at least that would sound like trying to improve monitoring efficacy (whether it's a wise way to do it or not), instead of just bullshit. But we all know that's the opposite of what is happening, in fact, they recently cancelled MORE US-funded research on infectious diseases in China.
300bps 6y ago
Your response seems knee-jerk in consideration of the actor more than the action. If President Obama had made a statement saying, “Today we are taking the grave but necessary step of withdrawing from the WHO due to their not being an effective advocate for their mandate.” would you have the same instant reaction? As a centrist myself, the country seems so hyper partisan with neither side willing to give a millimeter. Sometimes though it’s right to disband an organization if it isn’t doing the job it is meant to. I don’t know whether the WHO was or wasn’t but maybe this action isn’t anymore “so so stupid” than disbanding the League of Nations at the end of World War II. I don’t see any reasons for this being stupid in your post other than ad hominem attacks and namecalling against the actor.
- czzr 6y ago
  Yes, I would have exactly the same reaction. I’m also not American.
- mcphage 6y ago
  > If President Obama had made a statement saying, “Today we are taking the grave but necessary step of withdrawing from the WHO due to their not being an effective advocate for their mandate.” would you have the same instant reaction? What if: the fact that he wouldn’t have (and didn’t) do that is part of the reason he is so popular? Otherwise, what you’re saying is: “sure, maybe what he did was bad, but if someone else had done a bad thing, they would be bad, too!” Which, okay, but they didn’t, and imagining someone else doing something bad doesn’t excuse people actually doing bad things. > Sometimes though it’s right to disband an organization if it isn’t doing the job it is meant to. I don’t know whether the WHO was or wasn’t but maybe this action isn’t anymore “so so stupid” than disbanding the League of Nations at the end of World War II. Well, part of the problem is that, no matter how much you interpret the WHO to have bungled up things (maybe a lot!), our federal government has still bungled it up far worse. So a lot of the reaction is that, we’re replacing the WHO with a disaster.
- loudmax 6y ago
  In order to do their job effectively, the WHO needs access to populations that live under a dictatorship. You can very reasonably argue that the WHO should be more open and transparent, but they need to be very careful about how they operate inside of authoritarian states. China could simply pull out of the WHO and then the organization would lose visibility into a huge chunk of the world population. It's a difficult balance to strike. That's just realpolitik. Instead, the United States is doing China the favor of pulling out so China doesn't have to. This gives China more control over the WHO. Ultimately, as the US abandons its position of global leadership it allows China to take on the mantle. This is a boon to the Chinese communist party. If Obama had pulled out of the WHO during an epidemic I would think this is a supremely irresponsible decision. Though I will admit that if it were Obama making this decision I might suspect there could be factors that aren't known to the general public, rather than just narcissistic boneheaded idiocy.
bassman9000 6y ago
https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coronavirus-outbreak-and-cover-up-ee65211a-afb6-4641-97b8-353718a5faab.html https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coro... Jan. 14: WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus." https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... Taiwan says WHO failed to act on coronavirus transmission warning https://twitter.com/nomiackerman/status/1246728816103481344?s=19 https://twitter.com/nomiackerman/status/1246728816103481344?... @WHO has admitted it did not even REPLY to Taiwan officials raising concerns in late DECEMBER over possible human to human transmission in the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan. For fear of hurting WHO relationship with China. Answers needed. https://twitter.com/sehof/status/1239418439799734273?s=19 https://twitter.com/sehof/status/1239418439799734273?s=19 Taiwan’s Vice President, the epidemiologist Chen Chien-jen, accuses the @WHO of ignoring Taiwan’s warning on 31 December of the possibility of human-to-human transmission. https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1252319621937598464?s=19 https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1252319621937598464?... WHO collusion with China was been disastrous. https://www.who.int/about/finances-accountability/funding/2020-21_AC_Summary.pdf https://www.who.int/about/finances-accountability/funding/20... The US pays the most, in absolute terms, double than China. What other mechanism do you propose to correct this?

by czzr 6y ago

ericzawo 6y ago

Very on brand for the sitting President, I would say.

esaym 6y ago

How in the world can you really say or think that? This was the WHO's official stance in January 2020: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan" If that isn't clear evidence that they are beyond useless, then I don't know what is.

iron0013 6y ago
The WHO declared coronavirus a global health emergency in January. Meanwhile Trump said “We have it totally under control” in January. Which of those perspectives proved true?
dylan-m 6y ago
Taking that quote at face value: at the time, they trusted the Chinese authorities. This isn't terribly unreasonable. I think in retrospect we can say, yeah, they obviously shouldn't have trusted the Chinese authorities then, and they definitely shouldn't trust them in the future. But at the time, the idea that trusting them was a bad idea was more a thing people said than something backed by solid evidence. Alas, sometimes large bureaucracies take a while to catch up with common sense. (See also, fax machines). There actually is solid, undeniable evidence now, which is great! Let's see how they apply that in the future.
- loopz 6y ago
  Do we have evidence though, still? Remember, this is a hoax, Right? Someone didn't listen to common sense and the available Intelligence also.
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    >Do we have evidence though, still? Remember, this is a hoax, Right? Trump did not call COVID19 a hoax. He called what Democrats said about his administration's response to the pandemic a "hoax", akin to the "impeachment hoax" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/joe-biden-trump-coronavirus-hoax-claim https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/joe-biden-trum...).
    - loopz 6y ago
      A somewhat fair point, but it was also mixed with poor choice of words and general inaccuracies at the time: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...
    - robotron 6y ago
      Are you saying there wasn't a campaign to call the virus a hoax?
- smileypete 6y ago
  'Health officials in Taipei said they alerted the WHO at the end of December about the risk of human-to-human transmission of the new virus but said its concerns were not passed on to other countries.' https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... [paywalled - but going via a google search gets round it] 'Wuhan virus probably is spreading between people (2020-01-04) Wuhan officials also said on Friday that no evidence of human to human transmission has been found so far. But Ho said it is possible that the virus can be passed from person to person, and this is likely to have already happened in the Wuhan outbreak.' https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1500994-20200104.htm https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1500994-20200104.h... 'Wuhan pneumonia: what we know about the new virus and how you can stop yourself getting sick (2020-1-9) Dr Ho Pak-leung, from the University of Hong Kong, said the new coronavirus was believed to be spread through droplets. "The public should wear disposable surgical masks in crowded places," Ho said. "They should also clean their hands frequently." https://today.line.me/hk/article/Wuhan+pneumonia+what+we+know+about+the+new+virus+and+how+you+can+stop+yourself+getting+sick-PoWrD5 https://today.line.me/hk/article/Wuhan+pneumonia+what+we+kno... 'Q&A with HK microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung who helped confirm coronavirus' human spread Tell us what you saw in Wuhan (on 17th Jan). Let me tell you what I think is the truth. All the places we visited in Wuhan looked like they were putting on a show. Whatever we asked them, they answered as if they had prepared hard with well-thought-out replies. However, Zhong Nanshan was extremely sharp - he kept asking follow-up questions, like: "Is there anything else?" "Are there any more cases?" "Is it really like you're saying, just that many cases?" Eventually, under pressure, they relented and told us it seemed that there was one patient in the neurosurgery department who had infected 14 medical workers. But they also said those medical staff had not had their diagnoses confirmed. ... We met a deputy-level national leader and officials from the National Health Commission. They were all quite frank. Our expert group reported that the situation was severe, and there must have been cases of human transmission, and that preventive measures needed to be taken immediately.' https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/exclusive-qa-with-hong-kong-microbiologist-yuen-kwok-yung-who-helped-confirm https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/exclusive-qa-wit...
perl4ever 6y ago
Suppose you made a list of all of the scandals or dumb things that a given state government or federal agency had been involved in, and then said it should be abolished. That's not a normal thing; nobody would take you seriously.
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
You have to go with the evidence you have at the time. That’s the way it works.
jrochkind1 6y ago
You can only act on the evidence and information you have, and they were wrong in early January. Being wrong isn't necessarily a sign of uselesness, even the most useful are sometimes wrong. But on January 30th, WHO said there was human to human transmission, and it was dangerous, officially declared a public health emergency. At what point would you say CDC started taking it seriously?
- LyndsySimon 6y ago
  It was clear based on the Chinese response much earlier that it was spreading widely. > At what point would you say CDC started taking it seriously? I’ll let you know.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    The WHO isn't an intelligence agency who has analysts reviewing "based on the Chinese response, we think something is going on other than what they say, and should alert the world to it." That's not what their job is, they should not be faulted for not doing it. The alarm was not being widely sounded by anyone but the WHO before then either. (Actual nation states DO have intelligence agencies who could have been analyzing this threat, btw). However, on January 30th when they did sound the alarm -- countries that paid attention to this and took the threat seriously then are, still, doing much better than countries that waited months to take it seriously, or which still aren't taking it seriously. This shows that the WHO in fact did something useful. The U.S. pulling out of the WHO is meant to distract from the fact that U.S. didn't take it seriously even when the WHO did sound the alarm, somehow blaming the WHO for the U.S. ignoring the WHO. Eliminating the WHO and having no world health organization at all wouldn't fix this problem, and would harm rather than help the global capacity for pandemic response. Perhaps they should have sent out an alarm earlier and not doing so was some kind of incomptency (I'm not convinced, but perhaps), but they still in fact played an important role and did send out the alarm far far before the U.S. paid any attention to it; sending out the alarm earlier wouldn't have made much difference for the US, we would have just had more time to ignore it. I mean, I guess if the U.S. took the money they were giving to the WHO and instead spent it on re-funding the infectious disease monitoring and research in China that we used to fund but stopped at least that would sound like trying to improve monitoring efficacy (whether it's a wise way to do it or not), instead of just bullshit. But we all know that's the opposite of what is happening, in fact, they recently cancelled MORE US-funded research on infectious diseases in China.

300bps 6y ago

Your response seems knee-jerk in consideration of the actor more than the action. If President Obama had made a statement saying, “Today we are taking the grave but necessary step of withdrawing from the WHO due to their not being an effective advocate for their mandate.” would you have the same instant reaction? As a centrist myself, the country seems so hyper partisan with neither side willing to give a millimeter. Sometimes though it’s right to disband an organization if it isn’t doing the job it is meant to. I don’t know whether the WHO was or wasn’t but maybe this action isn’t anymore “so so stupid” than disbanding the League of Nations at the end of World War II. I don’t see any reasons for this being stupid in your post other than ad hominem attacks and namecalling against the actor.

czzr 6y ago
Yes, I would have exactly the same reaction. I’m also not American.
mcphage 6y ago
> If President Obama had made a statement saying, “Today we are taking the grave but necessary step of withdrawing from the WHO due to their not being an effective advocate for their mandate.” would you have the same instant reaction? What if: the fact that he wouldn’t have (and didn’t) do that is part of the reason he is so popular? Otherwise, what you’re saying is: “sure, maybe what he did was bad, but if someone else had done a bad thing, they would be bad, too!” Which, okay, but they didn’t, and imagining someone else doing something bad doesn’t excuse people actually doing bad things. > Sometimes though it’s right to disband an organization if it isn’t doing the job it is meant to. I don’t know whether the WHO was or wasn’t but maybe this action isn’t anymore “so so stupid” than disbanding the League of Nations at the end of World War II. Well, part of the problem is that, no matter how much you interpret the WHO to have bungled up things (maybe a lot!), our federal government has still bungled it up far worse. So a lot of the reaction is that, we’re replacing the WHO with a disaster.
loudmax 6y ago
In order to do their job effectively, the WHO needs access to populations that live under a dictatorship. You can very reasonably argue that the WHO should be more open and transparent, but they need to be very careful about how they operate inside of authoritarian states. China could simply pull out of the WHO and then the organization would lose visibility into a huge chunk of the world population. It's a difficult balance to strike. That's just realpolitik. Instead, the United States is doing China the favor of pulling out so China doesn't have to. This gives China more control over the WHO. Ultimately, as the US abandons its position of global leadership it allows China to take on the mantle. This is a boon to the Chinese communist party. If Obama had pulled out of the WHO during an epidemic I would think this is a supremely irresponsible decision. Though I will admit that if it were Obama making this decision I might suspect there could be factors that aren't known to the general public, rather than just narcissistic boneheaded idiocy.

bassman9000 6y ago

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coronavirus-outbreak-and-cover-up-ee65211a-afb6-4641-97b8-353718a5faab.html https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coro... Jan. 14: WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus." https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... Taiwan says WHO failed to act on coronavirus transmission warning https://twitter.com/nomiackerman/status/1246728816103481344?s=19 https://twitter.com/nomiackerman/status/1246728816103481344?... @WHO has admitted it did not even REPLY to Taiwan officials raising concerns in late DECEMBER over possible human to human transmission in the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan. For fear of hurting WHO relationship with China. Answers needed. https://twitter.com/sehof/status/1239418439799734273?s=19 https://twitter.com/sehof/status/1239418439799734273?s=19 Taiwan’s Vice President, the epidemiologist Chen Chien-jen, accuses the @WHO of ignoring Taiwan’s warning on 31 December of the possibility of human-to-human transmission. https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1252319621937598464?s=19 https://twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1252319621937598464?... WHO collusion with China was been disastrous. https://www.who.int/about/finances-accountability/funding/2020-21_AC_Summary.pdf https://www.who.int/about/finances-accountability/funding/20... The US pays the most, in absolute terms, double than China. What other mechanism do you propose to correct this?