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Why? The great thing about local responses is that many different things can be tried, and different cultures with different viewpoints can be respected. When

Why? The great thing about local responses is that many different things can be tried, and different cultures with different viewpoints can be respected. When one organisation 'coordinates' the whole world, everyone can be wrong in unison. There's a lot of evidence that this has been happening with the WHO, but it's not just them. Some of the most valuable evidence generated in COVID times is from comparing different countries to observe differences based on what they did (or lack of differences). The WHO is an example of what one world government would look like: not a beatific utopia ruled by neutral and dispassionate experts, but incompetence and disarray unchecked by any sort of accountability. Remember: the WHO isn't run by a doctor but rather a former Ethiopian minister of finance. It has routinely made announcements that not only contradicted other health agencies and researchers but contradicted itself, as of a few weeks earlier. For example, the WHO's report on non-pharmaceutical interventions prepared in pre-COVID times says: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789... "Pandemic: Not recommended under any circumstances: contact tracing, quarantine of exposed individuals, entry/exit screening, border closure" For a mere epidemic they also don't recommend internal travel restrictions of any sort. In other words, the WHO recommends against lockdowns. When faced with a virus that spreads in exactly the same way, and which it soon became clear was of similar severity, they haven't gone back and changed their beliefs nor prior advice though.

jrochkind1 6y ago
Because since infectious diseases don't respect borders, coordination across borders is required to control them. For a pandemic, by definition global in reach, global coordination is required. The WHO has no ability to enforce any standards of practice, and I am not saying it ought to. Sure, if they are recommending against something, there's nothing stopping a local jurisdiction from doing it anyway, if they think their conditions or capacities differ, or they have access to better scientific guidance. They may be making a terrible mistake, or not, so it goes. This is how it is, and it ought not to be any different. But if you give up on coordination and cross-border mutual aid, and just say that it's every country/state/city/household for themselves to do what they personally decide best inconsistently with all their neighbors... well, how is that working out for the USA right now? Should we also eliminate the CDC, and let each state do for themselves? And eliminate state depts of health, and let each city do for themselves? I mean, heck eliminate city depts of health too, just let each household do for themselves. Now different "cultures and viewpoints can be respected", right? That DOES seem to be the USA approach at times; it's not working out very well, because of some un-changeable facts about how infectious diseases work. The OP is blaming the WHO for not supplying the right information in early January. Putting aside an argument about how (un)reasonable a mistake this was to make under the circumstances, if you're complaining that they didn't warn the world when they should have, how is it possibly an improvement to leave every country on their own to figure out the threat level from any part of the globe without coordination? How could that ever work better? If someone is complaining that the WHO didn't warn the world as early as they should, eliminating them so they dont' even exist to fill that role would obviously not produce a different outcome.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I think actually a "let people figure it out" approach has been adopted and the countries that used it are quite successful. This was basically Sweden's stated policy, and Switzerland also stuck mostly to recommendations rather than rules. What you see across the world is that the population's behaviour is generally ahead of whatever rules or recommendations governments are coming up with. People figure out the risks to themselves and others faster than governments do because the latter are incentivised (or believe they are incentivised) to take a safety über alles approach, and are very easily pushed around by "experts" and journalists, in ways that smaller groups aren't. Eliminating the CDC - I don't think the CDC has been particularly useful in this event either. Frankly as far as I am concerned governments have made what is now obviously a perfectly normal and trivial virus drastically worse, to the extent that we'd be far better off as a world, and far healthier as a population, if governments had literally done nothing at all. But doing nothing is paradoxically the hardest thing for any government to do. The best way to bring about that outcome is thus to just clear out organisations and government agencies that would otherwise following a road of, "something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done", which seems to explain a good 90% of the lockdown absurdities I see on a daily basis.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    Sweden has had far more deaths than it's neighbors, and per capita far more than the US -- we'd have like 50% more deaths if we had per capita what Sweden has had. While Sweden has had pretty much as much economic disruption as it's neighbors. If you want to consider that a successful outcome, I guess that is your perogative. I am not about arguing it has to be a "rule" enforced by the police rather than a "recommendation". I don't think enforced by the police with penalties is what makes the difference between succesful control or not, that's not what I'm arguing for. But arguing that not only no international coordination is required but no coordination of any kind, just people acting as their own personal epidimiologists based on what they read on social media... well, let's check back in a couple years and see how we think it's working out.
    - thu2111 6y ago

jrochkind1 6y ago

Because since infectious diseases don't respect borders, coordination across borders is required to control them. For a pandemic, by definition global in reach, global coordination is required. The WHO has no ability to enforce any standards of practice, and I am not saying it ought to. Sure, if they are recommending against something, there's nothing stopping a local jurisdiction from doing it anyway, if they think their conditions or capacities differ, or they have access to better scientific guidance. They may be making a terrible mistake, or not, so it goes. This is how it is, and it ought not to be any different. But if you give up on coordination and cross-border mutual aid, and just say that it's every country/state/city/household for themselves to do what they personally decide best inconsistently with all their neighbors... well, how is that working out for the USA right now? Should we also eliminate the CDC, and let each state do for themselves? And eliminate state depts of health, and let each city do for themselves? I mean, heck eliminate city depts of health too, just let each household do for themselves. Now different "cultures and viewpoints can be respected", right? That DOES seem to be the USA approach at times; it's not working out very well, because of some un-changeable facts about how infectious diseases work. The OP is blaming the WHO for not supplying the right information in early January. Putting aside an argument about how (un)reasonable a mistake this was to make under the circumstances, if you're complaining that they didn't warn the world when they should have, how is it possibly an improvement to leave every country on their own to figure out the threat level from any part of the globe without coordination? How could that ever work better? If someone is complaining that the WHO didn't warn the world as early as they should, eliminating them so they dont' even exist to fill that role would obviously not produce a different outcome.

thu2111 6y ago
I think actually a "let people figure it out" approach has been adopted and the countries that used it are quite successful. This was basically Sweden's stated policy, and Switzerland also stuck mostly to recommendations rather than rules. What you see across the world is that the population's behaviour is generally ahead of whatever rules or recommendations governments are coming up with. People figure out the risks to themselves and others faster than governments do because the latter are incentivised (or believe they are incentivised) to take a safety über alles approach, and are very easily pushed around by "experts" and journalists, in ways that smaller groups aren't. Eliminating the CDC - I don't think the CDC has been particularly useful in this event either. Frankly as far as I am concerned governments have made what is now obviously a perfectly normal and trivial virus drastically worse, to the extent that we'd be far better off as a world, and far healthier as a population, if governments had literally done nothing at all. But doing nothing is paradoxically the hardest thing for any government to do. The best way to bring about that outcome is thus to just clear out organisations and government agencies that would otherwise following a road of, "something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done", which seems to explain a good 90% of the lockdown absurdities I see on a daily basis.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  Sweden has had far more deaths than it's neighbors, and per capita far more than the US -- we'd have like 50% more deaths if we had per capita what Sweden has had. While Sweden has had pretty much as much economic disruption as it's neighbors. If you want to consider that a successful outcome, I guess that is your perogative. I am not about arguing it has to be a "rule" enforced by the police rather than a "recommendation". I don't think enforced by the police with penalties is what makes the difference between succesful control or not, that's not what I'm arguing for. But arguing that not only no international coordination is required but no coordination of any kind, just people acting as their own personal epidimiologists based on what they read on social media... well, let's check back in a couple years and see how we think it's working out.
  - thu2111 6y ago