6 ms·

What does this mean?

by spuz 6y ago

hef19898 6y ago
That he is one of the people that don't believe anything anymore the WHO says because they got the thing with the masks wrong.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  IIRC the 'masks wrong' accusation was more about the CDC than the WHO. As I recall, the WHO caught a lot of flak early on for press releases written in strict scientific language that were easily construed to mean something entirely different. They earned a bit of criticism for that, since they should have written those PR bits for the lay audience that it was intended for.
  - TaupeRanger 6y ago
    I fully realize this will incur a mob of downvotes, but the evidence on masks is still unsettled, despite clamoring on social media and some news media. I would encourage people to listen to a balanced view on doctor Vinay Prasad's excellent podcast "Plenary Session". Even mentioning the possibility that this might be true is enough to get shouted down and accused of supporting Trump. In fact, it is quite unclear whether widespread masking is a net positive for US populations. It hasn't been shown to be effective, and there are still many unstudied avenues that could lead to a negative result. Just a couple examples: 1. Giving people a false sense of security, causing them to go out when they feel sick when they otherwise wouldn't. 2. Causing more face-touching behavior while fiddling with the mask, making infection more likely. We just don't know the answer.
  - andybak 6y ago
    The sibling post was rather unjustly flagged. I'm often on the other side of the fence on this but in this case I think it was unfair.
  - vharuck 6y ago
    I've always thought of the WHO as serving an audience of public health experts for the member nations. Then those nations can decide what the best response is within their borders. When I remember back on the news about the other recent pandemic scares (ebola, swine flu, zika), I don't remember hearing any mention of the WHO. I'm sure it happened, but not nearly as much as CDC. We hear about their announcements a lot more often now, but how much is that due to being cast as antagonists by DC?
    - vkou 6y ago
      If the Ebola epidemic killed 200,000 people in the United States, due to a completely bungled response by the CDC, you could bet that the supporters of the administration in power at the time would be burning effigies of the WHO.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      That is what the WHO used to do, certainly. It does seem to talk more directly to the press these days, and it's honestly probably not a great idea.
      - vharuck 6y ago
        Going by their news releases page, it doesn't seem like even 2020 has more listings than most years: https://www.who.int/news https://www.who.int/news I'm now leaning more toward my hypothesis that they haven't changed behavior much, but US reporters are citing them now because the current administration brought them into the story. In the past, reporters probably read the WHO announcements but quoted from CDC same academic experts. Again, WHO info is dry.
- sova 6y ago
  Or, you know, this now infamous Tweet: https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    That's an entirely accurate tweet at the time. On Jan 14, 2020, the WHO had no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission yet. It came (to them) shortly afterwards. That China may have had such evidence and kept it private doesn't make the WHO's statement any less truthful at the time it was issued. They aren't an intelligence organization; they rely on cooperative member nations. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/factchecking-trumps-attack-on-the-who/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/factchecking-trumps-attack... > While there is a debate about what was known when — and it seems clear that China knew more than what it reported — the WHO never said the virus was not communicable. Instead, the agency always considered the possibility, even if it also shared information from China that found no evidence of such transmission. > Lack of evidence, especially of “preliminary” results, does not mean the WHO was saying the novel coronavirus could not be spread between people. The same day as the tweet, the WHO cautioned that there might be some human-to-human transmission of the virus among family members in China. > According to a timeline of events, Van Kerkhove, who is also the WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 response, also said that human-to-human transmission wouldn’t be unexpected, since that is what occurs with SARS and MERS, which are also coronaviruses. Just a few days later: > By Jan. 19, the WHO was more definitive, saying in a tweet that there was “some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts.” Trying to use this tweet to justify US inaction months later is silly and transparent.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Thanks!
    - nwienert 6y ago
      It wasn’t lacking evidence at all, want to know why? Because I read that headline at the time and thought it was ridiculous, I couldn’t believe they were saying something so backwards. If you had been paying attention, you knew already: 1. It was spreading rapidly in humans 2. It was a coronavirus and therefore was similar to other coronaviruses If you were following a precautionary principle, you’d have said “it likely is spreading between humans given we’ve never seen any other form of transmission this rapid in any virus that isn’t, and it’s a coronavirus”. If you think their “don’t wear masks” lie was ok because it was trying to keep medical workers from a shortage, then, how can you not see this as hypocritical? You can’t think the mask lie was ok, due to abundance of caution, and then a total disregard for caution at a much more crucial early stage as ok. But again, if you were paying attention, watching the WHO make statements like this was terrifying. Like driving in a car with a drunk driver who is stepping on the gas. Who in their right mind would make such a totally braindead, reckless press release like that. Technically there’s no direct evidence, but there’s a whole lot of reason to be worried it likely is airborne. So the headline should be “it’s highly possible it’s airborne, we are waiting for concrete data, but recommend caution given exponential spread within humans”. The WHO did things similarly shockingly bad three times or so during the pandemic. I was paying attention to all of them and couldn’t help but think something was up. Something was wrong with the WHO. Not just being conservative, but being totally negligent and backwards time and time again. It really seems they were playing either protection for China, or some sort of interference against a good chunk of the world. If they had done better, many many lives would have been saved. It was some internal politics that broke them. Any halfway sane person knew it at the time.
- dqv 6y ago
  I don't remember that, but they got the thing about restricting travel wrong. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1ZX1H3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1...
- hnracer 6y ago
  It's not just the masks. They also got many other things wrong, and the leader of the WHO has a number of corruption allegations with some veracity to their name.

What does this mean?

by spuz 6y ago

What does this mean?

hef19898 6y ago

That he is one of the people that don't believe anything anymore the WHO says because they got the thing with the masks wrong.

rootusrootus 6y ago
IIRC the 'masks wrong' accusation was more about the CDC than the WHO. As I recall, the WHO caught a lot of flak early on for press releases written in strict scientific language that were easily construed to mean something entirely different. They earned a bit of criticism for that, since they should have written those PR bits for the lay audience that it was intended for.
- TaupeRanger 6y ago
  I fully realize this will incur a mob of downvotes, but the evidence on masks is still unsettled, despite clamoring on social media and some news media. I would encourage people to listen to a balanced view on doctor Vinay Prasad's excellent podcast "Plenary Session". Even mentioning the possibility that this might be true is enough to get shouted down and accused of supporting Trump. In fact, it is quite unclear whether widespread masking is a net positive for US populations. It hasn't been shown to be effective, and there are still many unstudied avenues that could lead to a negative result. Just a couple examples: 1. Giving people a false sense of security, causing them to go out when they feel sick when they otherwise wouldn't. 2. Causing more face-touching behavior while fiddling with the mask, making infection more likely. We just don't know the answer.
- andybak 6y ago
  The sibling post was rather unjustly flagged. I'm often on the other side of the fence on this but in this case I think it was unfair.
- vharuck 6y ago
  I've always thought of the WHO as serving an audience of public health experts for the member nations. Then those nations can decide what the best response is within their borders. When I remember back on the news about the other recent pandemic scares (ebola, swine flu, zika), I don't remember hearing any mention of the WHO. I'm sure it happened, but not nearly as much as CDC. We hear about their announcements a lot more often now, but how much is that due to being cast as antagonists by DC?
  - vkou 6y ago
    If the Ebola epidemic killed 200,000 people in the United States, due to a completely bungled response by the CDC, you could bet that the supporters of the administration in power at the time would be burning effigies of the WHO.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    That is what the WHO used to do, certainly. It does seem to talk more directly to the press these days, and it's honestly probably not a great idea.
    - vharuck 6y ago
      Going by their news releases page, it doesn't seem like even 2020 has more listings than most years: https://www.who.int/news https://www.who.int/news I'm now leaning more toward my hypothesis that they haven't changed behavior much, but US reporters are citing them now because the current administration brought them into the story. In the past, reporters probably read the WHO announcements but quoted from CDC same academic experts. Again, WHO info is dry.
sova 6y ago
Or, you know, this now infamous Tweet: https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  That's an entirely accurate tweet at the time. On Jan 14, 2020, the WHO had no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission yet. It came (to them) shortly afterwards. That China may have had such evidence and kept it private doesn't make the WHO's statement any less truthful at the time it was issued. They aren't an intelligence organization; they rely on cooperative member nations. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/factchecking-trumps-attack-on-the-who/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/factchecking-trumps-attack... > While there is a debate about what was known when — and it seems clear that China knew more than what it reported — the WHO never said the virus was not communicable. Instead, the agency always considered the possibility, even if it also shared information from China that found no evidence of such transmission. > Lack of evidence, especially of “preliminary” results, does not mean the WHO was saying the novel coronavirus could not be spread between people. The same day as the tweet, the WHO cautioned that there might be some human-to-human transmission of the virus among family members in China. > According to a timeline of events, Van Kerkhove, who is also the WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 response, also said that human-to-human transmission wouldn’t be unexpected, since that is what occurs with SARS and MERS, which are also coronaviruses. Just a few days later: > By Jan. 19, the WHO was more definitive, saying in a tweet that there was “some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts.” Trying to use this tweet to justify US inaction months later is silly and transparent.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Thanks!
  - nwienert 6y ago
    It wasn’t lacking evidence at all, want to know why? Because I read that headline at the time and thought it was ridiculous, I couldn’t believe they were saying something so backwards. If you had been paying attention, you knew already: 1. It was spreading rapidly in humans 2. It was a coronavirus and therefore was similar to other coronaviruses If you were following a precautionary principle, you’d have said “it likely is spreading between humans given we’ve never seen any other form of transmission this rapid in any virus that isn’t, and it’s a coronavirus”. If you think their “don’t wear masks” lie was ok because it was trying to keep medical workers from a shortage, then, how can you not see this as hypocritical? You can’t think the mask lie was ok, due to abundance of caution, and then a total disregard for caution at a much more crucial early stage as ok. But again, if you were paying attention, watching the WHO make statements like this was terrifying. Like driving in a car with a drunk driver who is stepping on the gas. Who in their right mind would make such a totally braindead, reckless press release like that. Technically there’s no direct evidence, but there’s a whole lot of reason to be worried it likely is airborne. So the headline should be “it’s highly possible it’s airborne, we are waiting for concrete data, but recommend caution given exponential spread within humans”. The WHO did things similarly shockingly bad three times or so during the pandemic. I was paying attention to all of them and couldn’t help but think something was up. Something was wrong with the WHO. Not just being conservative, but being totally negligent and backwards time and time again. It really seems they were playing either protection for China, or some sort of interference against a good chunk of the world. If they had done better, many many lives would have been saved. It was some internal politics that broke them. Any halfway sane person knew it at the time.
dqv 6y ago
I don't remember that, but they got the thing about restricting travel wrong. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1ZX1H3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-who-idUSKBN1...
hnracer 6y ago
It's not just the masks. They also got many other things wrong, and the leader of the WHO has a number of corruption allegations with some veracity to their name.