8 ms·

Or, you know, this now infamous Tweet: https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152

by sova 6y ago

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.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    "I personally believe the evidence will come soon" is not the same as having that evidence. As the excerpts I've cited demonstrate, the WHO's statements at the time are longer than what can be fit in a single 280 character tweet. The tweet is accurate; the WHO was also issuing far more detailed statements including cautions about exactly what you assumed at the time - that further information was likely to arrive later. Again: > 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. They were making the exact point you claim they didn't make.
    - nwienert 6y ago
      The WHO January: > International traffic: no restrictions recommended. Wuhan city is a major domestic and international transport hub. Currently, there are no reports of cases outside of Wuhan City. Given the heavy population movements, expected to significantly increase during the Chinese New Year in the last week of January, the risk of cases being reported form elsewhere is increased. WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travellers. It is generally considered that entry screening offers little benefit, while requiring considerable resources. In case of symptoms suggestive to respiratory illness before, during or after travel, the travellers are encouraged to seek medical attention and share travel history with their health care provider. WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China based on the information currently available on this event. It’s a good thing Trump didn’t listen to them and limited immigration by end of January. They made many more reckless recommendations like this well after they knew people were dying, it was spreading rapidly, and it was a coronavirus.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        The travel "ban" was political theater, targeting only foreign nationals; red meat to add on to the existing trade wars. It had already escaped China at the time. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/01/debate-early-travel-bans-china/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/01/debate-ear... > The measure that the Trump administration implemented could not be described as a “ban” that “closed the country”: It only prohibited U.S. entry to foreign nationals who had visited China in the last 14 days. Americans and U.S. permanent residents returning from Hubei Province were still allowed, subject to a 14-day quarantine. After these policies were enacted, hundreds of thousands of travelers continued to arrive in the United States via direct flights from China. Until Feb. 27, no other travelers to the United States faced such travel restrictions and quarantine requirements — even if they were arriving from other nations that were reporting coronavirus cases. > Restricting flights from China did nothing to prevent the virus from arriving from other parts of the world. Genetic analyses have shown that the large epidemic that unfolded in New York was linked to travelers from Europe. In the early days of the U.S. epidemic, testing was restricted to people with a travel history to China, which limited the ability to detect locally the cases and infections among travelers from other countries. > By the time Trump expanded travel restrictions to Iran on Feb. 28 and to European nations on March 12, it was largely too late. By mid-March, the United States was approaching 2,000 confirmed cases and experiencing severe shortages in testing capacity that meant many infections likely went undiagnosed. The travel restriction did not initially apply to the United Kingdom, which already had hundreds of reported cases. And, implementation caused chaos. Photos showing large crowds of Americans stranded together in long lines and tight corridors for hours at airports may have increased virus transmission among those travelers who eventually made their way back to the United States. https://apnews.com/article/0dc271ad7f7917374a5a0cfb49273783 https://apnews.com/article/0dc271ad7f7917374a5a0cfb49273783 > A recent study from the journal Science found China’s internal crackdown modestly delayed the spread of the virus. It cast doubt that travel restrictions elsewhere will do much compared with other preventive measures, citing in part the likelihood that a large number of people exposed to the virus had already been traveling internationally without being detected.
- hnracer 6y ago
  It's pedantically accurate but grossly irresponsible for an agency that has such influence. Such a statement should only be uttered in scientific circles where the precise meaning of that statement is understood. "No evidence" is falsely interpreted by the layperson as evidence of absence, or at least that there isn't a good reason to expect it to be true. But given the asymmetric costs involved, it is exactly the wrong assumption that people need to make. Assume there is airborne transmission -> low cost but hedge extreme downside risk. Assume there is no airborne transmission -> slightly lower cost, but huge downside risk if incorrect. Policymakers were misled by the WHO.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > Such a statement should only be uttered in scientific circles where the precise meaning of that statement is understood. > Policymakers were misled by the WHO. Man, if only "policy makers" had access to "scientific circles" so they could stop getting their public health pandemic response ideas from reading Twitter.
    - hnracer 6y ago
      Given the number of politicians and media figures (who have influence over politicians) going along with the "no evidence" line early on, I believe the deleterious impact that I mentioned was real and significant. That's only ~10% of the reason that people are critical of the WHO though. They also refused to declare a pandemic until until weeks after it had spread globally, even though early R estimates were around 3, which delayed countries' ability to respond quickly. They wouldn't recommend masks until months into the pandemic, even though similar viruses such as SARS were airborne. The list of heinous mistakes is laundry-list long.
fsh 6y ago
I don't see anything wrong with this tweet. At the time, this was the only information available about the disease, and the source and preliminary nature of the research are clearly stated. One week later, the WHO had already conducted its own field visit in Wuhan and concluded that human-to-human transmission is likely taking place [1]. [1] https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit-wuhan-china-jan-2020 https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit...

Or, you know, this now infamous Tweet: https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152

by 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.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  "I personally believe the evidence will come soon" is not the same as having that evidence. As the excerpts I've cited demonstrate, the WHO's statements at the time are longer than what can be fit in a single 280 character tweet. The tweet is accurate; the WHO was also issuing far more detailed statements including cautions about exactly what you assumed at the time - that further information was likely to arrive later. Again: > 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. They were making the exact point you claim they didn't make.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    The WHO January: > International traffic: no restrictions recommended. Wuhan city is a major domestic and international transport hub. Currently, there are no reports of cases outside of Wuhan City. Given the heavy population movements, expected to significantly increase during the Chinese New Year in the last week of January, the risk of cases being reported form elsewhere is increased. WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travellers. It is generally considered that entry screening offers little benefit, while requiring considerable resources. In case of symptoms suggestive to respiratory illness before, during or after travel, the travellers are encouraged to seek medical attention and share travel history with their health care provider. WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China based on the information currently available on this event. It’s a good thing Trump didn’t listen to them and limited immigration by end of January. They made many more reckless recommendations like this well after they knew people were dying, it was spreading rapidly, and it was a coronavirus.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      The travel "ban" was political theater, targeting only foreign nationals; red meat to add on to the existing trade wars. It had already escaped China at the time. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/01/debate-early-travel-bans-china/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/01/debate-ear... > The measure that the Trump administration implemented could not be described as a “ban” that “closed the country”: It only prohibited U.S. entry to foreign nationals who had visited China in the last 14 days. Americans and U.S. permanent residents returning from Hubei Province were still allowed, subject to a 14-day quarantine. After these policies were enacted, hundreds of thousands of travelers continued to arrive in the United States via direct flights from China. Until Feb. 27, no other travelers to the United States faced such travel restrictions and quarantine requirements — even if they were arriving from other nations that were reporting coronavirus cases. > Restricting flights from China did nothing to prevent the virus from arriving from other parts of the world. Genetic analyses have shown that the large epidemic that unfolded in New York was linked to travelers from Europe. In the early days of the U.S. epidemic, testing was restricted to people with a travel history to China, which limited the ability to detect locally the cases and infections among travelers from other countries. > By the time Trump expanded travel restrictions to Iran on Feb. 28 and to European nations on March 12, it was largely too late. By mid-March, the United States was approaching 2,000 confirmed cases and experiencing severe shortages in testing capacity that meant many infections likely went undiagnosed. The travel restriction did not initially apply to the United Kingdom, which already had hundreds of reported cases. And, implementation caused chaos. Photos showing large crowds of Americans stranded together in long lines and tight corridors for hours at airports may have increased virus transmission among those travelers who eventually made their way back to the United States. https://apnews.com/article/0dc271ad7f7917374a5a0cfb49273783 https://apnews.com/article/0dc271ad7f7917374a5a0cfb49273783 > A recent study from the journal Science found China’s internal crackdown modestly delayed the spread of the virus. It cast doubt that travel restrictions elsewhere will do much compared with other preventive measures, citing in part the likelihood that a large number of people exposed to the virus had already been traveling internationally without being detected.
hnracer 6y ago
It's pedantically accurate but grossly irresponsible for an agency that has such influence. Such a statement should only be uttered in scientific circles where the precise meaning of that statement is understood. "No evidence" is falsely interpreted by the layperson as evidence of absence, or at least that there isn't a good reason to expect it to be true. But given the asymmetric costs involved, it is exactly the wrong assumption that people need to make. Assume there is airborne transmission -> low cost but hedge extreme downside risk. Assume there is no airborne transmission -> slightly lower cost, but huge downside risk if incorrect. Policymakers were misled by the WHO.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > Such a statement should only be uttered in scientific circles where the precise meaning of that statement is understood. > Policymakers were misled by the WHO. Man, if only "policy makers" had access to "scientific circles" so they could stop getting their public health pandemic response ideas from reading Twitter.
  - hnracer 6y ago
    Given the number of politicians and media figures (who have influence over politicians) going along with the "no evidence" line early on, I believe the deleterious impact that I mentioned was real and significant. That's only ~10% of the reason that people are critical of the WHO though. They also refused to declare a pandemic until until weeks after it had spread globally, even though early R estimates were around 3, which delayed countries' ability to respond quickly. They wouldn't recommend masks until months into the pandemic, even though similar viruses such as SARS were airborne. The list of heinous mistakes is laundry-list long.

fsh 6y ago

I don't see anything wrong with this tweet. At the time, this was the only information available about the disease, and the source and preliminary nature of the research are clearly stated. One week later, the WHO had already conducted its own field visit in Wuhan and concluded that human-to-human transmission is likely taking place [1]. [1] https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit-wuhan-china-jan-2020 https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit...