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Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

125 points by disabled 5y ago

disabled 5y ago
The entire commissioned report can be read here: https://theindependentpanel.org/mainreport/ https://theindependentpanel.org/mainreport/
cudgy 5y ago
“‘Global political leadership was absent,’ the independent experts said.” When has global political leadership ever not been “absent”? These are experts?
- garyfirestorm 5y ago
  I think generally US has carried that role in past until 2016. Either by partnerships or by holding a gun to other people’s head, US has exercised a self preservation strategy which had some effect on remaining world. For eg. Obama admin had narrowed down Ebola and contained it[1]. That indirectly was beneficial for rest of the world. Unfortunately the last administration deserted from these responsibilities thereby creating a sudden void and hence chaos. [1]https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ebola-response https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ebola-response
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      > We also basically abandoned the EU to deal with the migrant crisis we caused. How did the US cause economic migration from Africa to the EU? Why should the US do anything about that? Supposedly 1/3 of Africans hope to migrate to the EU to take advantage of generous welfare programs there.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    I think this is bit charitable, to say the least. Long before Obama the "US-led international order" was also screwing up on Global Warming. Only Hitler could unite most the rest of the world, and only then because that was near the peak of colonialism so world power had never been so concentrated.
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      Just because the US' leadership is absent in one area does not preclude it from being present and effective somewhere else. Similarly, just because the US' leadership is both absent and therefore ineffective in an area does not imply that were the US' leadership present, it would still be ineffective. Certainly, per the parent comment, we have examples of the US' past leadership in this context leading to a very different outcome. We know that leadership was abdicated (and in fact, actively eviscerated) during the prior presidency.
      - bourgwaletariat 5y ago
        It wasn't the leaders it was the followers. Or rather, those who refused to follow. No one followed up on the US leader's claim that it came from a lab. No, they said, "He said it so it's a lie!" And they continue to say that. This isn't on Trump.
        loopz 5y ago
        Your post is without any substance in it.
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        So first of all, I think the US-lead world order is much overhyped. Second, yes Trump accelerated some things, but deep changes that caused Trump more than they were caused by Trump have been having more effect on international relations far long. Don't forget all the same complaints about not funding the state department were made in the Bush years. Trump is a bad, don't get me wrong, but this seems like trite hawk Democrat thinking to me. It's precisely the nature of the US-led order in recent years that free trade agreements, IP laws, etc. etc. were more easily done than tackling issues of high global importance like global warming and Covid.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    Currently, there is an arms race in the Indo-Pacific region because of Obama's abandonment of defense treaties in the South China Sea, starting with the Philippines Scarborough Shoals. This week, a CCP official threatened to launch ballistic missiles at Australia. Trump was the first leader to stop air travel in 2020, and denounced as a racist for it by US Dem/Marxist leaders. Of course, not it's standard practise to restrict air travel. Trump funded the vaccines in 2020 that we're using in 2021. If you want to criticize the CDC and NIH, great. But don't lie about "the previous administration."
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jbandela1 5y ago
    > For eg. Obama admin had narrowed down Ebola and contained it[1]. It was great that they contained Ebola. But, containing a disease that makes you literally bleed from your eyes and requires bodily fluid contact and has an outbreak that starts in a low-density area of Africa, is much different than containing a disease where people who have the disease may only have a fever, and has airborne transmission, and the outbreak starts in a heavily populated city in China.
    - Fomite 5y ago
      It should be noted that Ebola presents in many patients as a febrile illness, not the "Hotzone" image of Ebola - a presentation that is extremely common in that part of Africa.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    So, Trump (or any American president) was supposed to dictate the response to Covid for the entire world? I recall many “powerful” people and news orgs ridiculing Trump’s actions early in the pandemic even so far as claiming in some cases to never even use a vaccine created under his administration. A vaccine that the same people now herald as a savior once the current administration took charge. Is that the leadership that you are talking about?
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      No, but there had been a lot of wargaming for pandemics ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02277-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02277-6 ), preparation for pandemics ( https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/17/the-art-of-the-pandemic-how-donald-trump-walked-the-u-s-into-the-covid-19-era/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/17/the-art-of-the-pandemic-... ), stark warnings that we were ripe for one from experts and notables ( https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-seemingly-predicted-the-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-seemingly-predict... ), and we even had CDC members inside and working with China in case of novel infectious agents appearing there ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-slashed-cdc-staff-inside-china-prior-to-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKBN21C3N5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-... ) The prior administration actively ignored and undermined all of that (as referenced in some of those prior links, and https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n... ). The concern with a vaccine at the time was that it was going to be a mickey mouse one designed to show a win, rather than be effective, similar to Trump's claims about hydroxychloroquine and injecting disinfectants. But as people saw Moderna and Pfizer go through proper clinical trials, and be proved effective, even at the accelerated rate, and to be recommended by actual trusted medical professionals, they came on board. Well, obviously not everyone; now that it's been tested and shown to be safe it's Bill Gates' 5G mind control shot, despite Trump having received one.
- x86ARMsRace 5y ago
  > When has global political leadership ever not been “absent” Plenty of times in history. Consider the 20th century. Almost all of it was defined by global political leadership.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    If your definition of global leadership consists of 2 world wars, several pan-Asian conflicts, war and conflict in areas like the entire Middle East, much of Africa, and large chunks of Central and South America for practically the entire 20th century, then it is clear that our definition of leadership differs greatly.
    - x86ARMsRace 5y ago
      > consists of 2 world wars Are you trying to go down the NRx rabbit hole of "World War II could have been avoided"? It's basically a Godwin's Law at this point. Most of the other conflicts you mention are actually American and Russian conflicts, so you're also falling into the trap of "America is the world".
- Fomite 5y ago
  I will say it was conspicuously absent in this epidemic - if you ask a lot of epidemiologists, myself included, what the thing we most didn't expect about the epidemic, it's how aggressively a number of national governments, including the U.S., abdicated their usual role in response.
raverbashing 5y ago
Yes and it would have caused even less damage if the WHO hadn't taken a whole year to reverse their stance on transmission methods, but instead kept parroting the "short range droplets"/fomites theory, which was good for security theatre but not much more. I mean: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1390738628528201735 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1390738628528201735
bourgwaletariat 5y ago
Yeah, just don't do GoF research. Or don't let it escape from a lab. Or, don't lie about it when it does. Or, contain it if it does. Or shut down travel outside the country if it does. Or, don't cripple Australia with a trade war if they suggest an investigation into the origins of the disease are warranted. Or don't cancel people if they wonder if maybe it didn't come from nature. Or, do the audits to verify the labs doing catastrophic research are doing it safely and properly. Or, don't sneak in funding for something that has already been declared a risk to human existence. Or, don't pay "non-profits" millions of dollars to pay enemy nations to do research into how to turn a virus into a bioweapon. Or value the health of the world over the profits of corporations. I bet none of these ideas are in the report. * read article * Nope. * reads report * Oh, I got one: Waive IP rights to vaccines. Their suggestion: Give the WHO more money. They'll do it better next time apparently. I guarantee you, if China had said, "A bioweapon we were developing escaped the lab, lock everything down!" This would not have happened.
- loopz 5y ago
  Bioweapon? A new strain of virus that can mutate to unknown properties, and to which virtually nobody have immunity?
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    Chinese scientists discussed weaponizing SARS in 2015 (https://www.ibtimes.com/explosive-report-says-chinese-scientists-discussed-weaponizing-coronavirus-2015-3196106 https://www.ibtimes.com/explosive-report-says-chinese-scient...).
    - cto_of_antifa 5y ago
      sure. your point?
    - femto 5y ago
      The chain of references here is: IBTimes quotes "The Australian" newspaper. (Murdoch) "The Australian" quotes the book "The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapon". The above book is based on a discredited claim that the US engineered SARS as a weapon against China, which has now been twisted into a counter claim that China in turn engineered COVID against the US (see below). https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/going-viral-how-a-book-on-amazon-inspired-the-latest-covid-conspiracy-20210512-p57r6e.html https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/going-viral-how-a-book-on-...
The_Amp_Walrus 5y ago
Uhuh the WHO has concluded that more power and control should be ceded to the WHO in emergencies: """ Identifying a systemic issue, the report said the WHO lacks the power to investigate and act swiftly when confronted with potential outbreaks. "Technical expert missions can be dispatched to individual countries only with their permission, and a system of preauthorization of missions has not been established," the report said. "Often lengthy negotiations with governments for access by missions are required after an outbreak has been notified." """ There's a "systemic issue" where you won't let our 'expert missions' into your country and boss you around.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
repost top level link, dunno what this WBUR stuff is https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/05/12/996284927/covid-19-was-a-preventable-disaster-who-ordered-report-states https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
- disabled 5y ago
  Thank you for the link. I am the original submitter of this topic. WBUR is Boston’s NPR station, which has a huge listener base, and I say this as a west coast person.
  - mroche 5y ago
    90.9 WBUR, that phrase will forever be stuck in my head. NPR is a go-to whenever I'm driving (I'm from MA), the catalog of shows and their content is great. Been catching more of the business and economic study breakdown the past few weeks, I've learned a lot more than I was anticipating.
top_post 5y ago
Man, all the WHO bashing comments are getting downvoted pretty quickly, except: - WHO took a _long_ time to declare a pandemic when member countries were asking for it. - WHO actively discouraged international border closures for containment. - WHO took way too long to declare aerosol transmission even when countries had identified it. In a global scale event like this, there's no individual country who should have been the shepherd. It should have been the WHO, comprised of all its member inputs, really showing the lead here. Each individual country owns responsibility for their own preparedness, no doubt or question about that, but the WHO needs a re-organization big time.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  The WHO absolutely did take a long time to declare a pandemic and certainly did fumble the ball on aerosol transmission. However given what we now know for sure we can safely say that border closures without an eradication policy (strict lockdowns and mass testing until the cases are undetectable followed by contact tracing) would not have changed anything. Which is what the models that WHO epidemiologists had used to give the guidance that airport closures would not be very effective used as premises and found. We know that by the time the border closures were suggested the virus was already definitely already in every country. From then on an extra five or six cases a month don't really affect the trajectory of the epidemic much at all. Unless you go for an eradication strategy. But in Western states that waited until deaths started mounting to lockdown and then opened back up mostly before they went to zero we can confidently say that airport closures would not have been a factor in avoiding the disaster.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    > However given what we now know for sure we can safely say that border closures without an eradication policy (strict lockdowns and mass testing until the cases are undetectable followed by contact tracing) would not have changed anything. How do you make the conclusion that without a policy reducing travel wouldn’t have helped? That doesn’t even make sense.
    - 5y ago
sudosysgen 5y ago
Objectively, Covid-19 was a preventable disaster. From all around the world, the issue was governmental competence. Almost every government in the world did not treat the issue with the due amount of urgency. Almost every government in the world screwed up on airborne transmission for a good while. Almost every government downright minimized the issued and wasted precious months of time that could have been used to ramp up testing, set up contact tracing, and organize the initial lockdowns to be more effective. My country still doesn't have an effective contact tracing system with people employed there complaining of massive dysfunction, over a year in. It's not for lack of power either - almost every government in the world has already assigned themselves a tremendous amount of emergency powers during pandemics and in general, from the authority to lockdown to mass surveillance. Yet very few used this authority effectively. The governments that claimed not to want to use these powers by respect for civil rights overwhelmingly... Still reserve those powers to themselves and abuse them in ways that don't help. Why is it that governments are so competent when it comes to mass surveillance and repression but completely fumble the ball in cases where governmental power is genuinely helpful and where the argument for them being justified is so much stronger?
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  "Why is it that governments are so competent when it comes to mass surveillance and repression" Are they? It seems alot of it is just ordering competent companies to do it for them
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Well, you're definitely right that competent companies help a lot, but the government still does a lot of technical work in Five Eyes countries and in countries like China and Russia that have very strong mass surveillance too the government does a lot of the job.
    - Nasrudith 5y ago
      I think the answer is different - the reason is because it is an 'Industrial Complex' regardless of any actual industry. Essentially if it works in a feedback loop of some sort whether it is 'more draconian security theater to help their career' or funneling money to donors then utility is irrelevant. If it is an end to itself then it is always 'competently done' even if it is a millstone around the neck of a nation.
goldenkey 5y ago
Yeah, if only the organization meant to give accurate epidemiology information hadn't first denied airborne transmission, then denied mask efficacy, and then espoused 6 feet distance bullshido. From the speed of spread of covid, it was clear that it was airborne. I don't need a PHD in epidemiology to not mislead the public.
- cameldrv 5y ago
  BTW WHO still says 1m is adequate. Previously they said 1m with no masks, indoors with no ventilation was fine.
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    That is sad.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Yes it was preventable. If China didn’t suppress early reports of the virus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_C...), or if they didn’t downplay the severity of COVID-19 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavi...), or if they voluntarily shut down their international ports (https://www.foxnews.com/us/coronavirus-china-us-flights-430000-people https://www.foxnews.com/us/coronavirus-china-us-flights-4300...), then a global disaster would have been much more preventable. Likewise if the WHO didn’t just spread China’s misinformation from their platform (https://www.businessinsider.com/who-no-transmission-coronavirus-tweet-was-to-appease-china-guardian-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/who-no-transmission-coronavi...), other nations could have taken action sooner. And if it does turn out that gain of function research in WIV, potentially funded by the US, led to the leak of an extra infectious coronavirus, that will have been another way in which COVID-19 was a preventable disaster. And for some reason the WHO’s delegation to visit Wuhan included Peter Daszak, despite very obvious conflicts of interest (https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/02/world-health-organization-daszak-conflict-interest/ https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/02/world-health-organization...), so we may never get a trustworthy answer on that possibility. This report mentions exactly none of that. It is a ridiculous farce, and the WHO is not to be trusted when it comes to a global retrospective on what went wrong.
- belltaco 5y ago
  >or if they voluntarily shut down their international ports Huh, isn't that unprecedented and would mean involuntary detention of non-citizens by preventing them from leaving?
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    Well it isn't unprecedented, especially not anymore. For one they could technically fly in Iceland but with the ash in the air it was dangerous to do so. While people were certainly annoyed nobody tried to call it a crime or denied its necessity. In practice it is more "Send them to their home country's embassy and it is their nation's job to take them back safely. They'll likely be a bit cross but if they mess up and infect themselves repatriating without proper quarantine procedures you can't blame us."
elia_is_me 5y ago
covid-19 is not an issue now... it's a disaster but a solved disaster.
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  Tell that to people of India
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  No. Maybe for some countries. But it's far from over.
- femto 5y ago
  It's not solved until the global number of people with COVID is low enough that COVID doesn't significantly mutate in the time that it takes to vaccinate the entire world with a compatible vaccine. Currently more people have COVID than at any point in the past [1]. This means COVID is evolving faster, as it has more chances to mutate. The danger of a new vaccine evading strain emerging is increasing along with the number of global infections. There's a risk that the rate of mutation accelerates to the point where we can't get updated vaccines into people fast enough. It's sobering that only 4% of the world has been fully vaccinated in 4 months [2] and the job will get more difficult once all the easy to access people are done. [1] Assuming cases in a 2 week period is a rough proxy for number of currently infected people. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_cases_smoothed_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Biweekly&Relative+to+Population=false&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=population&Metric=People+fully+vaccinated&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
diego 5y ago
Why is "preventable" even a meaningful label for a pandemic. All it means is that it wasn't inevitable, like death. It's like saying that you could have won a game you lost, if only you had played better.
- missblit 5y ago
  The report is trying to suss out how to "play better" for when the next dangerous disease comes along. So talking about how covid-19 was preventable is meaningful because it's treating it as a case-study.
cheeri0 5y ago
I always wondered why people thought quicker lockdowns in Chyna would have stopped covid-19 from spreading since no one knew who was infected and a single person who escaped the country during the arbitrary quarantine would have made the whole thing pointless. I'm also confused why they think a virus with such a low death rate is important. The only thing I can think of is a shocking percent of people don't actually use their own brains for thinking. It's kind of scary man.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  You don't have to be a genius to realize that 600k deaths even with lockdowns was quite bad. China managed to pretty much completely mitigate hundreds of thousands of deaths just by having a reasonable policy response. It makes me embarrassed to live where I do
  - vore 5y ago
    In GP's other comments they're pretty set on downplaying the pandemic. Them spelling China as "Chyna" is not a good sign in that department either.
  - cheeri0 5y ago
    That number is WITH covid using a test where the guy who invented it said it was not good at detecting a virus. everything i just told you is a fact and yet you will still downvote my comment.
- procinct 5y ago
  If you are wondering why people thought the virus was important despite the “low” death rate you only need to look at India right now. Or Italy before it. When it floods a medical system to the point of collapse things become very dangerous.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    All I got to say is watching people yammer on about the 'low death rate' has convinced me that cognitive inertia and motivated reasoning are a hell of a drug. Seriously my dad is 85. Death rate in his age group is not 'low'. These kinds of people simply refuse to consider the implications.
neonological 5y ago
Yes. China could have prevented it. If this started in the US though... There's no way for containment in the Us.
sadmann1 5y ago
Didn't WHO say that we shouldn't stop flights back in February. The message is still on Twitter.
xallarap 5y ago
Nah it was the government shitting on the people.
cycomanic 5y ago
I agree that the WHO bears some responsibility, however much stems from the fact how they are funded. Because they rely on essentially "donations" from member countries, they can't effort to offend anyone. There was immense pressure from many countries not to declare a pandemic because of the economic implications. We have actually seen similar patterns in many countries. Strong resistance to measures because of the fear of economic effects and pressure from industry. Only when it was really too late did they implement measures. Similarly as soon as things looked up again they opened everything way too quickly which caused the inevitable second and third waves. Take Germany for example, while they had a good initial response, much of that advantage was squandered because they did not really investigate how the virus spread and wanting to keep the economy (especially the large companies) running at all cost. This lead to measures like being very harsh about only few people meeting outside, but at the same time many factories etc, keeping to work without significant distancing, likely a much larger spread vector.
- yread 5y ago
  This is especially big factor as it originated from China and they can be pretty difficult on things so WHO is extra careful not to offend them. Everybody saw the interview "... and what does WHO think about Taiwan's response" "Well, we already talked about China" "Yes, but what about Taiwan?" "What I can't hear you the connection is really bad"
ronlobo 5y ago
Please read this and make up your mind: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... The WHO can't be trusted unfortunately.
eating555 5y ago
If WHO can take the warning earlier (https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-viBOuw?typeid=158 https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi...)..... IF.....
ryandrake 5y ago
COVID-19 has convinced me 100% that the end of humanity won’t be a freak accident, nuclear war, or a space alien invasion. It will be an entirely preventable catastrophe that could be avoided by coordinated, collective, cooperative activity. Activity that people simply won’t do, for stupid reasons. That’s how we’re eventually going extinct. The last person on earth will deny and downplay the problem, while drawing his last breath.
avereveard 5y ago
is this you? https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/who-chief-urges-countries-not-close-borders-foreigners-china https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/... "WHO Chief Urges Countries Not to Close Borders to Foreigners From China "
notaspecialist 5y ago
>wears mask >catches covid via eyes sigh
unityByFreedom 5y ago
The CDC had someone embedded in China. Months before the pandemic hit that position was eliminated. Someone who previously held that position said, > “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.” > ... > As an American CDC employee, they said, Quick was in an ideal position to be the eyes and ears on the ground for the United States and other countries on the coronavirus outbreak, and might have alerted them to the growing threat weeks earlier. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv-idUSKBN21910S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-...
kk58 5y ago
Soumya swaminathan WHO chief scientist is the one to blame here. The buck stops with her on bad scientific advice she peddled to the world Criminal incompetence. She comes from Indian princeling family. Her dad was key person Ms swaminathan who ran green Revolution in India

125 points by disabled 5y ago

The entire commissioned report can be read here: https://theindependentpanel.org/mainreport/ https://theindependentpanel.org/mainreport/

cudgy 5y ago

“‘Global political leadership was absent,’ the independent experts said.” When has global political leadership ever not been “absent”? These are experts?

garyfirestorm 5y ago
I think generally US has carried that role in past until 2016. Either by partnerships or by holding a gun to other people’s head, US has exercised a self preservation strategy which had some effect on remaining world. For eg. Obama admin had narrowed down Ebola and contained it[1]. That indirectly was beneficial for rest of the world. Unfortunately the last administration deserted from these responsibilities thereby creating a sudden void and hence chaos. [1]https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ebola-response https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ebola-response
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    > We also basically abandoned the EU to deal with the migrant crisis we caused. How did the US cause economic migration from Africa to the EU? Why should the US do anything about that? Supposedly 1/3 of Africans hope to migrate to the EU to take advantage of generous welfare programs there.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  I think this is bit charitable, to say the least. Long before Obama the "US-led international order" was also screwing up on Global Warming. Only Hitler could unite most the rest of the world, and only then because that was near the peak of colonialism so world power had never been so concentrated.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Just because the US' leadership is absent in one area does not preclude it from being present and effective somewhere else. Similarly, just because the US' leadership is both absent and therefore ineffective in an area does not imply that were the US' leadership present, it would still be ineffective. Certainly, per the parent comment, we have examples of the US' past leadership in this context leading to a very different outcome. We know that leadership was abdicated (and in fact, actively eviscerated) during the prior presidency.
    - bourgwaletariat 5y ago
      It wasn't the leaders it was the followers. Or rather, those who refused to follow. No one followed up on the US leader's claim that it came from a lab. No, they said, "He said it so it's a lie!" And they continue to say that. This isn't on Trump.
      - loopz 5y ago
        Your post is without any substance in it.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      So first of all, I think the US-lead world order is much overhyped. Second, yes Trump accelerated some things, but deep changes that caused Trump more than they were caused by Trump have been having more effect on international relations far long. Don't forget all the same complaints about not funding the state department were made in the Bush years. Trump is a bad, don't get me wrong, but this seems like trite hawk Democrat thinking to me. It's precisely the nature of the US-led order in recent years that free trade agreements, IP laws, etc. etc. were more easily done than tackling issues of high global importance like global warming and Covid.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Currently, there is an arms race in the Indo-Pacific region because of Obama's abandonment of defense treaties in the South China Sea, starting with the Philippines Scarborough Shoals. This week, a CCP official threatened to launch ballistic missiles at Australia. Trump was the first leader to stop air travel in 2020, and denounced as a racist for it by US Dem/Marxist leaders. Of course, not it's standard practise to restrict air travel. Trump funded the vaccines in 2020 that we're using in 2021. If you want to criticize the CDC and NIH, great. But don't lie about "the previous administration."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jbandela1 5y ago
  > For eg. Obama admin had narrowed down Ebola and contained it[1]. It was great that they contained Ebola. But, containing a disease that makes you literally bleed from your eyes and requires bodily fluid contact and has an outbreak that starts in a low-density area of Africa, is much different than containing a disease where people who have the disease may only have a fever, and has airborne transmission, and the outbreak starts in a heavily populated city in China.
  - Fomite 5y ago
    It should be noted that Ebola presents in many patients as a febrile illness, not the "Hotzone" image of Ebola - a presentation that is extremely common in that part of Africa.
- cudgy 5y ago
  So, Trump (or any American president) was supposed to dictate the response to Covid for the entire world? I recall many “powerful” people and news orgs ridiculing Trump’s actions early in the pandemic even so far as claiming in some cases to never even use a vaccine created under his administration. A vaccine that the same people now herald as a savior once the current administration took charge. Is that the leadership that you are talking about?
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    No, but there had been a lot of wargaming for pandemics ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02277-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02277-6 ), preparation for pandemics ( https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/17/the-art-of-the-pandemic-how-donald-trump-walked-the-u-s-into-the-covid-19-era/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/17/the-art-of-the-pandemic-... ), stark warnings that we were ripe for one from experts and notables ( https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-seemingly-predicted-the-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-seemingly-predict... ), and we even had CDC members inside and working with China in case of novel infectious agents appearing there ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-slashed-cdc-staff-inside-china-prior-to-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKBN21C3N5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-... ) The prior administration actively ignored and undermined all of that (as referenced in some of those prior links, and https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n... ). The concern with a vaccine at the time was that it was going to be a mickey mouse one designed to show a win, rather than be effective, similar to Trump's claims about hydroxychloroquine and injecting disinfectants. But as people saw Moderna and Pfizer go through proper clinical trials, and be proved effective, even at the accelerated rate, and to be recommended by actual trusted medical professionals, they came on board. Well, obviously not everyone; now that it's been tested and shown to be safe it's Bill Gates' 5G mind control shot, despite Trump having received one.
x86ARMsRace 5y ago
> When has global political leadership ever not been “absent” Plenty of times in history. Consider the 20th century. Almost all of it was defined by global political leadership.
- cudgy 5y ago
  If your definition of global leadership consists of 2 world wars, several pan-Asian conflicts, war and conflict in areas like the entire Middle East, much of Africa, and large chunks of Central and South America for practically the entire 20th century, then it is clear that our definition of leadership differs greatly.
  - x86ARMsRace 5y ago
    > consists of 2 world wars Are you trying to go down the NRx rabbit hole of "World War II could have been avoided"? It's basically a Godwin's Law at this point. Most of the other conflicts you mention are actually American and Russian conflicts, so you're also falling into the trap of "America is the world".
Fomite 5y ago
I will say it was conspicuously absent in this epidemic - if you ask a lot of epidemiologists, myself included, what the thing we most didn't expect about the epidemic, it's how aggressively a number of national governments, including the U.S., abdicated their usual role in response.

raverbashing 5y ago

Yes and it would have caused even less damage if the WHO hadn't taken a whole year to reverse their stance on transmission methods, but instead kept parroting the "short range droplets"/fomites theory, which was good for security theatre but not much more. I mean: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1390738628528201735 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1390738628528201735

bourgwaletariat 5y ago

Yeah, just don't do GoF research. Or don't let it escape from a lab. Or, don't lie about it when it does. Or, contain it if it does. Or shut down travel outside the country if it does. Or, don't cripple Australia with a trade war if they suggest an investigation into the origins of the disease are warranted. Or don't cancel people if they wonder if maybe it didn't come from nature. Or, do the audits to verify the labs doing catastrophic research are doing it safely and properly. Or, don't sneak in funding for something that has already been declared a risk to human existence. Or, don't pay "non-profits" millions of dollars to pay enemy nations to do research into how to turn a virus into a bioweapon. Or value the health of the world over the profits of corporations. I bet none of these ideas are in the report. * read article * Nope. * reads report * Oh, I got one: Waive IP rights to vaccines. Their suggestion: Give the WHO more money. They'll do it better next time apparently. I guarantee you, if China had said, "A bioweapon we were developing escaped the lab, lock everything down!" This would not have happened.

loopz 5y ago
Bioweapon? A new strain of virus that can mutate to unknown properties, and to which virtually nobody have immunity?
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Chinese scientists discussed weaponizing SARS in 2015 (https://www.ibtimes.com/explosive-report-says-chinese-scientists-discussed-weaponizing-coronavirus-2015-3196106 https://www.ibtimes.com/explosive-report-says-chinese-scient...).
  - cto_of_antifa 5y ago
    sure. your point?
  - femto 5y ago
    The chain of references here is: IBTimes quotes "The Australian" newspaper. (Murdoch) "The Australian" quotes the book "The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapon". The above book is based on a discredited claim that the US engineered SARS as a weapon against China, which has now been twisted into a counter claim that China in turn engineered COVID against the US (see below). https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/going-viral-how-a-book-on-amazon-inspired-the-latest-covid-conspiracy-20210512-p57r6e.html https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/going-viral-how-a-book-on-...

The_Amp_Walrus 5y ago

Uhuh the WHO has concluded that more power and control should be ceded to the WHO in emergencies: """ Identifying a systemic issue, the report said the WHO lacks the power to investigate and act swiftly when confronted with potential outbreaks. "Technical expert missions can be dispatched to individual countries only with their permission, and a system of preauthorization of missions has not been established," the report said. "Often lengthy negotiations with governments for access by missions are required after an outbreak has been notified." """ There's a "systemic issue" where you won't let our 'expert missions' into your country and boss you around.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

repost top level link, dunno what this WBUR stuff is https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/05/12/996284927/covid-19-was-a-preventable-disaster-who-ordered-report-states https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...

disabled 5y ago
Thank you for the link. I am the original submitter of this topic. WBUR is Boston’s NPR station, which has a huge listener base, and I say this as a west coast person.
- mroche 5y ago
  90.9 WBUR, that phrase will forever be stuck in my head. NPR is a go-to whenever I'm driving (I'm from MA), the catalog of shows and their content is great. Been catching more of the business and economic study breakdown the past few weeks, I've learned a lot more than I was anticipating.

top_post 5y ago

Man, all the WHO bashing comments are getting downvoted pretty quickly, except: - WHO took a _long_ time to declare a pandemic when member countries were asking for it. - WHO actively discouraged international border closures for containment. - WHO took way too long to declare aerosol transmission even when countries had identified it. In a global scale event like this, there's no individual country who should have been the shepherd. It should have been the WHO, comprised of all its member inputs, really showing the lead here. Each individual country owns responsibility for their own preparedness, no doubt or question about that, but the WHO needs a re-organization big time.

sudosysgen 5y ago
The WHO absolutely did take a long time to declare a pandemic and certainly did fumble the ball on aerosol transmission. However given what we now know for sure we can safely say that border closures without an eradication policy (strict lockdowns and mass testing until the cases are undetectable followed by contact tracing) would not have changed anything. Which is what the models that WHO epidemiologists had used to give the guidance that airport closures would not be very effective used as premises and found. We know that by the time the border closures were suggested the virus was already definitely already in every country. From then on an extra five or six cases a month don't really affect the trajectory of the epidemic much at all. Unless you go for an eradication strategy. But in Western states that waited until deaths started mounting to lockdown and then opened back up mostly before they went to zero we can confidently say that airport closures would not have been a factor in avoiding the disaster.
- kortilla 5y ago
  > However given what we now know for sure we can safely say that border closures without an eradication policy (strict lockdowns and mass testing until the cases are undetectable followed by contact tracing) would not have changed anything. How do you make the conclusion that without a policy reducing travel wouldn’t have helped? That doesn’t even make sense.
  - 5y ago

sudosysgen 5y ago

Objectively, Covid-19 was a preventable disaster. From all around the world, the issue was governmental competence. Almost every government in the world did not treat the issue with the due amount of urgency. Almost every government in the world screwed up on airborne transmission for a good while. Almost every government downright minimized the issued and wasted precious months of time that could have been used to ramp up testing, set up contact tracing, and organize the initial lockdowns to be more effective. My country still doesn't have an effective contact tracing system with people employed there complaining of massive dysfunction, over a year in. It's not for lack of power either - almost every government in the world has already assigned themselves a tremendous amount of emergency powers during pandemics and in general, from the authority to lockdown to mass surveillance. Yet very few used this authority effectively. The governments that claimed not to want to use these powers by respect for civil rights overwhelmingly... Still reserve those powers to themselves and abuse them in ways that don't help. Why is it that governments are so competent when it comes to mass surveillance and repression but completely fumble the ball in cases where governmental power is genuinely helpful and where the argument for them being justified is so much stronger?

thatguy0900 5y ago
"Why is it that governments are so competent when it comes to mass surveillance and repression" Are they? It seems alot of it is just ordering competent companies to do it for them
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Well, you're definitely right that competent companies help a lot, but the government still does a lot of technical work in Five Eyes countries and in countries like China and Russia that have very strong mass surveillance too the government does a lot of the job.
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    I think the answer is different - the reason is because it is an 'Industrial Complex' regardless of any actual industry. Essentially if it works in a feedback loop of some sort whether it is 'more draconian security theater to help their career' or funneling money to donors then utility is irrelevant. If it is an end to itself then it is always 'competently done' even if it is a millstone around the neck of a nation.

goldenkey 5y ago

Yeah, if only the organization meant to give accurate epidemiology information hadn't first denied airborne transmission, then denied mask efficacy, and then espoused 6 feet distance bullshido. From the speed of spread of covid, it was clear that it was airborne. I don't need a PHD in epidemiology to not mislead the public.

cameldrv 5y ago
BTW WHO still says 1m is adequate. Previously they said 1m with no masks, indoors with no ventilation was fine.
- goldenkey 5y ago
  That is sad.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Yes it was preventable. If China didn’t suppress early reports of the virus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_C...), or if they didn’t downplay the severity of COVID-19 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavi...), or if they voluntarily shut down their international ports (https://www.foxnews.com/us/coronavirus-china-us-flights-430000-people https://www.foxnews.com/us/coronavirus-china-us-flights-4300...), then a global disaster would have been much more preventable. Likewise if the WHO didn’t just spread China’s misinformation from their platform (https://www.businessinsider.com/who-no-transmission-coronavirus-tweet-was-to-appease-china-guardian-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/who-no-transmission-coronavi...), other nations could have taken action sooner. And if it does turn out that gain of function research in WIV, potentially funded by the US, led to the leak of an extra infectious coronavirus, that will have been another way in which COVID-19 was a preventable disaster. And for some reason the WHO’s delegation to visit Wuhan included Peter Daszak, despite very obvious conflicts of interest (https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/02/world-health-organization-daszak-conflict-interest/ https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/02/world-health-organization...), so we may never get a trustworthy answer on that possibility. This report mentions exactly none of that. It is a ridiculous farce, and the WHO is not to be trusted when it comes to a global retrospective on what went wrong.

belltaco 5y ago
>or if they voluntarily shut down their international ports Huh, isn't that unprecedented and would mean involuntary detention of non-citizens by preventing them from leaving?
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Well it isn't unprecedented, especially not anymore. For one they could technically fly in Iceland but with the ash in the air it was dangerous to do so. While people were certainly annoyed nobody tried to call it a crime or denied its necessity. In practice it is more "Send them to their home country's embassy and it is their nation's job to take them back safely. They'll likely be a bit cross but if they mess up and infect themselves repatriating without proper quarantine procedures you can't blame us."

elia_is_me 5y ago

covid-19 is not an issue now... it's a disaster but a solved disaster.

bitcharmer 5y ago
Tell that to people of India
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Synaesthesia 5y ago
No. Maybe for some countries. But it's far from over.
femto 5y ago
It's not solved until the global number of people with COVID is low enough that COVID doesn't significantly mutate in the time that it takes to vaccinate the entire world with a compatible vaccine. Currently more people have COVID than at any point in the past [1]. This means COVID is evolving faster, as it has more chances to mutate. The danger of a new vaccine evading strain emerging is increasing along with the number of global infections. There's a risk that the rate of mutation accelerates to the point where we can't get updated vaccines into people fast enough. It's sobering that only 4% of the world has been fully vaccinated in 4 months [2] and the job will get more difficult once all the easy to access people are done. [1] Assuming cases in a 2 week period is a rough proxy for number of currently infected people. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_cases_smoothed_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Biweekly&Relative+to+Population=false&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=population&Metric=People+fully+vaccinated&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

diego 5y ago

Why is "preventable" even a meaningful label for a pandemic. All it means is that it wasn't inevitable, like death. It's like saying that you could have won a game you lost, if only you had played better.

missblit 5y ago
The report is trying to suss out how to "play better" for when the next dangerous disease comes along. So talking about how covid-19 was preventable is meaningful because it's treating it as a case-study.

cheeri0 5y ago

I always wondered why people thought quicker lockdowns in Chyna would have stopped covid-19 from spreading since no one knew who was infected and a single person who escaped the country during the arbitrary quarantine would have made the whole thing pointless. I'm also confused why they think a virus with such a low death rate is important. The only thing I can think of is a shocking percent of people don't actually use their own brains for thinking. It's kind of scary man.

whimsicalism 5y ago
You don't have to be a genius to realize that 600k deaths even with lockdowns was quite bad. China managed to pretty much completely mitigate hundreds of thousands of deaths just by having a reasonable policy response. It makes me embarrassed to live where I do
- vore 5y ago
  In GP's other comments they're pretty set on downplaying the pandemic. Them spelling China as "Chyna" is not a good sign in that department either.
- cheeri0 5y ago
  That number is WITH covid using a test where the guy who invented it said it was not good at detecting a virus. everything i just told you is a fact and yet you will still downvote my comment.
procinct 5y ago
If you are wondering why people thought the virus was important despite the “low” death rate you only need to look at India right now. Or Italy before it. When it floods a medical system to the point of collapse things become very dangerous.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  All I got to say is watching people yammer on about the 'low death rate' has convinced me that cognitive inertia and motivated reasoning are a hell of a drug. Seriously my dad is 85. Death rate in his age group is not 'low'. These kinds of people simply refuse to consider the implications.

neonological 5y ago

Yes. China could have prevented it. If this started in the US though... There's no way for containment in the Us.

sadmann1 5y ago

Didn't WHO say that we shouldn't stop flights back in February. The message is still on Twitter.

xallarap 5y ago

Nah it was the government shitting on the people.

cycomanic 5y ago

I agree that the WHO bears some responsibility, however much stems from the fact how they are funded. Because they rely on essentially "donations" from member countries, they can't effort to offend anyone. There was immense pressure from many countries not to declare a pandemic because of the economic implications. We have actually seen similar patterns in many countries. Strong resistance to measures because of the fear of economic effects and pressure from industry. Only when it was really too late did they implement measures. Similarly as soon as things looked up again they opened everything way too quickly which caused the inevitable second and third waves. Take Germany for example, while they had a good initial response, much of that advantage was squandered because they did not really investigate how the virus spread and wanting to keep the economy (especially the large companies) running at all cost. This lead to measures like being very harsh about only few people meeting outside, but at the same time many factories etc, keeping to work without significant distancing, likely a much larger spread vector.

yread 5y ago
This is especially big factor as it originated from China and they can be pretty difficult on things so WHO is extra careful not to offend them. Everybody saw the interview "... and what does WHO think about Taiwan's response" "Well, we already talked about China" "Yes, but what about Taiwan?" "What I can't hear you the connection is really bad"

ronlobo 5y ago

Please read this and make up your mind: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/ https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop... The WHO can't be trusted unfortunately.

eating555 5y ago

If WHO can take the warning earlier (https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-viBOuw?typeid=158 https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi...)..... IF.....

ryandrake 5y ago

COVID-19 has convinced me 100% that the end of humanity won’t be a freak accident, nuclear war, or a space alien invasion. It will be an entirely preventable catastrophe that could be avoided by coordinated, collective, cooperative activity. Activity that people simply won’t do, for stupid reasons. That’s how we’re eventually going extinct. The last person on earth will deny and downplay the problem, while drawing his last breath.

avereveard 5y ago

is this you? https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/who-chief-urges-countries-not-close-borders-foreigners-china https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/... "WHO Chief Urges Countries Not to Close Borders to Foreigners From China "

notaspecialist 5y ago

>wears mask >catches covid via eyes sigh

unityByFreedom 5y ago

The CDC had someone embedded in China. Months before the pandemic hit that position was eliminated. Someone who previously held that position said, > “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.” > ... > As an American CDC employee, they said, Quick was in an ideal position to be the eyes and ears on the ground for the United States and other countries on the coronavirus outbreak, and might have alerted them to the growing threat weeks earlier. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv-idUSKBN21910S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-...

kk58 5y ago

Soumya swaminathan WHO chief scientist is the one to blame here. The buck stops with her on bad scientific advice she peddled to the world Criminal incompetence. She comes from Indian princeling family. Her dad was key person Ms swaminathan who ran green Revolution in India