12 ms·

> The who therefore played down the risks of aerosols, issuing guidance via its Twitter and Facebook pages at the end of March 2020 that the general public need

by SllX 5y ago

> The who therefore played down the risks of aerosols, issuing guidance via its Twitter and Facebook pages at the end of March 2020 that the general public need not worry. “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” it said, adding that any claims to the contrary were “misinformation”. Not quite the money quote, but on reading this I wanted to point out one little thing. This is also a form of authoritarianism, not the splashy kind that has you making land wars in Asia or creating command economies and seizing private property; but the bureaucratic "we know better than you because we said so" kind. When authority is invested in you, as it has been invested in the WHO, and you abuse that authority to tell independent investigators not on your payroll that they are just flat out wrong and the lines of inquiry they are investigating are dead ends and they should just shut up already, well, maybe you shouldn't have the authority you were vested with. Fortunately, we also live in a world where the UN and its agencies do not have a monopoly on good information.

kiba 5y ago
Yes, health authorities can be wrong, but if you want to prevent, stop, or aliemoriate a pandemic, you need cooperation. You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. Yes, the authority figures can be wrong. Fauci can be wrong. People can die when health authorities make mistakes, whether through indecision or decision. I myself keep wearing masks after the CDC says I don't need to. I suspect historians are going to analyze the pandemic and list a litany of mistakes health authorities made in trying to stop the pandemic. At the end of the day, who are you going to trust more? That schmuck in a random youtube video, or the doctors that run the CDC?
- mixedCase 5y ago
  I don't know, who purposefully lied to the people treating it like sheep to be shepherded with confident lies and half-truths? These organizations have burned through a tremendous amount of credibility by virtue of not being honest about what they did and didn't know. And Joe Sixpack, on the other hand, gained a lot. What are they going to be able to do when he starts using that to peddle dangerous products or make even worse recommendations but now with so much more influence? There's no fastest way to erode the usefulness of a government than making negligent use of its credibility.
- elif 5y ago
  I think the prudent thing is neither fork of your dilemma, but instead a synthesis of prevailing opinions that is skewed as conservatively (in life preservation terms) as afforded by my personal capacity to save lives by sacrificing leisure. For Instance, I have been treating covid like an airborne pathogen since the /first/ time the CDC didn't recommend masking, based upon an epidemiologists take on early cruise ship data. Of course I risked being wrong the whole time, but the cost of my leisure and convenience and income turned out to be worthwhile.
- krona 5y ago
  > you need cooperation Sure. > You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. So, cooperation, via coercion? Got it. I guess the ends justify the means.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    At some point... yes. Otherwise, what's your idea for dealing with people who know they're sick but still go into crowded places? We've had examples of people who knew they were infected trying to board planes for example. If not coercion, then what?
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    Just calling people Joe Sixpack is a mark against being given the authority to practice coercion.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- berniemadoff69 5y ago
  I feel it is punching down to attribute not wanting to quarantine or wear masks to a 'Joe Sixpack' caricature. The ultra-wealthy and powerful didn't want to quarantine or wear masks either - except they had the luxury of boarding a private plane and fleeing the country, or sailing around on a yacht, etc.
- andromeduck 5y ago
  The CDC's own learnings from SARS-COV1 concluded 'probable airborne spread' and the low efficacy of hand washing as an intervention, but somehow SARS-COV2 was totally different. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/6/13-0192_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/6/13-0192_article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190272/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190272/ https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5212a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5212a1.htm
- thu2111 5y ago
  The CDC isn't run by doctors, it's run by public health officials. Very different.
tinus_hn 5y ago
It’s not about having a monopoly on good information. It’s about a monopoly on attention. What use is it if the WHO is wrong and someone else is right, but everybody listens to the WHO?
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Who's going around listening to the WHO?
  - christophilus 5y ago
    For a while, YouTube and friends were banning people who pointed out the WHO was wrong. So, probably quite a few people.
    - harikb 5y ago
      that was specifically about calling Covid a hoax. Those who were fighting against this censorship weren’t fighting for Covid being airborne or not
      - christophilus 5y ago
        My recollection was that they banned disagreeing with the WHO[0]. The examples given in that article are fair enough for banning, but they banned scientists who were not quite so crazy[1]. Anyway, that’s based on my memory (which is often faulty), but those links seem to corroborate it. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-youtube-censoring-scientists-doctors-and-researchers-with-differing-views-on-covid-19?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-yo...
        benatkin 5y ago
        There is a lot of straw-manning going on, so if you say you disagree with the WHO on a minor point, you could be accused of calling COVID-19 a hoax.
behnamoh 5y ago
> Fortunately, we also live in a world where the UN and its agencies do not have a monopoly on good information. We live in a world where the UN is basically a formality. I don't see how this organization has been helpful in solving world problems and preventing wars at all.
- toast0 5y ago
  The ITU (a UN agency) helps solve the world problem of what country code to use to call countries, and coordinates new codes for new countries. If that's not a world problem, and it's not solved by the UN, I don't know what would satisfy you. There have been very few wars since the UN was formed. Instead, we mostly have armed conflicts and military engagements, preventing many wars.
  - quickthrowman 5y ago
    The UN hasn’t prevented war, nuclear weapons have. If your opponent has second-strike capability, starting a war is not a great idea. https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw
  - ralph84 5y ago
    ITU predates the UN by almost a century. And if it had been left to ITU, the Internet as we know it wouldn't exist. Thank goodness for IANA and IETF.
  - KirillPanov 5y ago
    The ITU is more than twice as old as the UN. It was around long before the UN, and in spite of being "adopted" by it, will be around long afterwards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicat... Describing the ITU as "just a UN agency" is like describing the IETF as "just a recipient of donations from Google".
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    There are several organizations beside the UN that can make a list of numbers or abbreviations, so no, that doesn't make the UN unique or valuable at all. > There have been very few wars since the UN was formed. Because the US is the only global superpower, since 1945. Our taxes have paid for relative global peace, which is not the normal state of mankind. (The normal state is a situation like Saddam annexing Kuwait, and then on to KSA.) However, the US was prepared to use nuclear weapons against China during the Korean War, the USSR planned to use them in 1969 against China, and Castro (and China) wanted to use them against the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which went on for years after the press stopped covering it. Prior to that, the pre-UN League of Nations was a joke, with Japan simply walking out, and then attacking everybody in the Pacific. The parent comment illustrates the childish understanding of the world prevalent on HN. And BTW, the US has been the major funding source for the UN since its inception, despite how corrupt it has become (ie. a CCP mouthpiece.)
peteretep 5y ago
> This is also a form of authoritarianism, not the splashy kind that has you making land wars in Asia or creating command economies and seizing private property; but the bureaucratic "we know better than you because we said so" kind. Yes brother, like how they make you wear a seatbelt. Next they'll have us all in camps.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BurningFrog 5y ago
It's important to understand that what CDC & FDA etc say is not "science". These are federal regulatory agencies whose mission is to enforce regulations. This is part of a political process, and their leaders ultimately serve at the pleasure of the president. When the prominent scientists who work there speak on issues, they are speaking as employees of that organization, not giving their best scientific estimation. The WHO is a UN agency that's probably even more politicized, but I don't know much about it.
- xxpor 5y ago
  >The WHO is a UN agency that's probably even more politicized, but I don't know much about it. Tedros was hand picked by China. He was a communist during his time in Ethiopia. This was a big controversy years before covid. I was wondering why China would possibly care so much, I thought it was just them trying to increase their international clout however possible...
  - _tik_ 5y ago
    Any source to back up your claim. I read Wikipedia Tedros receive overwhelming majority of the votes. The problem is WHO is don't have enough power to do it's jobs. Based on below article. Even US and UK ignored WHO advice. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/10/world-health-organization-who-v-coronavirus-why-it-cant-handle-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/10/world-health-or...
    - Asymmetryk 5y ago
      this is the second result from Google for "tedros Chinese support who election": https://www.cfr.org/blog/who-and-china-dereliction-duty https://www.cfr.org/blog/who-and-china-dereliction-duty
      - scoopertrooper 5y ago
        If you dig into it a bit, you'll see the claim that Tedros is some sort of manchurian candidate is based on him having given a speech at Peking University and his reiteration of the WHO's support for the One China policy. This is what the article they cite in support of the One China policy statement actually says: > In a meeting with Li Bin, minister of China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, Tedros said the UN agency will properly handle the Taiwan-related issues based on the resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the World Health Assembly, the WHO's decision-making body. http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2017-05/25/content_29490575.htm http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2017-05/25/content_294905...
deugo 5y ago
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-full-press-conference-11feb2020-final.pdf?sfvrsn=e2019136_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcr... Coronavirus press conference 11 February, 2020 Tedros gives the money quote: > That was exactly what we were trying to do in DRC so we don't want, as WHO, to go into speculation. Okay, people can have projections. We prefer, what can be done with the equipment or the solutions at hand and do our best to contain it at the source without undermining its gravity, without undermining the serious consequences it may have. That's what we did and that's what we want for this one. > Of course Ebola and this are not the same. Ebola is lousy. This is airborne, corona is airborne, it's more contagious and you have seen how it went into 24 countries although it's a small number of cases. In terms of potential to wreak havoc the corona is very different from Ebola; corona has more potency, virulence. We take it more seriously but still the position should be instead of speculation really to focus at the source, to do everything at the source, slow the spread, stop the spread, invest more in containment and based on the situation move into other strategies if necessary. > Meaning we have to be realistic; we have to be calm [?] but we have to take also serious measures. This was when the WHO was pressured into saying not to ban flights from China, as it would be useless [?!] against fighting the pandemic. Not blaming them too hard, as these were difficult decisions. But somehow this got retconned hard, and we, and the media, let it, not even bringing it up again when debating COVID being airborne or not.
- Asymmetryk 5y ago
  I don't understand why it's not a crime to alter or suppress medical information on political grounds in any circumstances other than possibly a absolute necessity for protecting the [vast] majority by some way eg possibly avoiding panic reactions.
  - SllX 5y ago
    Because in the PRC, the government, legislature and military are all officially subordinate to a political organization. The WHO is a treaty organization, effectively above the laws of nations because it is an offshoot of a diplomatic forum. Whatever you think of the reasons, these are the reasons.
nmz 5y ago
> FACT: COVID-19 is NOT airborne. > The coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. > To protect yourself: > -keep 1m distance from others > -disinfect surfaces frequently > -wash/rub your > -avoid touching your From: https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/fact-covid-19-is-not-airborne-the-coronavirus-is-mainly-transmitted-through-drop/3019704278074935/ https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/fact-covid-19-is-not-airb... Further reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2021/05/28/who-wrong-airborne-coronavirus/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2021/05/28/who-wrong-... Semantics played a huge role in this whole debacle. even to the point of what "airborne" means.
- faeriechangling 5y ago
  Years later I still run into people not aware of the semantics and the difference between a disease being an aerosol and a disease being airborne. Which smacks of poor communication.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Lots of people are bad at listening/reading, sadly. There's only so much that can be done as a speaker/writer. They could and should have done more here, but there will always be a lossy step when people doing the actual work take the information to "the public".
    - teekert 5y ago
      Airborne: Done or being in the air : being off the ground ... [0] Aerosol: A suspension of fine solid or liquid particles in gas [1] Air: The mixture of invisible odorless tasteless gases (such as nitrogen and oxygen) that surrounds the earth. Also : the equivalent mix of gases on another planet [3] Are people bad at listening or bad at explaining? [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/airborne https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/airborne [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aerosol https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aerosol [3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/air https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/air
  - 5y ago
bildung 5y ago
Well that March 2020 quote is still correct, isn't it? You as a layperson just think that airborne means something it doesn't mean for virologists (aerosol transmission <> airborne virus). So the tweet certainly was a typical science communication error, i.e. they forgot that words can have different meanings in different milieus, but it wasn't wrong.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/modes-of-transmission-of-virus-causing-covid-19-implications-for-ipc-precaution-recommendations https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/modes-of-t... seems to use airborne to mean transmission in small droplets. Airborne transmission is different from droplet transmission as it refers to the presence of microbes within droplet nuclei, which are generally considered to be particles <5μm in diameter, can remain in the air for long periods of time and be transmitted to others over distances greater than 1 m.
  - bildung 5y ago
    The same article then also goes on to reason why this doesn't seem to be the dominant way of transmission outside special circumstances (like ventilation). I don't have a background in this topic at all, but apparently actual airborne viruses are really small: Measles is about 200 nm and Influenza about 100 nm in diameter, while Sars-Cov-2 is about 1000 nm, so 5 to 10 times the diameter and thus 100 to 1000 times the mass.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      My point is that the WHO is literally, in recent releases, contradicting the usage you claim was primarily a communication error. Their measles info page doesn't even talk about airborne. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/measles https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/measles

by SllX 5y ago

kiba 5y ago

Yes, health authorities can be wrong, but if you want to prevent, stop, or aliemoriate a pandemic, you need cooperation. You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. Yes, the authority figures can be wrong. Fauci can be wrong. People can die when health authorities make mistakes, whether through indecision or decision. I myself keep wearing masks after the CDC says I don't need to. I suspect historians are going to analyze the pandemic and list a litany of mistakes health authorities made in trying to stop the pandemic. At the end of the day, who are you going to trust more? That schmuck in a random youtube video, or the doctors that run the CDC?

mixedCase 5y ago
I don't know, who purposefully lied to the people treating it like sheep to be shepherded with confident lies and half-truths? These organizations have burned through a tremendous amount of credibility by virtue of not being honest about what they did and didn't know. And Joe Sixpack, on the other hand, gained a lot. What are they going to be able to do when he starts using that to peddle dangerous products or make even worse recommendations but now with so much more influence? There's no fastest way to erode the usefulness of a government than making negligent use of its credibility.
elif 5y ago
I think the prudent thing is neither fork of your dilemma, but instead a synthesis of prevailing opinions that is skewed as conservatively (in life preservation terms) as afforded by my personal capacity to save lives by sacrificing leisure. For Instance, I have been treating covid like an airborne pathogen since the /first/ time the CDC didn't recommend masking, based upon an epidemiologists take on early cruise ship data. Of course I risked being wrong the whole time, but the cost of my leisure and convenience and income turned out to be worthwhile.
krona 5y ago
> you need cooperation Sure. > You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. So, cooperation, via coercion? Got it. I guess the ends justify the means.
- viraptor 5y ago
  At some point... yes. Otherwise, what's your idea for dealing with people who know they're sick but still go into crowded places? We've had examples of people who knew they were infected trying to board planes for example. If not coercion, then what?
- a9h74j 5y ago
  Just calling people Joe Sixpack is a mark against being given the authority to practice coercion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
berniemadoff69 5y ago
I feel it is punching down to attribute not wanting to quarantine or wear masks to a 'Joe Sixpack' caricature. The ultra-wealthy and powerful didn't want to quarantine or wear masks either - except they had the luxury of boarding a private plane and fleeing the country, or sailing around on a yacht, etc.
andromeduck 5y ago
The CDC's own learnings from SARS-COV1 concluded 'probable airborne spread' and the low efficacy of hand washing as an intervention, but somehow SARS-COV2 was totally different. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/6/13-0192_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/6/13-0192_article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190272/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190272/ https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5212a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5212a1.htm
thu2111 5y ago
The CDC isn't run by doctors, it's run by public health officials. Very different.

tinus_hn 5y ago

It’s not about having a monopoly on good information. It’s about a monopoly on attention. What use is it if the WHO is wrong and someone else is right, but everybody listens to the WHO?

whatshisface 5y ago
Who's going around listening to the WHO?
- christophilus 5y ago
  For a while, YouTube and friends were banning people who pointed out the WHO was wrong. So, probably quite a few people.
  - harikb 5y ago
    that was specifically about calling Covid a hoax. Those who were fighting against this censorship weren’t fighting for Covid being airborne or not
    - christophilus 5y ago
      My recollection was that they banned disagreeing with the WHO[0]. The examples given in that article are fair enough for banning, but they banned scientists who were not quite so crazy[1]. Anyway, that’s based on my memory (which is often faulty), but those links seem to corroborate it. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-youtube-censoring-scientists-doctors-and-researchers-with-differing-views-on-covid-19?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-yo...
      - benatkin 5y ago
        There is a lot of straw-manning going on, so if you say you disagree with the WHO on a minor point, you could be accused of calling COVID-19 a hoax.

behnamoh 5y ago

> Fortunately, we also live in a world where the UN and its agencies do not have a monopoly on good information. We live in a world where the UN is basically a formality. I don't see how this organization has been helpful in solving world problems and preventing wars at all.

toast0 5y ago
The ITU (a UN agency) helps solve the world problem of what country code to use to call countries, and coordinates new codes for new countries. If that's not a world problem, and it's not solved by the UN, I don't know what would satisfy you. There have been very few wars since the UN was formed. Instead, we mostly have armed conflicts and military engagements, preventing many wars.
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  The UN hasn’t prevented war, nuclear weapons have. If your opponent has second-strike capability, starting a war is not a great idea. https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw
- ralph84 5y ago
  ITU predates the UN by almost a century. And if it had been left to ITU, the Internet as we know it wouldn't exist. Thank goodness for IANA and IETF.
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  The ITU is more than twice as old as the UN. It was around long before the UN, and in spite of being "adopted" by it, will be around long afterwards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicat... Describing the ITU as "just a UN agency" is like describing the IETF as "just a recipient of donations from Google".
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  There are several organizations beside the UN that can make a list of numbers or abbreviations, so no, that doesn't make the UN unique or valuable at all. > There have been very few wars since the UN was formed. Because the US is the only global superpower, since 1945. Our taxes have paid for relative global peace, which is not the normal state of mankind. (The normal state is a situation like Saddam annexing Kuwait, and then on to KSA.) However, the US was prepared to use nuclear weapons against China during the Korean War, the USSR planned to use them in 1969 against China, and Castro (and China) wanted to use them against the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which went on for years after the press stopped covering it. Prior to that, the pre-UN League of Nations was a joke, with Japan simply walking out, and then attacking everybody in the Pacific. The parent comment illustrates the childish understanding of the world prevalent on HN. And BTW, the US has been the major funding source for the UN since its inception, despite how corrupt it has become (ie. a CCP mouthpiece.)

peteretep 5y ago

> This is also a form of authoritarianism, not the splashy kind that has you making land wars in Asia or creating command economies and seizing private property; but the bureaucratic "we know better than you because we said so" kind. Yes brother, like how they make you wear a seatbelt. Next they'll have us all in camps.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

BurningFrog 5y ago

It's important to understand that what CDC & FDA etc say is not "science". These are federal regulatory agencies whose mission is to enforce regulations. This is part of a political process, and their leaders ultimately serve at the pleasure of the president. When the prominent scientists who work there speak on issues, they are speaking as employees of that organization, not giving their best scientific estimation. The WHO is a UN agency that's probably even more politicized, but I don't know much about it.

xxpor 5y ago
>The WHO is a UN agency that's probably even more politicized, but I don't know much about it. Tedros was hand picked by China. He was a communist during his time in Ethiopia. This was a big controversy years before covid. I was wondering why China would possibly care so much, I thought it was just them trying to increase their international clout however possible...
- _tik_ 5y ago
  Any source to back up your claim. I read Wikipedia Tedros receive overwhelming majority of the votes. The problem is WHO is don't have enough power to do it's jobs. Based on below article. Even US and UK ignored WHO advice. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/10/world-health-organization-who-v-coronavirus-why-it-cant-handle-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/10/world-health-or...
  - Asymmetryk 5y ago
    this is the second result from Google for "tedros Chinese support who election": https://www.cfr.org/blog/who-and-china-dereliction-duty https://www.cfr.org/blog/who-and-china-dereliction-duty
    - scoopertrooper 5y ago
      If you dig into it a bit, you'll see the claim that Tedros is some sort of manchurian candidate is based on him having given a speech at Peking University and his reiteration of the WHO's support for the One China policy. This is what the article they cite in support of the One China policy statement actually says: > In a meeting with Li Bin, minister of China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, Tedros said the UN agency will properly handle the Taiwan-related issues based on the resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the World Health Assembly, the WHO's decision-making body. http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2017-05/25/content_29490575.htm http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2017-05/25/content_294905...

deugo 5y ago

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-full-press-conference-11feb2020-final.pdf?sfvrsn=e2019136_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcr... Coronavirus press conference 11 February, 2020 Tedros gives the money quote: > That was exactly what we were trying to do in DRC so we don't want, as WHO, to go into speculation. Okay, people can have projections. We prefer, what can be done with the equipment or the solutions at hand and do our best to contain it at the source without undermining its gravity, without undermining the serious consequences it may have. That's what we did and that's what we want for this one. > Of course Ebola and this are not the same. Ebola is lousy. This is airborne, corona is airborne, it's more contagious and you have seen how it went into 24 countries although it's a small number of cases. In terms of potential to wreak havoc the corona is very different from Ebola; corona has more potency, virulence. We take it more seriously but still the position should be instead of speculation really to focus at the source, to do everything at the source, slow the spread, stop the spread, invest more in containment and based on the situation move into other strategies if necessary. > Meaning we have to be realistic; we have to be calm [?] but we have to take also serious measures. This was when the WHO was pressured into saying not to ban flights from China, as it would be useless [?!] against fighting the pandemic. Not blaming them too hard, as these were difficult decisions. But somehow this got retconned hard, and we, and the media, let it, not even bringing it up again when debating COVID being airborne or not.

Asymmetryk 5y ago
I don't understand why it's not a crime to alter or suppress medical information on political grounds in any circumstances other than possibly a absolute necessity for protecting the [vast] majority by some way eg possibly avoiding panic reactions.
- SllX 5y ago
  Because in the PRC, the government, legislature and military are all officially subordinate to a political organization. The WHO is a treaty organization, effectively above the laws of nations because it is an offshoot of a diplomatic forum. Whatever you think of the reasons, these are the reasons.

nmz 5y ago

> FACT: COVID-19 is NOT airborne. > The coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. > To protect yourself: > -keep 1m distance from others > -disinfect surfaces frequently > -wash/rub your > -avoid touching your From: https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/fact-covid-19-is-not-airborne-the-coronavirus-is-mainly-transmitted-through-drop/3019704278074935/ https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/fact-covid-19-is-not-airb... Further reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2021/05/28/who-wrong-airborne-coronavirus/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2021/05/28/who-wrong-... Semantics played a huge role in this whole debacle. even to the point of what "airborne" means.

faeriechangling 5y ago
Years later I still run into people not aware of the semantics and the difference between a disease being an aerosol and a disease being airborne. Which smacks of poor communication.
- sneak 5y ago
  Lots of people are bad at listening/reading, sadly. There's only so much that can be done as a speaker/writer. They could and should have done more here, but there will always be a lossy step when people doing the actual work take the information to "the public".
  - teekert 5y ago
    Airborne: Done or being in the air : being off the ground ... [0] Aerosol: A suspension of fine solid or liquid particles in gas [1] Air: The mixture of invisible odorless tasteless gases (such as nitrogen and oxygen) that surrounds the earth. Also : the equivalent mix of gases on another planet [3] Are people bad at listening or bad at explaining? [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/airborne https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/airborne [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aerosol https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aerosol [3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/air https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/air
- 5y ago

bildung 5y ago

Well that March 2020 quote is still correct, isn't it? You as a layperson just think that airborne means something it doesn't mean for virologists (aerosol transmission <> airborne virus). So the tweet certainly was a typical science communication error, i.e. they forgot that words can have different meanings in different milieus, but it wasn't wrong.

maxerickson 5y ago
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/modes-of-transmission-of-virus-causing-covid-19-implications-for-ipc-precaution-recommendations https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/modes-of-t... seems to use airborne to mean transmission in small droplets. Airborne transmission is different from droplet transmission as it refers to the presence of microbes within droplet nuclei, which are generally considered to be particles <5μm in diameter, can remain in the air for long periods of time and be transmitted to others over distances greater than 1 m.
- bildung 5y ago
  The same article then also goes on to reason why this doesn't seem to be the dominant way of transmission outside special circumstances (like ventilation). I don't have a background in this topic at all, but apparently actual airborne viruses are really small: Measles is about 200 nm and Influenza about 100 nm in diameter, while Sars-Cov-2 is about 1000 nm, so 5 to 10 times the diameter and thus 100 to 1000 times the mass.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    My point is that the WHO is literally, in recent releases, contradicting the usage you claim was primarily a communication error. Their measles info page doesn't even talk about airborne. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/measles https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/measles