3 ms·

Where have you heard that before?

GavinMcG 5y ago
Do you actually have reason to doubt it here? Because cynical skepticism isn't a helpful alternative to genuinely doing our best to understand and correcting course when better data is available.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Also, just to flog that old dead horse for the umpteenth time: Nobody said that "COVID-19 does not spread from person to person". What the WHO reported, on January 14 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic when very little was known, was that "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". If you read that tweet and conclude that the WHO says that there is no human-to-human transmission, then you have a problem with reading comprehension.
  - lambdaphagy 5y ago
    WHO was largely denying the possibility of airborne transmission as late as July 2020. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/9/2311/5867798 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/9/2311/5867798
    - FabHK 5y ago
      Yes, there are things to criticise the WHO for (the initial advice against masks, and the delayed acknowledgment of aerosol/airborne transmission you allude to). But that often misrepresented tweet is not one of them I'd say.
      - lambdaphagy 5y ago
        My original comment pertained to a general pattern of communication from public health agencies-- I believe you were the first to bring up that tweet. But if you want to explore the topic, by 14 January 2020 the virus had been sequenced for over a week, and its status as a beta-coronavirus with substantial sequence similarity to SARS established. Even if the sentence "preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission" was true, rather than merely asserted by Chinese authorities (as now seems more likely) it's just not a terribly pertinent thing to report if you're trying to be Gricean about it. It was one instance of a pattern of minimization from public health agencies that persisted even after it was clear that SARS-CoV-2 had global reach: https://lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/things-can-get-really-bad-really https://lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/things-can-get-r...
  - liketochill 5y ago
    It was early in the pandemic and very little was known, so issuing a statement that says “…no clear evidence of human to human transmission” was irresponsible. There was no clear evidence against human to human transmission either. Simply saying nothing about it or we don’t know yet would have been better than that statement which guides a non pedantic reader, which are common outside of HN, to believing that human to human transmission was unlikely.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    > very little was known, was that "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". Wuhan hospitals were full starting in September, 2019 according to satellite photos and the first "officially reported" corona death was Dec. 1, 2019. So I don't understand what your point is, but the CCP knew long before Jan. 14, 2020 that is was spreading human-to-human. But here's more dates before Jan. 14, 2020 that further make your post seem like some kind of 50 cent army post: "On 31 December 2019 Chinese health officials first reported to WHO that 41 patients in Wuhan had contracted a mysterious pneumonia that was not responding to conventional treatment. As most patients were from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market it was closed on the 1st of January. On the 7th of January Chinese scientists identified the virus as a novel Coronavirus later termed as the COVID-19 virus." https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how-china-locked-down-internally-for-covid-19-but-pushed-foreign-travel/ https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how...
- lambdaphagy 5y ago
  It's simply a matter of applying a prior: when I hear an organization's claim, I consider the base rate at which past claims have proven trustworthy, adjusting for whether past errors were honest mistakes, noble lies, culpable failures to apply medieval-peasant-tier common sense, the fruit of transparently ulterior motives, and so on. I sure hope they're right in this case but it's not clear why in particular I should think so. What do you do?
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    I consider all my priors, not just a single one about the source.
    - lambdaphagy 5y ago
      I'm not saying you should reflexively believe the opposite of what any given source reports, just bear in mind the track records.

Do you actually have reason to doubt it here? Because cynical skepticism isn't a helpful alternative to genuinely doing our best to understand and correcting course when better data is available.

FabHK 5y ago
Also, just to flog that old dead horse for the umpteenth time: Nobody said that "COVID-19 does not spread from person to person". What the WHO reported, on January 14 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic when very little was known, was that "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". If you read that tweet and conclude that the WHO says that there is no human-to-human transmission, then you have a problem with reading comprehension.
- lambdaphagy 5y ago
  WHO was largely denying the possibility of airborne transmission as late as July 2020. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/9/2311/5867798 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/9/2311/5867798
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Yes, there are things to criticise the WHO for (the initial advice against masks, and the delayed acknowledgment of aerosol/airborne transmission you allude to). But that often misrepresented tweet is not one of them I'd say.
    - lambdaphagy 5y ago
      My original comment pertained to a general pattern of communication from public health agencies-- I believe you were the first to bring up that tweet. But if you want to explore the topic, by 14 January 2020 the virus had been sequenced for over a week, and its status as a beta-coronavirus with substantial sequence similarity to SARS established. Even if the sentence "preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission" was true, rather than merely asserted by Chinese authorities (as now seems more likely) it's just not a terribly pertinent thing to report if you're trying to be Gricean about it. It was one instance of a pattern of minimization from public health agencies that persisted even after it was clear that SARS-CoV-2 had global reach: https://lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/things-can-get-really-bad-really https://lessonsfromthecrisis.substack.com/p/things-can-get-r...
- liketochill 5y ago
  It was early in the pandemic and very little was known, so issuing a statement that says “…no clear evidence of human to human transmission” was irresponsible. There was no clear evidence against human to human transmission either. Simply saying nothing about it or we don’t know yet would have been better than that statement which guides a non pedantic reader, which are common outside of HN, to believing that human to human transmission was unlikely.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > very little was known, was that "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". Wuhan hospitals were full starting in September, 2019 according to satellite photos and the first "officially reported" corona death was Dec. 1, 2019. So I don't understand what your point is, but the CCP knew long before Jan. 14, 2020 that is was spreading human-to-human. But here's more dates before Jan. 14, 2020 that further make your post seem like some kind of 50 cent army post: "On 31 December 2019 Chinese health officials first reported to WHO that 41 patients in Wuhan had contracted a mysterious pneumonia that was not responding to conventional treatment. As most patients were from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market it was closed on the 1st of January. On the 7th of January Chinese scientists identified the virus as a novel Coronavirus later termed as the COVID-19 virus." https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how-china-locked-down-internally-for-covid-19-but-pushed-foreign-travel/ https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how...
lambdaphagy 5y ago
It's simply a matter of applying a prior: when I hear an organization's claim, I consider the base rate at which past claims have proven trustworthy, adjusting for whether past errors were honest mistakes, noble lies, culpable failures to apply medieval-peasant-tier common sense, the fruit of transparently ulterior motives, and so on. I sure hope they're right in this case but it's not clear why in particular I should think so. What do you do?
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  I consider all my priors, not just a single one about the source.
  - lambdaphagy 5y ago
    I'm not saying you should reflexively believe the opposite of what any given source reports, just bear in mind the track records.