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WHO declares monkeypox a public health emergency
- dustinmoris 4y ago
- HatchedLake721 4y agoWhy?
- FrenchDevRemote 4y agoChina owns them. Doesn't mean everything they say is bullshit, but they can't be really trusted anymore.
- curiousgal 4y agoAs opposed to every other organization owned by the U.S. oh please.
- FredPret 4y ago
- MichaelCollins 4y agoI believe this is what the kids are calling the 'Bothsidesism' Fallacy. Or is this meant to only be said in domestic political contexts?
- curiousgal 4y agoIs there a fallacy for throwing that fallacy around all the time?
- effingwewt 4y agoSure we can call it the 'curiousgal Fallacy'. Let me explain my downvote here. You are not wrong, and as an american it is infuriating to see what our country has become. But that makes his original point no less valid. China silenced the WHO and the WHO literally pretended their internet went out when asked about Taiwan. Both sides having done something fucked up doesn't negate what's going on in this situation, thus the 'both sides-ism' If it did all arguments would be over instantly, as only babies are innocent. There are degrees of fucked up and context matters.
- freeflight 4y agoI guess the WHO must be "owned" by a lot of countries [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/oct/13/world-health-organisation-iraq-war-depleted-uranium https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/o...
- l1n 4y agoStraight lines on log-log plots.
- tjpnz 4y agoThe exclusion of Taiwan and the behaviour of their representatives during interviews whenever the subject came up.
- waffleiron 4y agoThe WHO is an agency of the UN, of which Taiwan is not an independent member.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
- philliphaydon 4y agoThat shouldn’t matter. It’s the World Health Organisation. Not the UN Membership Health Organisation. The only reason Taiwan is not a member is because of China being a bully.
- calibas 4y agoAt the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were starting to get concerned about this strange new disease in China, the WHO announced there was "no evidence of human-to-human transmission" and no need to restrict international travel to Wuhan. In reality, there was nothing but evidence of human-to-human transmission and plenty of Chinese doctors knew this, but the WHO repeated the Chinese government's lies. Instead of trying to contain the pandemic in it's earliest stages, the WHO told the world there was nothing to worry about. They screwed up about as bad as they possibly could, and helped enable the spread of a disease.
- whimsicalism 4y agoThe US had more than enough time to control covid by when China confirmed human-to-human spread.
- calibas 4y agoThe WHO made a huge mistake, it was already spreading internationally, and yet somehow you found a way to shift blame to the US...
- whimsicalism 4y agoHuman to human spread was confirmed before any international case was found. I traveled from China to US in January 2020 well after China had reported the virus as transmissible and the US was not doing jack shit to screen.
- makomk 4y agoThere was literally nothing the US could've done that would've lead to Covid being comtrolled. Their efforts to stop it spreading there from China seem to have more or less worked, and were at least effective enough that they weren't the problem - the US had contact tracing that suggested it wasn't really spreading, and genetic testing also indicated this wasn't the source of the major US outbreaks. What turned this into a global pandemic was undetected, large-scale community spread in Europe, in places like Italy - all the subsequent major outbreaks seem to have come from there except maybe for South Korea's. Those coutries listened to the WHO and followed their advice. This just got obscured because the American media is a bunch of partisan trash with unfortunate global influence that saw the pandemic as a good way to replace a leader they dislike. So everything got distorted and spun based on that angle, and it did immense damage to people's understanding of the pandemic. American potlics seems to have a bit of a main protagonist problem at the best of times too.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 4y agoNothing to worry about then, I guess? On a more serious note: "The WHO" is already a sign of a limited understanding of how this works. In as far as an organization of that name exists, it's a tiny bureaucracy tasked with coordinating other organizations to carry out tasks set by the other thing called "WHO", which is just the label for a group of delegates from those national organizations. The WHO does not have any institutional power of itself. It does not have any interests or credibility that is distinct from the interests and credibility of "getting the world's national health agencies" in a room.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- iso1631 4y ago
- wessorh 4y ago
- designium 4y agoWhat “BS” are you referring to? This is just a news.
- ihsw 4y ago
- 300bps 4y agoAccording to study published in New England Journal of medicine, 95% of studied cases were sexually transmitted almost exclusively in men who have sex with men. 41% of those infected with monkeypox were coinfected with HIV. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/monkeypox-driven-overwhelmingly-sex-men-major-study-finds-rcna39564 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/monk... For anyone worried that monkeypox will be equivalent to Covid, the evidence does not support that.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 4y agoWell, yes, maybe. The gay community also happens to be rather well-organized when it comes to STD threats. Together with the more benign course this strain seems to take, the varied presentation, and issues of shame, it is not unreasonable to believe that self-selection and other issues may affect the statistics right now. And, either way, the statistics would have looked exactly like that in the early years of the HIV epidemic, which obviously became a huge burden on society as a whole, both in terms of infections and death as well as curtailing sexual freedom.
- foobiekr 4y agoThis isn't really true. The continued persistence of new HIV cases, syphilis and gonorrhea isn't really an indicator of being "well organized." There's basically no reason anyone post-1995 should have gotten HIV, and yet 34k+ people a year, mostly young men, continue to get it.
- ethbr0 4y agoWell... the US at least has also spent the last few decades decreasing funding to community sexual health centers, which were at the forefront of the AIDS response. So, that's not great. Hopefully this is a reason to reallocate money to a critical part of public health. If anyone is curious, there's a 2019 survey of "the challenges experienced by state and local public health entities at the frontline of STD prevention and control" (NCSD Phase II report): https://www.ncsddc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NCSD-Phase-II-Final-Report.pdf https://www.ncsddc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NCSD-Phase...
- hericium 4y ago
- lesstyzing 4y agoIf you’re going to chat shit about an important global organisation it’s worth explaining your comments. Given they were handling a once in a century pandemic I feel like they did a decent job.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
- pyinstallwoes 4y agoNailed it. Of course I got downvotes. However I know what I saw and others did too.
- olivermarks 4y ago
- WillPostForFood 4y agoWHO has some huge fails. They didn’t declare it a pandemic until March 11 - extremely late. They were extremely critical of travel restrictions, while the countries they did the best in the first year defied that advice and had the most extreme restrictions, like New Zealand. They failed to actually investigate the Wuhan Lab that may have been the source. They didn’t acknowledge airborne spread for two years - allowing people to live in fear of packages. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 What did they do right?
- sgift 4y ago
- tempsy 4y agoWhen it first started spreading outside of Africa I was concerned because the reported fatality rate was something like 5-10% Now we have tens of thousands of cases outside of Africa and it doesn’t appear to be lethal at all and goes away on its own. Depending on the severity it seems like the biggest issue is pain/itchiness for a week or so. So what’s the “emergency” in that context?
- HL33tibCe7 4y agoThe fatality rate depends on the strain. And of course, the demographic of people with the disease. Currently in Western countries almost all cases are in young, healthy men.
- samhyde69 4y ago
- Originami 4y agoThornhill et al, NEJM, MPOX summary: -98% gay/bisexual -41% have concurrent HIV -95% transmission by sexual activity -13% hospitalized for derm/anogenital lesions -No deaths https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2207323 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2207323
- JaceLightning 4y agoCan't it leave disfiguring scars?
- tempsy 4y agoIs that alone cause for declaring something a public health emergency? I’ve only seen videos of men who have contracted and recovered from it and no one mentioned disfiguring scars so far and couldn’t tell that was an issue myself based on their appearance.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
- anonymouse008 4y agoThe outward presentation of this virus is most interesting. We just went through a pandemic that was silent, invisible and on the whole similar symptoms to other illnesses - it’s funny to think Monkeypox will be a pandemic of vanity as well as monkeypox.
- designium 4y ago
- bilsbie 4y ago
- Naga 4y agoThis line of thinking has never made sense to me. We spend billions worldwide combatting diseases that mostly impact people over the median age of death and with other co-morbidities. Heart disease mostly kills old and obese people, but no one ever has a problem with tax dollars going to this. If we don't care about people with co-morbidities, doesn't it make sense to shut down heart institutes and cancer wards?
- junofan 4y agoI believe coronavirus spending was well into the trillions over a short period of time. Not to mention the disruption of the lives of people not at risk. The response was disproportionate to the risk, and I don’t think questioning that response means one doesn’t “care about people with comorbidities.”
- mandmandam 4y agoAny time people's thinking around Covid doesn't make sense to you, try to remember how often we were (and are) knowingly and intentionally lied to by trusted authorities. For example, "masks don't work", or, "GOF researchers are so confident this didn't leak from a lab that you're an anti-science (!) Trump fanatic if you suggest it". Also, the idea that the elderly must be saved at all costs surely comes as surprising news to anyone paying attention to how healthcare works, or how nursing homes are managed. Many countries Corona death states consist of 30-50% purely nursing home deaths from extreme mismanagement, and decades of under-funding for nursing homes. If you care about the elderly, then be outraged at those responsible for that major fuckup, not the people trying to get a sense of perspective amid oceans of deliberate misinformation and unjustified censorship.
- designium 4y agoI don’t understand how HN has become this cesspool of nonsense. It is a news. The virus is spreading. What this has to do with US or China? WTF with you guys.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwk8s 4y agoThere's so little content to the references to WHO's COVID handling that I can't tell whether they mean WHO over-reacted or under-reacted to COVID.
- aftbit 4y agoAgreed. I don't quite understand the focus on the WHO. They don't really control much in a practical sense. In terms of global response to the pandemic, I think we both under-reacted (at the start) and over-reacted (towards the "end"). China could have stopped the virus if they had locked down back in November/December of 2019, instead of updating their WeChat filters. Whereas by mid-2021, we were past the point of controlling the virus, but NPIs continued in force for a while longer before people realized they were mostly pointless.
- freeflight 4y ago> Agreed. I don't quite understand the focus on the WHO. Some conspiracy folks consider the WHO, just like the UN, the manifestation of the NWO global government that secretly controls everything. Didn't help that Trump had some weird hate boner for the WHO to such a degree that the US left it, plus a lot of "WHO is in the pocket of China to suppress the truth!" hysteria around t he same time. Then there was this whole episode of, mostly US conservative media, creating a shit-storm over this WHO tweet [0] by interpreting that tweet as "WHO said it doesn't transmit between humans, WHO has been wrong and shouldn't be trusted!" [0] https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
- throw93232 4y ago
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
- ricardobayes 4y agoIt has been a widely studied disease before the current European outbreak. So we can safely say it's not an STD.
- aftbit 4y agoWell lots of things can be spread by sexual contact. Most respiratory viruses, for example, are quite easily spread through the implied close proximity. The CDC does have a page titled "Monkeypox Facts for People Who are Sexually Active"[1] but I don't know how many cases are spread that way versus other ways of coming into contact with sores or things that touched sores. 1: https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/sexualhealth/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/sexualhealth/index.ht...
- 0xcde4c3db 4y agoI'm no epidemiologist, but I think "as much an STD as herpes" would mean that it's popularly stereotyped as an STD despite most infections not having anything to do with sexual activity (HSV-1, which is mainly transmitted via oral contact, is much more prevalent than HSV-2, which is mainly transmitted via genital contact [1]). [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/herpes-simplex-virus https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/herpes-simp...
- MichaelCollins 4y agoSeems like it's even more of an STD than herpes then.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> where the vaccines were originally claimed to prevent infection and transmission by government agencies and pharmaceutical corporations Who claimed this? In America, for the mRNA vaccines, preventing hospitalisation was the only endpoint even tested across the board in the pre-release studies.
- johndevor 4y agoFauci: https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-vaccinated-people-become-dead-ends-for-the-coronavirus/ https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-...
- djbusby 4y agoThe relevant quote: “So even though there are breakthrough infections with vaccinated people, almost always the people are asymptomatic and the level of virus is so low it makes it extremely unlikely — not impossible but very, very low likelihood — that they’re going to transmit it,” Fauci said. Repeat: "extremely unlikely — not impossible"
- johndevor 4y agohttps://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1551047614224666624 https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/15510476142246666...
- cookingrobot 4y agoI thought the vaccine prevented infection. The CDC website says “All COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the United States are effective at preventing COVID-19.” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.htm... Is there a claim that the vaccines don’t prevent infection?
- 6d6b73 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 462436347 4y ago
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- bilsbie 4y ago
- loceng 4y agoI am curious too what % of those who contract the virus, seemingly easier than it used to be caught, have been vaccinated with the mRNA shots (how many shots, and how recently their last shots were).
- sn0w_crash 4y ago
- olivermarks 4y ago
- sn0w_crash 4y ago
- walterbell 4y ago> In an unusual move, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the declaration even though a committee of experts he had convened to study the issue was unable to reach a consensus. The same committee met just one month ago and declined to declare a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC. What's the W.H.O. process which allows the director-general to bypass the W.H.O. process for scientific debate by experts? The W.H.O. has (so far) failed to achieve international consensus on an international treaty that would give the W.H.O. the legal authority to override local health authorities (national, state, city) in the declaration of public health emergencies. If such a treaty were in effect, today's declaration by one human would have immediately affected the daily lives of 8 billion humans. https://inb.who.int/ https://inb.who.int/
- origin_path 4y agoYup. And yet people who sound the alarm about the problems of international government are described as the crazy ones! One guy unilaterally upending people's lives for no obvious reason is exactly what that would look like, all the time. Arguably it already does given what happened with COVID.
- walterbell 4y agoThere hasn't been enough media coverage of the IHR/W.H.O. treaty negotiations, https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-far-reaching-us-proposals-to-amend-the-international-health-regulations-at-the-upcoming-75th-world-health-assembly-a-call-for-attention/ https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-far-reaching-us-proposals-to-am... > As of yet, there has been almost no public awareness or debate of the substantial amendments to the IHR although the WHO Secretariat circulated the US initiative first in January 2022 to state parties ... Attention to the US amendments was further drowned by the stir made around the launch of the negotiations to draft a new treaty on pandemic preparedness and response by 2024 with a hitherto uncertain scope, content and outcome, as well as an uncertain relationship to the existing legal framework of the IHR. Without objective reporting and analysis on the nuts and bolts of these ongoing treaty negotiations, which affect every person and country on Earth, we're left with coverage by polarized blogs, https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/stop-the-who https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/stop-the-who
- TechBro8615 4y agoDoes anyone have a data source that includes recoveries? There’s been a lot of fearmongering over the past month based on charts of cumulative cases.
- yosito 4y agoAccording to the CDC: > Infections with the type of monkeypox virus identified in this outbreak—the West African type—are rarely fatal. Over 99% of people who get this form of the disease are likely to survive. https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html
- IAmNotACellist 4y ago>Over 99% of people who get this form of the disease are likely to survive. So it has an IFR two orders of magnitude higher than COVID-19 in young people.
- thesaintlives 4y ago
- friedman23 4y agoAnyone know if I can get monkeypox from going to the gym?
- vorpalhex 4y agoMy layman's understanding is that it's pretty unlikely unless you are getting frisky with someone. It's spread by "intimate contact" which is a lower bar than sexual contact - extended contact with an infected persons clothes or bedsheets will do. This is also why condoms don't stop the spread of monkeypox. Not the worst idea to wipe down machines before/after use as a general rule, monkeypox or not.
- abeppu 4y agoMy layperson's understanding is also that if this were happening, we should have noticed it by now. The communities where monkeypox are blowing up all have gyms with a lot of gay customers, and if it was easy to spread we would have noticed more straight or celibate gym-goers in those areas getting infected. That said, the limited testing infrastructure and the questions screening people before they even get tested might stop us from confirming such cases? I _am_ annoyed that the guidance on how it spreads keeps getting broadened. Initially it was supposed to be fluids or skin-to-skin contact ("ok, easy, no cuddling with active rashes for now"). Now the guidance says it can be carried on cloth (e.g. linens). But really, the virus doesn't know that much about what surface it's on, right? And indeed the CDC public-facing guidance does say that it can spread from "shared surfaces, and objects, such as bedding, towels, and sex toys, that were used by a person with monkeypox", but only under a collapsible heading "Can I get monkeypox from having sex?" I.e. they recognize that surfaces can carry it, but perhaps there needs to be a lot of contact with the surface in question. But if, for example, I'm unaware I'm infected but I lie on a pool-side lounge chair which someone else then uses ... couldn't that be comparable shared contact as a bedsheet? Is that so far off from contact with a bench at the gym? Slightly more concerning is: > "It also can be spread by respiratory secretions during prolonged, face-to-face contact" The same page includes "talking closely" as a form of "intimate contact". So it does sound like it can be spread by airborne particles but perhaps less easily than the other viruses we've all been dealing with. If there are a few treadmills in small, not especially well ventilated room, at what point do two people running there share respiratory particles which are comparable to prolonged face-to-face contact? https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/faq.html
- sn0w_crash 4y ago
- verdverm 4y agoit's not the mods "censoring" you, it's the community filtering your comment out
- lizardactivist 4y agoHN is definitely turning into an echo-chamber where certain opinions and questions are down-voted and whisked out of sight quickly.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lizardactivist 4y ago
- Madmallard 4y ago> In an unusual move, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the declaration even though a committee of experts he had convened to study the issue was unable to reach a consensus. The same committee met just one month ago and declined to declare a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC.
- samhyde69 4y ago
- abeppu 4y ago> "...There’s just nobody acting like this is a fucking emergency" - Peter Staley https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/22/peter-staley-monkeypox-response-us-interview https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/22/peter-stale... So, I think it's crazy that: > In early June, top officials assured Staley that the US had in place a stockpile of 1.2m doses of the vaccine > The problem was most of those doses weren’t ready. Just 68,000 of the doses were already located in the US; the rest were in freezers in Denmark awaiting shipment. Worse, two-thirds of the doses in Denmark had been manufactured on a new factory line that the FDA hadn’t inspected – which meant the vaccines produced on it couldn’t be used, despite approvals from the FDA’s EU counterpart, the European Medicines Agency (EMA). So the US is buying a stockpile of vaccines that it considers unacceptable for use? Who does that help? Was this the result of lobbying from a US-based donor with heavy investments in specific EU producers? Is this emergency-preparedness theater? The FDA reported that it _started_ inspections of that plant on July 7. To be clear, these were bought under a Trump-administration order, so they could easily have inspected that plant a long time ago. Why wait until you actually have an outbreak? And of the vaccines that _were_ already FDA-approved, it really seems like the administration has really slow-walked moving them. Meanwhile, in my city which has perhaps the worst outbreak in the US in per-capita terms, vaccines are scarce enough that people can wait for hours in line and then not receive it. People who are in the group who are advised to get the vaccine can call one of several phone numbers to try to get an appointment, but no one will answer. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-monkeypox-cases-rise-17317868.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-monkeyp... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/san-franciscos-lgbtq-monkeypox-vaccine-access https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/san-franciscos... So while others in this thread are arguing that the WHO shouldn't be declaring this an emergency, I'm frustrated that the people calling it an emergency aren't empowered to do much.
- dannyw 4y agoPublic regulatory agencies are chronically underfunded and have been for a long time. The FAA gets Boeing to hire people who carry out the jobs of regulatory approval, just think about that.
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- hackerlight 4y agoI hope the vaccination efforts are targeting gay men?
- loceng 4y agoThe amount of censorship and suppression of valid dialogue on HN is shameful.
- scifibestfi 4y agoMany are unaware of the extent of ineptitude and corruption that has infiltrated our institutions. Many people would rather assume they are still capable. It's comforting to think we can still rely on them. Ignorance is the ultimate happiness.
- loceng 4y ago
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- Maryjane190 4y ago