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That's totally false. Infection control systems were activated. SARS and MERS did not spread widely, either. Here's one example from Canada: >All hospitals in

by graeme 4y ago

That's totally false. Infection control systems were activated. SARS and MERS did not spread widely, either. Here's one example from Canada: >All hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Simcoe County were ordered to activate their “Code Orange” emergency plans by the government. “Code Orange” meant that the involved hospitals suspended nonessential services. They were also required to limit visitors, create isolation units for potential SARS patients, and implement protective clothing for exposed staff (i.e., gowns, masks, and goggles). Four days later, provincial officials extended access restrictions to all Ontario hospitals. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/ That same article discusses how WHO communicated during the process. The reaction to SARS was not simply let is spread and see how it goes. This paper discusses the response in Hong Kong, which included hospital infection control, isolation and contact tracing. https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-12444260277&origin=inward&txGid=051fbd00d5404bfa3e1362fcc584e910 https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-1244426... Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles. Page 6 of this Alberta health document for measles control from 2018 discusses how to respond, including contact tracing. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/cddcf8b0-9193-4fd7-aa49-def3fded69cf/resource/8fd5cf2d-ccd0-4bf9-97c9-f2cfa4284adb/download/guideline-measles-2018-07-16.pdf https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/cddcf8b0-9193-4fd7-aa49-def3... Public health measures aren't that visible if you aren't that involved but it doesn't mean they don't exist.

timr 4y ago
> Infection control systems were activated No one said otherwise. You're leaping to the conclusion that these "control systems" caused the viruses to go away. > SARS and MERS did not spread widely, either. SARS: 8096 known cases across 29 different countries. [1] MERS: 2603 known cases across 27 different countries. We're still seeing cases, btw. [2] I guess we have different definitions of "spread widely". (Also "contained", in the case of MERS.) As I said, the viruses petered out after rapidly spreading around the world. We still don't understand why, but it's arrogance to conclude that it was something humans did that "contained" them (particularly when at least one of them wasn't stopped). > Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles. ...and it doesn't work well for respiratory viruses, as we just learned from watching the world try to do it for years, only to fail completely. Of all the debunked interventions we witnessed over the last 3 years, "contact tracing respiratory illnesses" is uniquely amongst the most costly and damaging blunders in human history. Yes, "public health" may engage in this kind of pseudo-scientific, bureaucratic theater, but it certainly doesn't mean that it's effective. Bringing this to the current day, the bird flu is now endemic amongst wild birds (and possibly other animals) around the planet -- that is how it is getting into chicken farms despite all of our current efforts. The horse (or the chicken, in this case) is literally out of the barn. If bird-to-human or human-to-human transmission were common, we'd know it by now. Moreover, if that were true, there's literally zero chance that we could somehow "contain" a virus endemic in the animal population. It's going to do what it's going to do. [1] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/summary-of-probable-sars-cases-with-onset-of-illness-from-1-november-2002-to-31-july-2003 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/summary-of-probable-... [2] https://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/mers-cov/mers-outbreaks.html https://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/mers-cov/mers-outbrea...
- graeme 4y ago
  I lived in a place that did contact tracing for SARS-Cov-2 and it definitely worked. Other places in Canada had large outbreaks they had to quell with extensive lockdowns to prevent hospital overwhelm. Nova Scotia did extensive contact tracing when a case first appeared and often could get rid of small outbreaks without additional measures (beyond border controls.) The spread of SARS and MERS around the world was via airplanes. That doesn’t mean they for firmly established in any population.
  - timr 4y ago
    In literally every part of the world, SARS-CoV2 is endemic. It didn't "work", you're just making a post hoc attribution of wiggles in the first derivative of case counts to an action that you prefer. A far more parsimonious reason that (for example) Novia Scotia had fewer cases (for a time) is that Novia Scotia is in the middle of nowhere and has less than a million people. It's the inverse of the reason that the major cities of the world got it first.

by graeme 4y ago

timr 4y ago

> Infection control systems were activated No one said otherwise. You're leaping to the conclusion that these "control systems" caused the viruses to go away. > SARS and MERS did not spread widely, either. SARS: 8096 known cases across 29 different countries. [1] MERS: 2603 known cases across 27 different countries. We're still seeing cases, btw. [2] I guess we have different definitions of "spread widely". (Also "contained", in the case of MERS.) As I said, the viruses petered out after rapidly spreading around the world. We still don't understand why, but it's arrogance to conclude that it was something humans did that "contained" them (particularly when at least one of them wasn't stopped). > Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles. ...and it doesn't work well for respiratory viruses, as we just learned from watching the world try to do it for years, only to fail completely. Of all the debunked interventions we witnessed over the last 3 years, "contact tracing respiratory illnesses" is uniquely amongst the most costly and damaging blunders in human history. Yes, "public health" may engage in this kind of pseudo-scientific, bureaucratic theater, but it certainly doesn't mean that it's effective. Bringing this to the current day, the bird flu is now endemic amongst wild birds (and possibly other animals) around the planet -- that is how it is getting into chicken farms despite all of our current efforts. The horse (or the chicken, in this case) is literally out of the barn. If bird-to-human or human-to-human transmission were common, we'd know it by now. Moreover, if that were true, there's literally zero chance that we could somehow "contain" a virus endemic in the animal population. It's going to do what it's going to do. [1] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/summary-of-probable-sars-cases-with-onset-of-illness-from-1-november-2002-to-31-july-2003 https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/summary-of-probable-... [2] https://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/mers-cov/mers-outbreaks.html https://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/mers-cov/mers-outbrea...

graeme 4y ago
I lived in a place that did contact tracing for SARS-Cov-2 and it definitely worked. Other places in Canada had large outbreaks they had to quell with extensive lockdowns to prevent hospital overwhelm. Nova Scotia did extensive contact tracing when a case first appeared and often could get rid of small outbreaks without additional measures (beyond border controls.) The spread of SARS and MERS around the world was via airplanes. That doesn’t mean they for firmly established in any population.
- timr 4y ago
  In literally every part of the world, SARS-CoV2 is endemic. It didn't "work", you're just making a post hoc attribution of wiggles in the first derivative of case counts to an action that you prefer. A far more parsimonious reason that (for example) Novia Scotia had fewer cases (for a time) is that Novia Scotia is in the middle of nowhere and has less than a million people. It's the inverse of the reason that the major cities of the world got it first.