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WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

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Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#11

Post by Anon84 »

MockObject wrote: post #9
feanaro wrote: post #4

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

> WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. This was my favorite: > "The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious.

> Obvious cautious tip-toe is obvious.

Yes and no. The guidelines for declaring a (Phase 5) outbreak is to have person to person transmission in 2+ regions of the world. https://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/pandemic_p... So, yes, it is about what's happening outside China.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#12

Post by emptysongglass »

gruez wrote: post #5
feanaro wrote: post #4

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

>they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. >At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation. but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to "de…

This doesn't make any sense if I step through it mentally. If you're a carrier of a virus and you have to hoof it to my end of the world, it's going to take you a whole lot longer to get there than if you flew. This is absolute fact. The faster vectors you give to something to transport a thing, that thing will move to its destination that much faster.

You don't need science to grok this.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#14

Post by AnimalMuppet »

reaperducer wrote: post #6
feanaro wrote: post #4

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. I wonder if they don't want to piss off China and make it say, "Fine, we're not going to cooperate with you. We'll handle it ourselves." From what I've read, China, and especially the Chinese government, doesn't seem to respond well to the sort of light criticism that people and governments in the west would blow off.

True, China doesn't respond well to criticism. I don't often see them taking clearly stupid actions in response, though.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#15

Post by rococode »

splittingTimes wrote: post #13

How is this worse than your normal influenza cycle with 3-5Mio infections and 290k-650k death to warrant such an emergency?

Without delving into any of the numbers here since they're still mostly speculation (we don't know how many people are really infected / dead), I think it's safe to say that two deadly seasonal illnesses is worse than one and is an outcome worth trying to prevent.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#16

Post by fasthandle »

reaperducer wrote: post #6
feanaro wrote: post #4

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. I wonder if they don't want to piss off China and make it say, "Fine, we're not going to cooperate with you. We'll handle it ourselves." From what I've read, China, and especially the Chinese government, doesn't seem to respond well to the sort of light criticism that people and governments in the west would blow off.

This was my interpretation also. From non-reporting through December to rapid change at the end of December to lockdown of any social venue from museums to restaurants throughout the country since Jan 25th, WHO are giving support to the policy awareness change.

Source: Live in China.

Watching the group in Imperial College closely as they've been giving closest analysis so far.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#17

Post by durpleDrank »

Can we PLEASE collectively put our manners aside and confront people who are not covering their mouths when they cough? I'm very aggravated that people don't. What is going through the mind of a person who deep coughs, open mouth, without cover, in public transport? It's depressing.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#18

Post by abhisuri97 »

This is (imo) the right course of action to (at minimum) alert countries wrt the gravity of this outbreak; however, I was disappointed to see the tiptoeing around potentially offending China. From the press conference, it seemed that Dr. Tedros made it painfully (maybe even unnecessarily) clear that this action wasn't faulting China for their handling of this situation. It's just weird to see that global politics is creeping into these public health decisions.

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#19

Post by [deleted] »

Anon84 wrote: post #10
pastor_elm wrote: post #7

Any good models that predict the peak of this?

You might want to give http://www.gleamviz.org/simulator/ whirl. You can simulate any epidemic model on a real-life datasets of mobility and healthcare access around the world. The tricky part is know exactly what the "correct" epidemic model is: length of latent/infectious/etc periods, etc. Full disclosure: I was once one of the main developers of this epidemic modeling framework.

[deleted]

Re: WHO declares coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency

#20

Post by feanaro »

gruez wrote: post #5
feanaro wrote: post #4

WHO spent the majority of the press briefing in very eerie and artificial sounding praise of China. Also, despite declaring a global emergency, they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation.

>they advise against restriction measures for international travel, which personally boggles the mind. >At some point they vapidly ask "Where is the science behind this?". The science behind this is the discovery of viruses and the impossibility of teleportation. but it's true though. there's limited evidence that travel bans will stop the spread of the infection. the evidence ranges between "no effect at all" to "de…

There are many variables when it comes to travel restriction. "Travel restriction" is simply not a binary category which you either have or do not have. Hence, I'm unconvinced by a universal conclusion of "travel restriction does not work" from a few retrospective studies of a few heterogeneous cases of past travel restrictions. I maintain that we should not give in to the conclusion that global spread of infections is simply inevitable, except by chance, and write off restricted mobility completely.
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