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Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

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Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#111

Post by refurb »

stadium wrote: post #60
disabled wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Original submitter comment: Agreed. However, I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen living in Croatia. I am culturally American. The US had the expertise, technological capacity, and economic investment capacity to be able to eradicate the virus. Very few governments have similar resources and the ability to scale like the US government, which is quite unique. The issue was the political party that we had in place, wit…

> The US had the expertise, technological capacity, and economic investment capacity And incompetent leadership that foundered an opportunity to be the heroes of a generation.

You mean bring multiple vaccines to market in less than 12 months?

Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#112

Post by eCa »

disabled wrote: post #49
_y5hn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHO bears no responsibility (better word: accountability) as it is comprised of member states who define and fund it, that do. Findings, medical experts, doctors come from member state contributions. Given conflicting reports, underreporting, unknowns, denials, how this virus transmits, this could only be handled better with crisis policies. The world didn't operate in crisis mode until now.

Original submitter comment: Agreed. However, I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen living in Croatia. I am culturally American. The US had the expertise, technological capacity, and economic investment capacity to be able to eradicate the virus. Very few governments have similar resources and the ability to scale like the US government, which is quite unique. The issue was the political party that we had in place, wit…

> Croatia failed because they chose tourist season over attempting to eradicate the virus.

One thing I want to see get researched the next few years is the way the slavic countries pretty much completely avoided the first wave that hit many other parts of Europe so bad, only to then get hit (in some cases much more severely) by the second and third waves.

Since this also happened to less touristy countries like B&H, Bulgaria and Slovakia I do think it is more complicated than that. (But I’m in another part of EU so I might be missing something.)

Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#113

Post by refurb »

sudosysgen wrote: post #20

Objectively, Covid-19 was a preventable disaster. From all around the world, the issue was governmental competence. Almost every government in the world did not treat the issue with the due amount of urgency. Almost every government in the world screwed up on airborne transmission for a good while. Almost every government downright minimized the issued and wasted precious months of time that could have been used to r…

The general rule is those govts that were affected by past pandemics, SARS, Swine flu did the best (Vietnam, Singapore, Australia) while those that didn’t go through those pandemics didn’t do well.

Practice helps.

Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#114

Post by sofixa »

sudosysgen wrote: post #20

Objectively, Covid-19 was a preventable disaster. From all around the world, the issue was governmental competence. Almost every government in the world did not treat the issue with the due amount of urgency. Almost every government in the world screwed up on airborne transmission for a good while. Almost every government downright minimized the issued and wasted precious months of time that could have been used to r…

There's some nuance to government responses.

In France for instance, there was recent history of the swine flu epidemic in 2009, where the government responded with urgency, mass buying of supplies and vaccines, and a mass vaccination drive; and it was a huge flop, they were ridiculed and criticized because the epidemic stopped by itself and all the resources were wasted.

So subsequent governments were reluctant to jump too quickly to full on panic lockdown mode; what if it were "just a flu"? Nonetheless the Health minister was changed with an actual doctor in ~february, who has done pretty well since.

It's easy to criticize with the benefit of hindsight.

Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#116

Post by _carbyau_ »

procinct wrote: post #65
cheeri0 wrote: post #55

I always wondered why people thought quicker lockdowns in Chyna would have stopped covid-19 from spreading since no one knew who was infected and a single person who escaped the country during the arbitrary quarantine would have made the whole thing pointless. I'm also confused why they think a virus with such a low death rate is important. The only thing I can think of is a shocking percent of people don't actually…

If you are wondering why people thought the virus was important despite the “low” death rate you only need to look at India right now. Or Italy before it. When it floods a medical system to the point of collapse things become very dangerous.

I think here in Australia our population only took it seriously when we saw Italy get smashed.

We have it very good ... for now. But it is a tightrope walk until we can get the vaccines going properly.

Edit: brevity

Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#117

Post by femto »

elia_is_me wrote: post #45

covid-19 is not an issue now... it's a disaster but a solved disaster.

It's not solved until the global number of people with COVID is low enough that COVID doesn't significantly mutate in the time that it takes to vaccinate the entire world with a compatible vaccine.

Currently more people have COVID than at any point in the past [1]. This means COVID is evolving faster, as it has more chances to mutate. The danger of a new vaccine evading strain emerging is increasing along with the number of global infections. There's a risk that the rate of mutation accelerates to the point where we can't get updated vaccines into people fast enough.

It's sobering that only 4% of the world has been fully vaccinated in 4 months [2] and the job will get more difficult once all the easy to access people are done.

[1] Assuming cases in a 2 week period is a rough proxy for number of currently infected people. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#118

Post by octodog »

samatman wrote: post #105
rzz3 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also WHO told people not to wear masks and that it could actually make it more likely to get covid (CDC echoed this as well). “But it was justified lying to protect the mask supply!”—some people already had masks, and didn’t wear them because of this. I had someone literally get mad at me and block me because I said wearing a mask was obviously a good idea, and an N95 is more likely to protect you than a cloth mask.

Ironically, WHO and CDC have done bad messaging on both sides of this. I get slammed every time I bring this up now, because the issue is politicized and, let's be honest, pretty traumatic as well. But I think it's important so I'll keep trying. Everyone should have been masking up as soon as possible in the pandemic. Case counts were low, we didn't know much about the route of transmission, and we also thought it wa…

Do you have any sources for cloth or surgical masks not working?

The study in this article [0] is still in pre-print but it claims that a change to mandatory mask wearing was a critical factor in crushing the virus in Melbourne's second wave.

I've seen some comments on HN that masks aren't effective but from what I've read and observed in Melbourne/Australia they have been very effective.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/face-masks-number-one...

Re: Covid-19 Was 'A Preventable Disaster,' WHO-Ordered Report Says

#120

Post by Bancakes »

whimsicalism wrote: post #53
rzz3 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also WHO told people not to wear masks and that it could actually make it more likely to get covid (CDC echoed this as well). “But it was justified lying to protect the mask supply!”—some people already had masks, and didn’t wear them because of this. I had someone literally get mad at me and block me because I said wearing a mask was obviously a good idea, and an N95 is more likely to protect you than a cloth mask.

This was very early in the pandemic, I doubt that many people had masks early, and the problem of people hoarding was very real and medical professionals were having a lot of difficulty acquiring PPE. I think it was a difficult situation, I don't think they handled it the best they could have, but the response (in the context of massive amounts of hoarding) was understandable. I know that this will not be a popular t…

You can always limit the amount of masks per person.
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