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Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

economist.com

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Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#81

Post by quickthrowman »

toast0 wrote: post #70
behnamoh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fortunately, we also live in a world where the UN and its agencies do not have a monopoly on good information. We live in a world where the UN is basically a formality. I don't see how this organization has been helpful in solving world problems and preventing wars at all.

The ITU (a UN agency) helps solve the world problem of what country code to use to call countries, and coordinates new codes for new countries. If that's not a world problem, and it's not solved by the UN, I don't know what would satisfy you. There have been very few wars since the UN was formed. Instead, we mostly have armed conflicts and military engagements, preventing many wars.

The UN hasn’t prevented war, nuclear weapons have. If your opponent has second-strike capability, starting a war is not a great idea.

https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#82

Post by TylerE »

beisner wrote: post #32
darkteflon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask why you chose this brand and this model? I’m looking for an air filter but have no idea which brands to trust.

Wirecutter recommends Coway

Careful with that... Wirecutter is known for recommending whoever gives them the biggest commission.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#83

Post by ralph84 »

toast0 wrote: post #70
behnamoh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fortunately, we also live in a world where the UN and its agencies do not have a monopoly on good information. We live in a world where the UN is basically a formality. I don't see how this organization has been helpful in solving world problems and preventing wars at all.

The ITU (a UN agency) helps solve the world problem of what country code to use to call countries, and coordinates new codes for new countries. If that's not a world problem, and it's not solved by the UN, I don't know what would satisfy you. There have been very few wars since the UN was formed. Instead, we mostly have armed conflicts and military engagements, preventing many wars.

ITU predates the UN by almost a century. And if it had been left to ITU, the Internet as we know it wouldn't exist. Thank goodness for IANA and IETF.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#84

Post by a9h74j »

krona wrote: post #21
kiba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, health authorities can be wrong, but if you want to prevent, stop, or aliemoriate a pandemic, you need cooperation. You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. Yes, the authority figures can be wrong. Fauci can be wrong. People can die when health authorities make mistakes, whether through indecision or decision. I myself keep wearing masks after the CDC says I don't need…

> you need cooperation Sure. > You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. So, cooperation, via coercion? Got it. I guess the ends justify the means.

Just calling people Joe Sixpack is a mark against being given the authority to practice coercion.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#85

Post by thu2111 »

SllX wrote: post #28
tinus_hn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about having a monopoly on good information. It’s about a monopoly on attention. What use is it if the WHO is wrong and someone else is right, but everybody listens to the WHO?

Fortunately they didn’t have an attention monopoly either, in part because they didn’t have an information monopoly. :)

Not for lack of trying however. Bear in mind the big tech companies all adopted an explicit policy of, "information that disagrees with the WHO is forbidden" and proceeded to ban lots of qualified commentators for trying to present non WHO approved information. They did this with the full approval and encouragement of the WHO itself.

I'm slightly disturbed by the casualness of this thread actually. The WHO is not merely some random organisation, one of many providing information in an open environment. It commands the loyalty of many powerful people who just automatically assume it is correct, and as such has proven basically unkillable. Trump realised it was corrupted and tried to defund it, that lasted right up until Biden rolled everything back. Other countries have also been defunding it which is why the Gates Foundation is now such a large donor. How should society handle an organisation that is so clearly inadequate and even dangerous yet which commands blind adherence from the richest and most powerful people in the world, people who can and do seriously interfere with the flow of information?

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#86

Post by thu2111 »

harikb wrote: post #30
christophilus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while, YouTube and friends were banning people who pointed out the WHO was wrong. So, probably quite a few people.

that was specifically about calling Covid a hoax. Those who were fighting against this censorship weren’t fighting for Covid being airborne or not

No, pretty much anything was banned or throttled including professors sharing graphs of data, or people re-sharing articles critical of the WHO or the COVID response. And it's still happening, by the way. That's not in the past.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#87

Post by thu2111 »

kiba wrote: post #13
SllX wrote: post #6

> The who therefore played down the risks of aerosols, issuing guidance via its Twitter and Facebook pages at the end of March 2020 that the general public need not worry. “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” it said, adding that any claims to the contrary were “misinformation”. Not quite the money quote, but on reading this I wanted to point out one little thing. This is also a form of authoritarianism, not the splashy…

Yes, health authorities can be wrong, but if you want to prevent, stop, or aliemoriate a pandemic, you need cooperation. You can't just have Joe Sixpack decided to not quarantine himself or not wear masks. Yes, the authority figures can be wrong. Fauci can be wrong. People can die when health authorities make mistakes, whether through indecision or decision. I myself keep wearing masks after the CDC says I don't need…

The CDC isn't run by doctors, it's run by public health officials. Very different.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#88

Post by mistermann »

thu2111 wrote: post #85
SllX wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately they didn’t have an attention monopoly either, in part because they didn’t have an information monopoly. :)

Not for lack of trying however. Bear in mind the big tech companies all adopted an explicit policy of, "information that disagrees with the WHO is forbidden" and proceeded to ban lots of qualified commentators for trying to present non WHO approved information. They did this with the full approval and encouragement of the WHO itself. I'm slightly disturbed by the casualness of this thread actually. The WHO is not mer…

Historically you could maybe fight back with better speech, except now you're also up against internet platform moderation, and the powerful conspiracy theory heuristic that's been installed into hundreds of millions (billions?) of minds, that is frequently invoked in a (coincidentally) coordinated manner by independent journalism organizations (followed by responsible, scientific thinking citizens) when epistemic normalization is called for.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#89

Post by j4yav »

tharkun__ wrote: post #64
christophilus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recollection was that they banned disagreeing with the WHO[0]. The examples given in that article are fair enough for banning, but they banned scientists who were not quite so crazy[1]. Anyway, that’s based on my memory (which is often faulty), but those links seem to corroborate it. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586 [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/46573762/why-is-yo...

They are not the only ones at all. Same thing happened to a lot of other people. There was for example a lot of good information from the Italian National Institute of Health that simply listed the number and type of comorbidities in deceased Covid patients. Mentioning these numbers, even with proper citation was cause for being banned/not being approved by moderators. It didn't fit the official narrative. Like my si…

There is this problem where:

1. A situation becomes political, and all kinds of claims are made by demagogues without evidence in order to score points, based on whatever they would like to be true.

2. There is lots of arguing, and subtle points like “we don’t know enough to know the truth yet but X seems practical/probable” get attacked by all sides or used by the people from 1 to show how much they are being silenced or to generate conspiracy theories.

3. Eventually the reality of the situation becomes mostly clear, and the people who happened to jump to the right conclusion without evidence use it to recruit more followers, and the people who were wrong don’t want to give an inch because it benefits the group who were right for the wrong reasons.

In the end most people get more polarized and there is no clear way to short circuit the process.

Re: Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

#90

Post by jansan »

rwallace wrote: post #9

There is a lot of low hanging fruit in this area being ignored. Here in Ireland, the pandemic is still raging and they are reopening stores – okay, that's a tradeoff on which reasonable people can disagree. But then there's no air circulating in the stores. Ventilation could be significantly improved by such a trivial measure as keeping the front door propped open, but they don't bother. Why not?

With a current average of 3 deaths per day in Ireland, how can you call the pandemic "raging"?
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