Simple if one thinks about it. Quit thinking of COVID itself and think of how the pandemic has been used. It’s easy to understand why after that.
“Follow the money”
“George Soros”
“Bill Gates”
Etc
Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
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Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#12It's unfortunate that they were loud with the misinformation and very quiet with the correction.
Exactly. They act like they are the "authority" when most of their initial statements were wrong. It's understandable to be wrong because no one knew much about this virus at first, and everyone, including the ones that were proven right, was making guesses. But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#13A powerful reminder that “science” and “scientists” don’t say anything. There are organizations & researchers. They don’t speak with one voice, or have the same threat assessment, and they respond to different incentives. It would be a gift to humanity to move beyond the antiquated idea that there are “FACTS” - static statements of truth that require no context or qualification. Not only does context matter, it matte…
No, there are facts. Better to state “please stop politicizing uncomfortable facts”. Some facts are essentially absolute such as the speed of light in a medium. Some are statistical in nature and so can change as additional information appears (population response). And some are only inferences. The problem appears when people fail to differentiate these categories through ignorance or point of view.
Remember that “news” is at best entertainment and at worst performance art. If somebody says “the current situation is bad, assuming our model is correct”, it’s reported as “the current situation is bad” so any change is seems as nefarious. It’s just the lizard brains overpowering the neocortexes.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#14>“We’re really talking here about two failures, not one,” says Sandman. “Being reluctant to change your mind, and being reluctant to tell people you changed your mind.” Like other public-health and scientific organizations, the WHO “are afraid of losing credibility by acknowledging that they got something wrong”, he says.
Quite a good summary for the entire clusterfuck that was the pandemic response. I still cant wrap my head about the utter spineless idiocy. You dont loose credibility by acknowledging you were wrong, you do so by lying to protect your image despite knowing better. You being wrong isnt dependent on you acknowledging it.
And the worst part, the more they kept lying the more they created a vocal minority who heavily drank the coolaid loosing the ability to even consider that the god like apparatus could be wrong.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#15Super interesting how /r/coronavirus and 4chan were more accurate in their conclusions about Covid. Also it seem that institutions are deemed to feel, just how I used to hear "religions are good but religious institutions are bad", it seem to start to apply to science now. It was disgusting how rabid were liberals about the whole Covid thing.
What were their conclusions about COVID?
Did they actually have a consensus for their conclusions, or were there just some segment of the site saying one thing, some segment saying another thing, and we now remember only the segment that was saying the right thing?
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#16It's unfortunate that they were loud with the misinformation and very quiet with the correction.
Exactly. They act like they are the "authority" when most of their initial statements were wrong. It's understandable to be wrong because no one knew much about this virus at first, and everyone, including the ones that were proven right, was making guesses. But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting.
Labelling is one thing (putting a warning underneath posts with the current understanding of a given topic), but the step too far (in my opinion) was the silencing and deplatforming by way of removing posts and banning users.
No company should have unfettered control over the metaphorical "town square" to control population-level discourse.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#17> For example, even in the middle of the fast-moving epidemic, the WHO dismissed field epidemiology reports as proof of airborne transmission because the evidence was not definitive, something that is difficult to achieve quickly during an outbreak. It seems the responsible thing to do in this situation, rather than tweeting definitively that the virus was "NOT" spread via airborne transition, would've been too withh…
The problem with this, is that people want action items. No one wants to go to the WHO and find out nothing about the virus. If you wanted to do that, you could go anywhere. So they're encouraged to put something down. That something was wrong.
It happens, it's a group run by humans. It would be great if they got everything correct, but unfortunately they don't, and to make matters worse, it sounds like they're an organization driven by consensus so changing minds means changing a bunch of individual doctors minds. Take it from me that changing doctors' minds on things is a sisyphean task. We're lucky we got a correction in 2 years.
Hopefully they learned something for any further pandemics. But the other factor of this is that communicating to people is difficult, and if you change your mind publicly and loudly too many times people lose faith in you. And unfortunately faith/belief is what people need to have in the WHO for it to be effective at giving advice.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#18Super interesting how /r/coronavirus and 4chan were more accurate in their conclusions about Covid. Also it seem that institutions are deemed to feel, just how I used to hear "religions are good but religious institutions are bad", it seem to start to apply to science now. It was disgusting how rabid were liberals about the whole Covid thing.
It was disgusting how many people became totally close-minded, hateful authoritarian bullies regardless of who was "right" and even if there were no mistakes or blatant misrepresentation of risks and benefits of certain policies.
- A person's bodily autonomy is the most fundamental freedom there is. Of course there is a balance to be weighed when it affects others, but there is no absolute right or wrong answer.
- People absolutely are justified and right to question authority, politicians, self-proclaimed experts, pharmaceutical and medical corporations, as well as studies, data, and science.
- Even if "the science" around the risk of covid and benefit of lockdowns was correct, the response to it is not scientific. Policy can take science or evidence into account, that doesn't mean it is science. You are not anti-science if you don't believe mandatory lockdowns and economic shutdowns was a good policy.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#19>“We’re really talking here about two failures, not one,” says Sandman. “Being reluctant to change your mind, and being reluctant to tell people you changed your mind.” Like other public-health and scientific organizations, the WHO “are afraid of losing credibility by acknowledging that they got something wrong”, he says. Quite a good summary for the entire clusterfuck that was the pandemic response. I still cant wra…
You also lose people when you change your mind. There's an entire group of news anchors who dedicate themselves to pointing out where people have flip-flopped. It's pretty common.
I agree the not changing your mind is worse, but they also describe this thing as being driven by consensus as doctors, so you're having to change a bunch of people's minds who think they're the very best at what they do. It's a serious failing of that setup. It's somewhat impressive that they ever changed their mind.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#20It's unfortunate that they were loud with the misinformation and very quiet with the correction.
Exactly. They act like they are the "authority" when most of their initial statements were wrong. It's understandable to be wrong because no one knew much about this virus at first, and everyone, including the ones that were proven right, was making guesses. But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting.
Hrm reminds me of government.