Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 404 posts

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#81

Post by licebmi__at__ »

danamit wrote: post #8

Super 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.

>Super interesting how /r/coronavirus and 4chan were more accurate in their conclusions about Covid.

Yeah, I mean, who would have thought that the globohomo cabal was behind it all along... oh you mean that they were more accurate on the 10% non crazy stuff they say?

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#82

Post by lobochrome »

It is rather interesting to consider that many countries in Asia (China / Japan / Taiwan / Vietnam / Malaysia that I am aware of) happily ignored the WHO on masks and, with regards to Japan, actively promoted the airborne nature of COVID-19 early on. I remember seeing specials on NHK visualising the spread from a sneezing person in a room in March 2020. There were also a lot of helpful PSAs like the 3C model [0] and comparing the potential aerosol spread of the virus to cigarette smoke (when you would smell the smoker - he could also infect you with the virus).

The west tried to rely on its supranational institution to establish top-down consensus and then couldn't react to its failure.

Ostensibly Asian countries are part of the WHO, so why was it that the decision-makers there weren't able to adapt? Doesn't China supposedly have a significant influence on the WHO? Why didn't they intervene?

[0] https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/2020/avoiding_the_three_cs.ht...

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#83

Post by watwut »

cf141q5325 wrote: post #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 wra…

> You dont loose credibility by acknowledging you were wrong

Unfortunately, you do. It is something that could change and should change. But as of now, changing mind is treated as "gotcha".

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#84

Post by rcoveson »

programmarchy wrote: post #22
jleyank wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 “n…

Facts are carefully constructed human artifacts, not ideal platonic forms. Since they are usually formed by a consensus, or at least the appearance of a consensus, they are inherently political. The scientific method will tend to produce facts which are "eventually consistent" with reality, but since humans are involved, it's not a guarantee, especially in the short term.

No, facts are true statements. We don't know which statements about this collectively observed reality are facts. Coming up with new statements about reality and figuring out how likely it is that they are facts is the point of science.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#85

Post by blenderdt »

Early 2020 the Dutch Maurice de Hond, who studies social geography, noticed a pattern in outbreaks. His conclusion at the time also was transmission via aerosols. But because he had no related degree in virology most people ignored him. Now two years later everybody agrees with him.

It's sad that people are too proud to cooperate with other people working in other domains (and sometimes even in the same domain).

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#86

Post by j4yav »

kelnos wrote: post #60
heavyset_go wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You dont loose credibility by acknowledging you were wrong Disagree, plenty of organizations and people lost credibility in the eyes of some for doing just this as new research emerged over the course of the pandemic.

I agree with that. But I think there's a small gap in credibility loss between "being right in the first place" and "being wrong, but admitting it promptly". And a much larger gap between "being wrong, but admitting it promptly", and "being wrong, and refusing to admit it until everyone has known you were wrong for a long time".

There's also the interesting "being right, but essentially having guessed and tied various other crackpot theories to the reasoning" that muddies the water further. For example, that COVID was always airborne, but it is actually the vaccine that causes it because the microchips they put in it have little propellers on them and they use them to fly around the room.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#87

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

ipaddr wrote: post #76
unityByFreedom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when pretty much everyone was in the 'just a flu/cold' mode By "everyone" do you mean people around where you live? The CDC was always concerned about mortality rates and never suggested it was just a flu/cold. In Feb 2020 I recall hearing the president say the flu/cold thing, however the CDC was always trying to say it is serious. They were just not clear on where it had spread yet, and due to a testing screw-up,…

Many of us knew in January when the Chinese doctor spilled the news before he was in-prisoned.

imprisoned*

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#88

Post by makeitdouble »

heavyset_go wrote: post #29
cf141q5325 wrote: post #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 wra…

> You dont loose credibility by acknowledging you were wrong Disagree, plenty of organizations and people lost credibility in the eyes of some for doing just this as new research emerged over the course of the pandemic.

Parent's point is that they'd lose these people's credibility either way by the mere fact of being wrong.

To me the paths look like:

- acknowledge your mistakes: some people will accept based on your attitude, others will resent you being wrong.

- don't acknowledge: people who would have otherwise accepted mistakes now resent your stubbornness. Others will still resent you for being wrong.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#89

Post by lemmsjid »

nradov wrote: post #61
jeffbee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is the fact that the majority of infected individuals didn't suffer from it does not mean it is not a serious disease. Hardly anyone was paralyzed by polio, but we view it as an extremely serious disease.

We never locked down society for 2 years because of polio.

According to Wikipedia on the initial polio pandemic: “On Saturday, June 17, 1916, an official announcement of the existence of an epidemic polio infection was made in Brooklyn, New York. That year, there were over 27,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths due to polio in the United States, with over 2,000 deaths in New York City alone.[16] The names and addresses of individuals with confirmed polio cases were published daily in the press, their houses were identified with placards, and their families were quarantined.[17] Dr. Hiram M. Hiller, Jr. was one of the physicians in several cities who realized what they were dealing with, but the nature of the disease remained largely a mystery. The 1916 epidemic caused widespread panic and thousands fled the city to nearby mountain resorts; movie theaters were closed, meetings were canceled, public gatherings were almost nonexistent, and children were warned not to drink from water fountains, and told to avoid amusement parks, swimming pools, and beaches.”

Here’s an article with some quotes from people who were young during polio pandemics describing the countermeasures: https://cvm.msu.edu/news/perspectives-magazine/perspectives-...

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#90

Post by heavyset_go »

jeffbee wrote: post #55
nradov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet for the vast majority of people it really was just a bad cold. I had a bunch of friends and family who got infected before vaccines were available, and that's literally how most of them described the experience.

95% of people infected with polio didn't even know they had it, but we eradicated that disease anyway.

Paralytic polio only happened in 0.1% to 0.5% of polio cases, as well.
Post reply on HN