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

131–140 of 404 posts

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

#131

Post by unityByFreedom »

philliphaydon wrote: post #124
unityByFreedom wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Information was floating around in China and Taiwan before that. Cases in China date back to October/November 2019. That's not true, as the Time report clearly states. Cases have been dated back to October/November by analysis, not by news reports. It's also worth noting that the WHO's own website does not mention that Taiwan told them about the Wuhan news report [1], > WHO’s Country Office in the People’s Republic…

So what you're saying is that because Wuhan University sent samples to be tested on the 30th of december for 'sars like virus' sorry 'atypical pneumonia' (commonly used to refer to SARS) which was posted in a forum, which Taiwan picked up and forwarded to the WHO. That Taiwan did not make the WHO aware. That there is absolutely no remote possibility that prior to the 30th, anyone could possibly be talking about 'sars…

> That Taiwan did not make the WHO aware.

Huh? Taiwan did make the WHO aware.

> That there is absolutely no remote possibility that prior to the 30th, anyone could possibly be talking about 'sars' in december, sorry 'atypical pneumonia', because it's not reported by the Times report or the WHO.

There is no public record about this novel coronavirus, later called Covid-19, prior to Dec 31 2019. China kept it under wraps. Wuhan doctors knew but they were not allowed to speak out. When they tried, they were detained and threatened with arrest.

Every report on the timeline of Covid-19 marks Dec 31 2019 as the start, because that's when news about it breached China's wall. Obviously the virus itself existed prior to that. The question is, what was known when, and who knew it. Elements of China knew prior to Dec 31 2019. It only became public after that as a result of Taiwan informing the WHO.

From The facts regarding Taiwan’s email to alert WHO to possible danger of COVID-19, [1]

> To be prudent, in the email we took pains to refer to atypical pneumonia, and specifically noted that patients had been isolated for treatment. Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease.

The email text is in this Taipei Times article [2].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi...

[2] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/04/12/2...

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

#132

Post by divbzero »

xorcist wrote: post #97
lobochrome wrote: post #82

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…

But coronavirus specifically does not spread like cigarette smoke. It was one of the models that turned out to be wrong. It is easy to focus on what scientists got wrong about the virus, but it's equally important to point out what was right. In retrospect, the early data about the nature of the virus itself was pretty spot on. Modelling pandemics is really hard, even before this virus, and we've only gotten better.…

> But coronavirus specifically does not spread like cigarette smoke. It was one of the models that turned out to be wrong.

Wait, I think your mental model is out of date. OP is all about how COVID-19 is indeed airborne [1] — i.e. it can float through air for considerable distances — and how it took a long time for WHO to correct its messaging. I guess this is case-in-point on how initial public messaging can be really hard to correct later on, and needs to be corrected quickly and loudly.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_transmission

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

#133

Post by refurb »

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, you do so by lying to protect your image despite knowing better.

Yup, I had a chance to be involved in some high profile (for the company) PR issues and one of the worse things you can do is trying to cover something up. It's far better to just be transparent and admitting errors can actually build trust if done right.

But I also understand that without solid evidence, it can be impossible to give firm recommendations, which in the end can make people question the value of what you say.

Getting PR right is actually really hard.

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

#134

Post by scruffyherder »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #96
philliphaydon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We heard about 'sars outbreak in china' around xmas of 2019, at the end of Jan I flew to the UK and at the airport literally every single Asian person wore a mask, and myself. I didn't see any non-asian person wearing a mask. Wore mask the whole flight, on the way home I had 2 elderly people on the plane tell me I was scaring them for wearing a mask. I got back beginning Feb and went WFH while the rest of the office…

> We heard about 'sars outbreak in china' around xmas of 2019 That's impossible, unless you're saying after the new year still means around xmas. Taiwan discovered it on Dec. 31 2019 via a Wuhan news report about several cases held in isolation. They forwarded that info to the WHO. [1] > At 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 31, Dr. Lo at Taiwan’s CDC woke to an alert on his phone. > His colleagues in the media monitoring unit had de…

Taxi drivers in Hong Kong were telling me about some bad flu in the Mainland around Christmas.

It was known in Asia far before it'd been reported in western media.

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

#135

Post by mypalmike »

laurent92 wrote: post #78
optymizer wrote: post #33

I was the first in our office to go permanently WFH in February of 2020, three weeks before our offices closed, because I recognized that SARS-Cov-2 would be a huge problem, when pretty much everyone was in the 'just a flu/cold' mode. Here's the news that did not pass my bullshit detector: 1. Virus is not airborne (as initially claimed). I thought the water droplets claims were true for a while until I saw how fast i…

> 2. CDC (I believe) was claiming that N95 masks won't help as much as other masks. Later it turned out they just didn't want to create scarcity for N95 masks because hospitals need them. This is the most probable explanation for governments around the world saying that masks are “Absolutely useless” (literal quote) until June 2020. It is lying-as-a-form-of-governance. It’s extremely detrimental to credibility: From…

One theory is that governments acted maliciously and lied. The other theory is that they were being advised by bad science (the 5 micron boundary).

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

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

#136

Post by hnbad »

avazhi wrote: post #128
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…

"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." This statement applies to the WHO, and it applies equally to China, which will wear the shame of…

I'm going out on a limb here and guess you're in the US because that's the only place I've seen hyperfixating on China during COVID discussions.

I don't think "China will forever be remembered as the wannabe superpower that was so scared of the truth that it knowingly fucked over the rest of the world for more than 2 years" because that's not even what anyone remembers them as today, outside the US. And even in the US I don't think that's going to matter or create any semblence of a legacy in any way that matters. China was very quick to rebound from the economic downturn and as far as I can tell came out ahead of everyone else.

Not to mention that every single other country fucked up their pandemic response so badly that getting angry at China requires several layers of indirection (though some US media has been better at making this detour).

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

#137

Post by janto »

drewcoo wrote: post #23
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…

Trust and truth are two very different things. It's possible to lose trust by telling the truth. So is it worth it to be less truthful? Is there good you can accomplish with that trust? I see what they're playing and the bind they're in. It's a very social kind of game. I'm just too simple to be there or have dealt with it.

I no longer trust them to tell the truth. Trust is what you earn when you prioritize truthfulness above all else.

They decided to spend public trust to what end?

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

#138

Post by anamax »

makeitdouble wrote: post #88
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.

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.

The problem is in the original statement.

There's an important difference between "The sky will be red tomorrow" and "Based on {data}, I think that the sky will be red tomorrow." even if the reasoning from {data} to "sky red tomorrow" is flawed.

If someone arrives at a conclusion via a process that I can analyse, I expect that they'll arrive at a different conclusion if the data turns out different.

When someone says "{whatever} is true", it's on them, and should be, when {whatever} turns out to be false.

Here's another way to look at it.

Folks who arrive at conclusion in a openly disinterested way can switch conclusions without losing credibility.

People who seem to be interested in a given conclusion lose credibility, and should, when they're wrong. Same for folks who don't show their work.

If you make it about you, you can't complain when it's about you.

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

#139

Post by onethought »

tomp wrote: post #105
onethought wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to assume you're in the US? Most countries were already in the process of announcing health restrictions by February 2020. Taiwan had already been screaming for 2 months that it was airborne, and had limited airline travel and started mask mandates.

Which countries exactly? EU kept it’s head firmly in the sand until Bergamo happened towards the end of February, and even then the prevailing philosophy was “Italians are idiots, this can’t happen to us”.

Well, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, of course China had Wuhan in full lockdown. By March Canada, a handful of the south americas, uk had all started some form of restrictions.

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

#140

Post by FooBarWidget »

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

Maybe that's how you think, but lots of people don't think that way. To a large part of the masses, experts have to be right the first time around, otherwise people lose trust in them. Many people don't understand the scientific method or that science is not about certainty but about constantly learning and adjusting. Many treat science and expertise as authoritative, and when they fail, or even if they say "we don't know", many lost faith in the entire concept of science, jumping to... less science-y approaches that feel more emotionally gratifying.

Is this just a failure of education? I don't know.

Post reply on HN