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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

#191

Post by CTDOCodebases »

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…

All anyone had to do was look at the video coming out of China. Would they be wearing bunny suits and N95 masks while welding doors shut if it was a no issue? Think of the financial ramifications of shutting down an entire city. Remember they dealt with SARS too.

Once the r0 was released it was clear it was going to be a sh*tshow for anyone who understands exponential math.

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

#192

Post by magicalhippo »

zhdc1 wrote: post #95
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. The messaging IIRC was a little more nuanced, but delivered poorly The US and other countries faced a mask shortage at the beginning of the pandemic. Masks don't provide absolute protection, but they do reduce viral load exposure (a…

> 1. masks don't work (at completely preventing an infection), which many of them simplified to "masks don't work".

I'm from Norway. Here a quote from one of the largest news outlets[1] mid February 2020 (my translation):

Face masks have little effect on preventing infection among the population and can in some cases contribute to increasing the risk of infection, says Hanne-Merete Eriksen-Volle, section leader at the National Institute of Public Health.

So not only did they say masks don't work they went one further and said masks can be bad. They harped the same message for several months until they did a 180 and said everyone should wear masks.

To me, this was a huge failure in communication which highlighted a severe lack of ability to communicate with the public in our health sector.

[1]: https://www.nrk.no/livsstil/fhi_-munnbind-gir-falsk-trygghet...

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

#193

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

throwntoday wrote: post #173
shapefrog wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go with a negative number - by definition every scientific discovery is replacing the null hypothesis or as you say - "popular narrative" (wtf does that mean anyway? is this like 'main stream media' or some other made up dog whistle?).

You seem confused. Popular narrative is not driven by scientist, it's driven by saber rattling morons who will crucify anyone that speaks against them. For example, what the scientific community understood about efficacy of masks, and how utterly useless cloth masks are, disappeared overnight with covid. Perhaps your memory is failing you but I can recall people being chastised for even suggesting they might be usele…

Cloth masks are not as good as properly fitted KN95/99 masks, but they are not utterly useless.

There's a ton of evidence supporting this, and it doesn't help your argument to deny it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7510705/

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

#194

Post by adrianN »

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.

Absolute skepticism works well in philosophy lectures, but it's not a good heuristic in real life. Most facts we find by scientific short term consensus are quite close to reality.

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

#195

Post by dgellow »

titzer wrote: post #183

Governments who "didn't want to create a panic" just flat-out lied. They broke the public trust and did incalculable, permanent damage to societies' ability to react to crises in the future. It was self-serving, short-sighted, and frankly, the worst possible outcome. They clearly did not avoid a panic, did not avoid massive consequences, but, in the long run, deliberately injected distrust, hatred, and fear, deepenin…

Which governments specifically? Also, you say that they failed to avoid panic but where have you seen some?

From what I’ve seen some governments said a few incorrect or misleading things at a time where we had a lot of uncertainty and contradictory information. And then corrected once information became better. Overall western governments (I’m mostly familiar with Western Europe and the US) have been quite good at communicating in the middle of a global pandemics, even when the US had Trump as president, someone who contributed actively to misinformation regarding the virus.

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

#196

Post by adrianN »

throwntoday wrote: post #5
sirspacey wrote: post #2

A 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…

How many do you think are scared of becoming pariahs by saying anything counter to popular narrative? I'd say it's a significant number. Wouldn't want to lose the chance to ever get a research project funded again.

If they have the data that supports their claims, papers who counter the popular narrative are about the most valuable thing a scientist can publish to further their career. Nobody cites papers that just reproduce existing results.

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

#197

Post by ben_w »

verisimi wrote: post #144
FooBarWidget wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aut…

It shouldn't matter how you think, or how a change of opinion is viewed. The idea is that science should be continuous discovery process - scientists are meant to be acting in good faith, not hiding or 'managing' information. If we are genuinely seeking understanding (not attempting to sell people on a particular viewpoint), why shouldn't new information be widely disseminated? Whatever has been going on, it is clear…

Shouldn’t matter? No. Does matter? Yes.

And that’s why things get politicised in the first place.

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

#198

Post by reuben_scratton »

"Taking full precautions against airborne transmission would require major changes at hospitals"

Major changes such as, er, occasionally opening a window to let some fresh air in? That's a basic, obvious precaution that's been known since the dawn of time that wasn't done at all in the UK hospital ward where my mother caught and then died from Covid late last year. I know because I was there. The cluelessness re. viral spread almost two years into the pandemic was just astounding and I'm still very, very angry about it.

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

#199

Post by traceroute66 »

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…

> Japan, actively promoted the airborne nature of COVID-19 early on

Yes, but Japan is a leader in airborne disease prevention.

I mean, if you visit Japan during a "normal" winter season you will observe two things:

    1) Widespread mask-wearing in public spaces
    2) Japanese not turning up to work to cough and splutter all over their colleagues
Both the above never happened in the West. It was hard enough to get your average dumb Westerner to comply during COVID.

The Japanese mentality of taking into account the impact of your actions on others has served them well.

That is why Japan has seen less than 1/10th of the COVID cases that, for example, the UK had. Despite Japan being 2x UK population and living/working in SIGNIFICANTLY higher density.

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

#200

Post by tonyedgecombe »

makomk wrote: post #169
tomp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Yeah, whereas the reality seems to be more like Italians were idiots, and this could well be why it happened to us. There were several interesting things about the Italian outbreak which got downplayed or ignored (at least in the English-speaking world) because it didn't help with the preferred political narratives. The information coming out of Italy was obviously garbage. The only way for an outbreak to go from fir…

>There were several interesting things about the Italian outbreak which got downplayed or ignored (at least in the English-speaking world) because it didn't help with the preferred political narratives.

Not in the UK, the situation in Italy was all over our news.

Probably the biggest criticism I have of the UK media was their overemphasis on young people succumbing. The stats said that young people were unlikely to die but we were presented with cases of that almost daily.

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