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Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

nature.com

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

#271

Post by diffeomorphism »

JetAlone wrote: post #267
diffeomorphism wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Liberalism is about liberty. Only in the rest of the world. In the US that word was redefined to mean "people I do not like" and they use "libertarian" instead for the original meaning.

I thought about this a little more. The relationship of these "people I do not like" (though some of them are not so bad) to freedom exists - it's not liberal, it's libertine . You are free to play almost any way you want. You want to play all day with little children's toys well into your 40s? Go right ahead, you do you. Watch a show aimed at the opposite sex, while stuffing your face full of custom made toothpaste-…

Almost witty.

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

#272

Post by meetups323 »

netsharc wrote: post #179
xorcist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

A cursory Google early in the pandemic told me that virus particles are smaller than cigarette smoke particles, so paranoid me thought masks aren't bulletproof (it feels like a lot of people think - and I exaggerate - "I'm wearing a mask, I can stand at making-out distance to this other person and I'll be fine."), and why shouldn't the virus be as airborne-transmissible as cigarette smoke? It was also funny how peopl…

Gavin Newsom getting on the tsunami alert speakers to bitch at beachgoers for spending time outside all while having closed room dinners with donors at the French Laundry successfully turned me 100% off from the CA democratic party, and in some ways the democratic party at large.

Shame the recall didn't go through.

State of Jefferson FTW.

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

#273

Post by geysersam »

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…

> And yet political leaders will face no consequences.

What consequences should they face? They are democratically elected. If the handling was indeed as terrible as you suggest I am sure they'll face the consequences in the next election.

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

#274

Post by shapefrog »

nradov wrote: post #257
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Cloth masks do very little. I recommend you listen to the explanations by infectious disease experts Dr. Monica Gandhi and Dr. Michael Osterholm. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://open.spotify.com/episode/5VSukFrMYGae1ILd0e4HuR?si=F...

Cloth masks do very little > utterly useless.

Litterally orders of magnitude.

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

#275

Post by geysersam »

programmarchy wrote: post #265
tenuousemphasis wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Facts are carefully constructed human artifacts, not ideal platonic forms. Is that a fact, or opinion?

I’ll take the opportunity to expand. Say you observe an event directly, with your own eyes. We’ll exclude optical illusions, hallucinations, or the possibility of a demon manipulating your brain in a vat. Is your direct observation a fact? It’s an important observation, so you must communicate it to others. You perform a speech act to tell a few colleagues, with utterances and gesticulations to describe your observat…

Thank you for the well articulated comments.

The emphasis on absoluteness of facts in (American) public discussion nowadays is sometimes quite hysterical.

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

#276

Post by rayiner »

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…

> And yet political leaders will face no consequences.

To the contrary they will be rewarded.

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

#278

Post by AbrahamParangi »

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.

If you lose the perspective that “a single reality exists and we all share it- regardless of the degree to which we actually understand it” then you’re lost to science. What your doing is no longer science and is in fact just politics.

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

#280

Post by bcrl »

geysersam wrote: post #273
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…

> And yet political leaders will face no consequences. What consequences should they face? They are democratically elected. If the handling was indeed as terrible as you suggest I am sure they'll face the consequences in the next election.

Misinformation is a problem and causes harm to society. Punishing people who knowingly spread misinformation despite having more accurate knowledge seems like a possible way of improving public discourse. It doesn't even need to be a massive penalty, a fine is probably sufficient in most cases to make someone think twice.
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