Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by choward » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

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.

They only lose credibility when they state things as indisputable facts. They should have been saying "based on current research this is our new best guess."

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

#342

Post by foxhill » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

swores wrote: post #253

foxhill wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i’m not sure operating theatres, ICUs, NICUs, private examination rooms, MRI facilities, etc. have much in way of windows. i also don’t think i’d appreciate a gentle breeze rolling over my internal organs whilst my appendix is being removed :) i’m sorry for your loss. there’s no doubt that governmental denial and reckless mismanagement - especially prevalent in the early days of the pandemic - is directly responsible…

There's quite a difference between a ward like they talked about and an operating theatre. There may well be valid reasons for keeping windows shut in the former too, but jumping to talk about the latter was a bit irrelevant since (except for the teams who work in their all day, who are a tiny % of the hospital population) time spent in wards is far greater, and surrounded by far more unmasked people, than time spent…

sorry, i thought it was clear from my smiley & general tone that i wasn't being serious with that part of the response.

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

#343

Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #303

muh_gradle wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know Collins has resigned until I read this. What problems do you have with Fauci and Collins? I am just curious and am reading more and not trying to be aggressive about this. It seems to me like they were the sole rational voices during the Trump administration.

I’m not a right-wing Fauci hater, but I think he’s just not that good at his job. He found himself in a tough situation, having to tell inconvenient truths to a President that had every reason to downplay the virus because he had up to that point a very strong economy and was up for re-election in less than a year. Guess what—that’s a key part of the job for a high level government official. Politics always influence…

He was trying to navigate an impossible course between telling the truth and not getting fired for telling the truth.

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

#344

Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

disambiguation wrote: post #312

fivea wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As GP states, they engaged in "noble lies" in order to drive vaccine adoption. Can you point out what was in your opinion the best example of what you described as "noble lie"? I've seen people throwing baseless accusations by misrepresenting basic guidances, such as how avoiding scarcity of personal safety equipment like latex gloves and surgical masks in hospitals was distorted into "first they state masks don't…

Natural immunity works. It's settled science, and has been for some time. Many countries acknowledge it as a valid alternative to the vaccine. But not the USA. There has been no change in policy. Not even a public acknowledgment, let alone an apology for getting it wrong. Is this out of ignorance? malice? Neither, it's simply pragmatic. Reliably testing for prior infections at population scale would be really slow, e…

Natural immunity works?

Have you seen how bad Sweden's numbers were? It was vaunted as a story of the success of let it rip approach, but the end result was to show the failure of the let it rip approach.

And note that it's not that good in the first place--plenty of reinfections because the immune system locked onto a part of the virus that changed. The vaccine has enough problem with immune escape, natural "immunity" fares even worse.

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

#345

Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

fivea wrote: post #300

parkingrift wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are adults. You tell them the truth. Lies don’t work as well now that we have access to so much information. We now have a sizable percentage of people who not only don’t care what the WHO has to say, but also want to outright cut funding to the organization. Great outcome. Panick avoided.

> People are adults. No, not really. Not all, at least. I vividly recall from the start of the very first lockdown, when the only people expected to be outside were those attending pressing matters like restocking provisions on supermarket, the local police caught a middle age man who was avoiding the lockdown by strolling around repeatedly with the same days-old loaf of bread under his arm. He didn't even bothered t…

Yeah, I remember a thread elsewhere. Someone was complaining about a large party early in the lockdown. The homeowner (note: very expensive area) felt that they were only risking themselves and thus it wasn't anybody else's business what they were doing.

Among the various objections people made to this I pointed out that my wife is in the medical field, albeit not on the front lines--his recklessness is a risk to her. His opinion was that doctors knew what they were signing up for, it didn't matter. Unfortunately, the moderators zapped the thread before I got a reply to my pointing out that she had not signed up for dealing with reckless idiots in a pandemic.

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

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Post by chimprich » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

native_samples wrote: post #325

chimprich wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kinda unsettling that we even required masks on the public with no evidence they worked going in, eh? No, not in the slightest. The evidence wasn't perfect, but you have to operate using the best working evidence you have. It's logical that face coverings reduce spread of a virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets. The experimental evidence also supports it. The downside, of people being mildly inconveni…

> The evidence wasn't perfect, but you have to operate using the best working evidence you have. It's logical that face coverings reduce spread of a virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets. You're making two mistakes here, that mask advocates frequently make: 1. At the time this decision was made there was no evidence that masks would have any effect. That's why public health officials around the world we…

> This isn't how it works. COVID spreads like a gas

Nonsense. The virus spreads primarily through salivary droplets. Please don't peddle this rubbish.

There is some aerosol transmission, but most infections happen at short range. Masks aren't perfectly effective but they do help, and that has saved lives.

If you don't even understand the basic science then educate yourself before commenting.

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

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Post by spookthesunset » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #310

spookthesunset wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. But wait until you have rational thoughts that get you banned and deplatformed for “misinformation”. I didn’t think it would ever happen to me until it did… there is definitely a balance between keeping toxic crap off a forum and labeling everything the admins happen to disagree with as “misinformation”

What specifically did you say that got you banned?

Posting public data from the county Covid dashboard. “It’s dangerous” I was told.

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

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Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #288

nradov wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is we still don't know why Japan had a relatively low death rate. The factors you mentioned aren't sufficient to account for the difference relative to similar countries. Lower obesity was surely a factor but there's something else going on. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/japan-covid-...

Could also be artifacts if testing and labeling. Perhaps they weren’t testing everything with a pulse. Perhaps they weren’t (mis)labeling hospital patients who tested positive but were in the hospital for Covid as a “Covid hospitalization” It will take decades and much cooler heads to determine the winners and losers. Trying to claim the winners and losers right now is a fools errand.

In almost every country the excess mortality is well above the official "Covid" death toll. They're undercounting, not overcounting.

Just because they ended up in the hospital for "other" reasons doesn't mean it wasn't Covid--someone we know recently lost her mother that way. Health issues that were under control--then they weren't. Coincidence that she tests positive after being admitted?? I don't think so!

There's also the reality that some people are clotting out in various fashions when they aren't nearly sick enough to warrant the hospital and thus likely aren't even tested. If the clot hits someplace quickly lethal (heart, brain, lungs) they end up in the morgue without ever being diagnosed.

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

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Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:38 PM UTC

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.…

No, it does spread like cigarette smoke. It's just the earlier variants required enough virons to infect that few people beyond the distancing requirements would get enough exposure to be infected. Thus we saw a few cases where prevailing airflow could infect people well beyond the "safe" distance but in general distance was safety. It's not anymore.

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

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Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #104

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…

I think one of us is misreading things. > 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. Sneezing would be the droplets distribution theory, which is now "debunked". If the virus is airborne, there's no need to sneeze to spread it.

Just because a sneeze isn't required doesn't mean that a sneeze isn't more effective.