41–50 of 57 posts
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Hard disagree. Scientists have tunnel vision, they are so focused on their own area of expertise that they totally ignore second order effects their actions have on society. Covid pandemic was one such example: scientists advised lockdowns, which did not help much in stopping virus spread, but did ruin the economy.
I remember there was an acknowledgement that we all knew something like COVID-19 would happen eventually. There was Contagion, a 2011 film about a realistic pandemic, or Bill Gates' TED talk, 'The next outbreak? We're not ready', in 2015. Globally, we weren't prepared for what seemed like an inevitability. Perhaps the 1918 flu pandemic was just outside our familial experience. Just as the memory of The Great War fades, and perhaps the lessons of the Second World War as well, as our parents' parents become memories.
Now, we're more prepared. Although, I suspect stockpiles will fall over the next decade. What are we doing to prevent the next outbreak? We know that research of viruses needs the utmost controls and oversight. They are more deadly than nuclear weapons and we should treat them as such. We know keeping animals in close quarters, mixed species, and in poor conditions is a perfect environment for natural viral evolution. I've seen images of chicken farms in the USA and vertical hog farms in China that give me chills. How can we get a handle on this situation?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corruption at the WHO is legendary. Been the case for at least 30 years.
I'm sure handing them broad new powers via the forthcoming pandemic treaty will encourage them to reform themselves /s
[1]:https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docume...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the article. The headline is not at all supported by the content, which itself is based on a single-word quote from a WHO spokesperson that leaves a great deal of doubt about the intent of the comment. Literally the first paragraph of the story contradicts the headline: > The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of…
After 2 cases in the same family in Cambodia a director of the WHO says “The global H5N1 situation is worrying given the wide spread of the virus in birds around the world and the increasing reports of cases in mammals including humans,” The Guardian's headline is "WHO says avian flu cases in humans ‘worrying’ after girl’s death in Cambodia" This sounds a) reasonable grounds for worry by someone who studies epidemics…
What does this have to do with the accuracy of the headline? You're just appealing to authority -- but the same authority figure says, in the same article, that the 2 cases in Cambodia may not even be an example of human-to-human transmission:
> “So far, it is too early to know if it’s human-to-human transmission or exposure to the same environmental conditions,” Briand told a virtual press conference hosted in Geneva.
The line you're quoting also explicitly says that the "worry" is general spread, not this particular example.
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Anything involving viruses has become a hot-button political issue (at least in the USA). There is a significant faction of people who want to panic at any suggestion of a new pandemic, and refuse to be mollified by any contradictory facts. There is also a significant faction who want to ridicule public health authorities, and refuse to believe that there might be any who are acting in good faith. Anyone in the middl…
This may come off as me being a pandemic/virus/masks/vaccine denier, but that's not what I'm saying.
There was a time when those same misanthropes might have been thumping the Bible. With fewer people in the West taking religion seriously, The Science became their new host given that it the public both simultaneously respects it and understands it even less than religion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yes, it's unreasonable, because there's not a thing the WHO can do about it. The WHO exists to contain such things so as to minimize the risk of wider harm. It is not inevitable that every new disease spreads widely and becomes endemic. SARS and MERS were contained, for example. If this new bird flu started transmitting human to human and was as lethal as it is in birds and animals there would be efforts to contain…
> SARS and MERS were contained, for example No, they weren't. They spread widely, and then simply petered off for reasons we don't fully understand. To conclude that we therefore "contained" these viruses via some bureaucratic measure is a classic example of human hubris with regards to our power over nature.
>All hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Simcoe County were ordered to activate their “Code Orange” emergency plans by the government. “Code Orange” meant that the involved hospitals suspended nonessential services. They were also required to limit visitors, create isolation units for potential SARS patients, and implement protective clothing for exposed staff (i.e., gowns, masks, and goggles). Four days later, provincial officials extended access restrictions to all Ontario hospitals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/
That same article discusses how WHO communicated during the process. The reaction to SARS was not simply let is spread and see how it goes.
This paper discusses the response in Hong Kong, which included hospital infection control, isolation and contact tracing.
https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-1244426...
Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles. Page 6 of this Alberta health document for measles control from 2018 discusses how to respond, including contact tracing.
https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/cddcf8b0-9193-4fd7-aa49-def3...
Public health measures aren't that visible if you aren't that involved but it doesn't mean they don't exist.
The WHO absolutely bungled the last pandemic. And now it has increased authority [1]. It's mostly a function of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation now, sadly. [1]: https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docume...