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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
#112It 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…
Very early 3C PSA (made by Ministry of Health and Prime Minister's Office) was really great work, but Japan's authoritative National Institute of Infectious Diseases finally admits aerosol infection in March this year. I don't know what happened.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Taiwan notified the WHO on the 31st of Dec. Information was floating around in China and Taiwan before that. Cases in China date back to October/November 2019. The Wuhan Doctor referred to it as a 'sars like virus'.
> 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 of China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China.
They received word about that "media statement" from Taiwan. The "media statement" was later deleted, but not before it was screenshotted and distributed on PTT, a Taiwanese social network.
> The Wuhan Doctor referred to it as a 'sars like virus'.
China did not allow these statements to be made public until around January 20 when they finally stated human-to-human transmission was confirmed. At first they detained doctors who tried to speak out.
Taiwan was the first to publicly call it SARS. In early January they sent a team to visit Wuhan, then came back and said "this is SARS".
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of us knew in January when the Chinese doctor spilled the news before he was in-prisoned.
Feb 2020 is the timeframe mentioned by the above comment. In mid January we heard there was a new version of a SARS-like virus, and around January 21 China finally acknowledged there was human-to-human transmission. Taiwan noticed news about isolated cases of an unknown virus on Dec. 31 2019, and had tipped off the WHO of possible human-to-human transmission. I don't think the wider public world knew about it until a…
There is also much propaganda still coming out of China that the virus started elsewhere. Which may be true, we'll probably never know for sure.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#115I 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…
Everyone knew since the original sars outbreak that the only protection was a respirator. The N95 is the lowest level that provides meaningful protection.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#116I 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…
It was especially confusing when my company at the time (in sfbay area) hired someone to tell us that masks won't help because viruses are small and also we'll be back in the office soon. :)
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#117I 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…
> The messaging IIRC was a little more nuanced, but delivered poorly
Probably as intended. Governments are not above outright lying about these matters when it suits them. Several years before covid the German government tried to push a flu vaccine (was it pig or bird flu?), politicians across the board vouched for its safety, some even got theirs on camera. It didn't take long for someone to leak the orders and distribution plans that clearly showed that politicians would not get the cheap, mass produced vaccine which was rushed out and stretched with various questionable additives to scale that everyone was worried about. Every single politician that made a show of getting vaccinated got a vaccine reserved for critical government positions as its production could not be scaled to cover the population. I think in response politicians started to blame the press for sabotaging the vaccination effort, when they could have avoided the whole issue by just taking the normal vaccine like everyone else, not a single one of these assholes was in any way "critical" to the day to day operation of the nation but they had to conspire to give the impression that the normal vaccine wasn't good enough for them.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#118>“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…
> the more they created a vocal minority who heavily drank the coolaid loosing the ability to even consider that the god like apparatus could be wrong.
There are small vocal minorities all over the spectrum that say all sorts of crap. The WHO isn’t yet only voice of “the system” though and plenty of other services and agencies recognised covid was airborne as soon as the evidence was out.
As for the WHO, they’re a weak politically compromised organisation that was all over the map in their vivid response. Being a political football is by design though, as a UN agency.
Even so, they are also an incredibly important resource for dozens of developing countries that heavily rely on their technical expertise and resources. INHO the answer is to strengthen them and make them more independent and capable if tending off political pressure, but unfortunately their (frankly deserved) credibility hit probably makes that impossible, so they’ll become even more bent out of shape by interference. We do need a credible, well resourced, at least somewhat independent global health organisation though.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#119>“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…
> the more they created a vocal minority who heavily drank the coolaid loosing the ability to even consider that the god like apparatus could be wrong.
They’re are small vocal minorities all over the spectrum that say all sorts of crap. The WHO isn’t the only voice of “the system” though and plenty of other services and agencies recognised covid was airborne as soon as the evidence was out. Overall I think at least here in the UK the system worked very well, health services were severely tested but the lockdowns were effective, and now the vaccines and other proven therapies have returned life pretty much to normal.
As for the WHO, they’re a weak politically compromised organisation that was all over the map in their covid response. Being a political football is by design though, as a UN agency. The governments that hold power over it want to be able to kick it around and they do.
Even so, they are also an incredibly important resource for dozens of developing countries that heavily rely on their technical expertise and resources. IMHO the answer is to strengthen them and make them more independent and capable of fending off political pressure, but unfortunately their (frankly deserved) credibility hit probably makes that impossible, so they’ll become even more bent out of shape by interference. We do need a credible, well resourced, at least somewhat independent global health organisation though.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feb 2020 is the timeframe mentioned by the above comment. In mid January we heard there was a new version of a SARS-like virus, and around January 21 China finally acknowledged there was human-to-human transmission. Taiwan noticed news about isolated cases of an unknown virus on Dec. 31 2019, and had tipped off the WHO of possible human-to-human transmission. I don't think the wider public world knew about it until a…
There is also much propaganda still coming out of China that the virus started elsewhere. Which may be true, we'll probably never know for sure.
China has not permitted any investigation into the origins of the virus. And given the ease with which it spreads, and the fact that everyone was heads up about it in January, you'd think we'd have heard about a proliferation of cases elsewhere if it had begun elsewhere. That didn't happen. What we saw was a spread of cases in Wuhan, then in nearby China, then major cities worldwide. And as soon as it spread worldwide, China reported exactly 50% more deaths in one day [1], then stopped reporting deaths altogether. [2] [3]
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/17/chinas-wuhan-revise...
