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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

#391

Post by native_samples »

chimprich wrote: post #387
native_samples wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the belief at the start of the pandemic. Oddly so because it was inconsistent with how things like SARS-1 spread. Very few people believe the droplet theory now, because it's inconsistent with the evidence. For example if it was really spreading this way, then masks would have an immediate and visible impact on case curves, but they don't. If you want more evidence, try: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16696…

> Very few people believe the droplet theory now Again, absolute nonsense. World Health Organisation: "Current evidence suggests that the virus spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, for example at a conversational distance. The virus can spread from an infected person’s mouth or nose in small liquid particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe."[0] > People were locked i…

You keep trying to make this about how you (or the WHO) think masks should affect outcomes. I keep pointing how they actually affect outcomes. Because reality is more important than theory, that's all that needs to be done here. Masks do not work. The data is definitive and final. How you think COVID spreads or what the WHO says just doesn't matter at all, because they clearly have no idea how it spreads. If they did they'd be able to explain why masks had no observable impact, and they cannot.

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

#392

Post by optymizer »

nradov wrote: post #53
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…

And yet for the vast majority of people it really was just a bad cold. I had a bunch of friends and family who got infected before vaccines were available, and that's literally how most of them described the experience.

Ignoring the details, COVID's death rate in the US is about 1.17% (20K deaths, 1.7M infections), and let's say that on average 10% of infections require hospitalizations. You could still say that for the vast majority of people (~90%) it's like a bad cold, so your comment makes sense, but my thinking was focused on the risk/reward aspects.

To simplify all of this, if covid didn't exist, and you somehow found out that by going out of the house you have a 1.17% chance of dying, but if you stay inside, that chance is 0.002% (average chance of dying on any given day in US), would you still go outside or would you stay inside?

That 1.17% is a 585x increase over the usual 0.002%, and when I thought about how large that increase is, for me, it was very clearly not worth the risk.

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

#393

Post by diffeomorphism »

janto wrote: post #388
diffeomorphism wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Framing the dissenting opinion as equivalent to "aliens did it" is exactly the problem. You made a category error by somehow replacing "opinions which are obvious nonsense" with "any dissenting opinion whatsoever". Nobody but you suggested that. The claim was that you cannot say anything at all about any "dissenting opinion" unless you are 100% sure you are correct. That is nonsense. You can obviously say something…

What do you do with opinions that you think are wrong? Do you place them all in an "obviously nonsense" category and slap a misinformation sticker on it so others are not tempted to look at it? Because that is what happened here. What do you do when it turns out some of those things were true? Do you continue to curate the world with willful blindness?

What part of "no, you don't" was so hard to understand?

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

#394

Post by janto »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #393
janto wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do with opinions that you think are wrong? Do you place them all in an "obviously nonsense" category and slap a misinformation sticker on it so others are not tempted to look at it? Because that is what happened here. What do you do when it turns out some of those things were true? Do you continue to curate the world with willful blindness?

What part of "no, you don't" was so hard to understand?

I don't see where you said "no, you don't" so it's unclear what you mean here. Did you mean that labelling something as misinformation is unwise? Because then I agree with you.

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

#395

Post by warning26 »

thehappypm wrote: post #376
Blackstrat wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO was not wrong. They lied, as did Fauci, the CDC, et al. The peer reviewed research, prior to COVID, was clear that masking was not effective against respiratory viruses. When the media starts “canceling” people like Ioannidis and numerous others for questioning the effectiveness of government mitigations, all of which reduced individual freedoms, it isn’t a conspiracy. It’s blatant and unequivocal. Conspiraci…

How did Gates make money?

All those copies of Windows 95 just flew off the shelves as soon as COVID hit!

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

#396

Post by jimmydorry »

seattle_spring wrote: post #49
jimmydorry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labelling is one thing (putting a warning underneath posts with the current understanding of a given topic), but the step too far (in my opinion) was the silencing and deplatforming by way of removing posts and banning users. No company should have unfettered control over the metaphorical "town square" to control population-level discourse.

Then the "town square" would become completely overrun with hateful people yelling falsehoods through microphones. Normal people would avoid the "town square" like the plague.

People of the past would consider our crowded city town spaces completely overrun. I can't speak for your specific locality, but when I go to mine, I always see that there are several people with a microphone proselytising or screaming about the end of the world.

Perspective changes over time, and I have no doubt that the "town squares" will adapt into forms unrecognizable to those of us alive now, but to simply throw our hands up in the air a cede all control of public discourse to unaccountable entities is an abhorent thought.

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

#397

Post by throwntoday »

shapefrog wrote: post #385
throwntoday wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It truly is easier to fool someone than convince them they have been fooled. Best of luck to you lad.

> saber rattling morons who will crucify anyone that speaks against them. Consider me crucified.

You won't even accept they are useless now that the narrative has shifted back to that. I don't know what else to tell you mate.

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

#398

Post by jjeaff »

disambiguation wrote: post #379
jjeaff wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more nuance in your fact that a person who survives a COVID infection has immunity. That nuance is that most people who think they were infected actually did not ever get tested. Additionally, testing for previous infection takes more time and is more costly and adds additional complexity to the cheaper and simpler one step plan of "just go get vaccinated".

yes .. I cover that a few comments ago -- hence the "noble lie". i.e let's lie and say natural immunity does _not_ work, that way people are more likely to get vaccinated. It's for their own good, the common folk don't know any better!

So in your opinion, is there no such thing as a noble lie? While I don't know if I would consider this one of those cases or not, I do know with a pretty strong certainty that this particular lie can and most likely did save lives.

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

#399

Post by chimprich »

native_samples wrote: post #391
chimprich wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very few people believe the droplet theory now Again, absolute nonsense. World Health Organisation: "Current evidence suggests that the virus spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, for example at a conversational distance. The virus can spread from an infected person’s mouth or nose in small liquid particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe."[0] > People were locked i…

You keep trying to make this about how you (or the WHO) think masks should affect outcomes. I keep pointing how they actually affect outcomes. Because reality is more important than theory, that's all that needs to be done here. Masks do not work. The data is definitive and final. How you think COVID spreads or what the WHO says just doesn't matter at all, because they clearly have no idea how it spreads. If they did…

I look forward to your peer-reviewed paper on this with some rigorous mathematical analysis rather than what you think you saw on some cherry-picked data in a blog post.

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

#400

Post by disambiguation »

jjeaff wrote: post #398
disambiguation wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes .. I cover that a few comments ago -- hence the "noble lie". i.e let's lie and say natural immunity does _not_ work, that way people are more likely to get vaccinated. It's for their own good, the common folk don't know any better!

So in your opinion, is there no such thing as a noble lie? While I don't know if I would consider this one of those cases or not, I do know with a pretty strong certainty that this particular lie can and most likely did save lives.

No, I strongly disagree that this saved lives and everyone keeps getting this wrong about the pandemic.

Look at Japan and Russia. Japan was highly compliant with lockdowns, masks, and vaccine inoculation. Russia was the exact opposite. The difference being trust in institutions. You could argue lives were lost in Russia because of the inherent distrust.

In parallel, the USA was caught telling blatant lies. This is exactly what spooked and outraged so many people ultimately fueling the anti-vax movement. "If they're lying about this, what else are they lying about?"

No truth, no trust. The USA lost trust, and lost lives as a result.

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