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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
#42>“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…
Three, I think; being overconfident and not admitting uncertainty from the beginning (or lying from the start, depending on your interpretation)
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#43No post body was provided.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#44>“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…
This is because science is being corroded by politics. Politics is being paralyzed by binarism. Everything is Right OR Wrong, left OR right, on OR off. there is no grey areas anymore.. there is no acceptable position that is in between or overlaps.
Hmmm... There are some grey areas. For example, in most spaces it's socially acceptable to wear one mask or two.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. They act like they are the "authority" when most of their initial statements were wrong. It's understandable to be wrong because no one knew much about this virus at first, and everyone, including the ones that were proven right, was making guesses. But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting.
>But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting. Is it though? If someone makes an unfounded guess and states it as fact isn't it fair to call that misinformation even if that turns out to be correct? What would be your preferred approach?
Debate, free speech, a judicious tongue, and an open mind.
What we got? People without a full understanding of the subject matter themselves acting as if they were the ultimate authority on SARS-CoV-2, and a cadre of sympathetic globalist-oriented corporations uncritically deferring to them in the extreme. It’s like some of the supposedly smartest people in the world just have their brains leak out their ears simply because a three-letter agency with such apparently big words such as “world” and “health” in the full name make some pronouncements and broker no argument.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#46I think there’s still an amazing potential thriller miniseries or decisions-matter video game around really difficult public health strategy. The game theory is terrifying. It plays out locally when the water company issues boil water notices to deter usage. This is a ‘lie’ meant to prevent the need to issue a real boil water notice. Perhaps our protagonist realizes that lying will save countless lives, but he must f…
Sounds plentifully like frostpunk but the constraints are more based on disease and human cognition.
I posit that for the purposes of psychological/mental health, it is not worth it to live in a system run through deception. It is also civically dangerous because the habit of lying can be so easily transposed from a selfless telos to a selfish one - and, conveniently, lied about. If it is possible, I would rather die so that someone else is spared having to live in a deceptive system. Do I have the right to impose that decision on others, though? I say no. It's their responsibility to make that choice.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#47I 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…
> when pretty much everyone was in the 'just a flu/cold' mode
By "everyone" do you mean people around where you live? The CDC was always concerned about mortality rates and never suggested it was just a flu/cold.
In Feb 2020 I recall hearing the president say the flu/cold thing, however the CDC was always trying to say it is serious. They were just not clear on where it had spread yet, and due to a testing screw-up, it was undertracked at the beginning. Also, at that time the CDC was saying healthy people didn't need to wear masks -- because it wasn't yet a pandemic and there still wasn't research indicating that masks protect the wearer.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#48> For example, even in the middle of the fast-moving epidemic, the WHO dismissed field epidemiology reports as proof of airborne transmission because the evidence was not definitive, something that is difficult to achieve quickly during an outbreak. It seems the responsible thing to do in this situation, rather than tweeting definitively that the virus was "NOT" spread via airborne transition, would've been too withh…
The problem with this, is that people want action items. No one wants to go to the WHO and find out nothing about the virus. If you wanted to do that, you could go anywhere. So they're encouraged to put something down. That something was wrong. It happens, it's a group run by humans. It would be great if they got everything correct, but unfortunately they don't, and to make matters worse, it sounds like they're an or…
> The problem with this, is that people want action items. No one wants to go to the WHO and find out nothing about the virus.
People want a lot of things. That does not automatically mean that appealing to it is the right thing to do.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. They act like they are the "authority" when most of their initial statements were wrong. It's understandable to be wrong because no one knew much about this virus at first, and everyone, including the ones that were proven right, was making guesses. But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting.
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.
Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne
#50Great I wonder if YouTube will now unban all the “disinformation” videos they banned while the WHO was wrong. There were so many people debating this long before the WHO changed its tune. This is why free speech must be protected. Fuck these overlords telling us what to think.
Wasn't the banned disinformation about how COVID is just the flu or started in a government lab? The article seems to indicate that the virus was actually more transmissible and dangerous than officially communicated. Do we really think things would have gone better if they said it was more dangerous? What am I missing?