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The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

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Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#81

Post by jacquesm »

throwawaysea wrote: post #76
jacquesm wrote: post #37

The comments here are roughly the opposite of what a responsible group of people should agree to. Yes, the WHO isn't perfect. They made a ton of mistakes, especially in the beginning when information was scarce and the demands for information far outstripped their ability to deliver. But focusing on the mistakes and trying to play politics with the sensitive situation that they were handed after the fact certainly is…

> From day #1 the WHO has been arguing for strong countermeasures rather than to slow-walk it to see how bad it was going to get because time lost will not be won back during a pandemic. This is explicitly false. The WHO did not argue for strong countermeasures from “day #1”. They didn’t even acknowledge human to human transmission until late January 2020 ( https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1219478547644813312?s=20…

The WHO has given a running report on the knowledge as it became available and has adjusted their severance in lockstep with that.

The information that they had was flawed and incomplete, which is enough to understand the degree to which they felt the need to sound the alarm.

The only people who are rabidly blaming the WHO for 'failing us' are the ones that would like to distract from the people the really failed us: the politicians that decided to ignore the information coming out of the WHO and that refused to act on it. Those governments that went a step further and played it safe did considerably better, but do note that those very same groups that are blaming the WHO are claiming that these countries only managed to do so by curbing people's freedoms, by abusing their population and so on.

On another note, the people who continuously talk about 'narratives' tend to be the ones that are most invested in sowing chaos and dissent as well as distrust in those authorities working hard to help us get out of this. The practical upshot of this is that you may succeed in undermining the sentiment that the WHO is a useful organization but that will not change the facts on the ground, and the isolationism that this is closely related to tends to be strongly associated with people who would like to reduce the world to little fiefdoms without such niceties as the UN, the WHO, the International Criminal Court etc. Be careful whose water you carry.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#82

Post by ethbr0 »

topkai22 wrote: post #58
ethbr0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the problems international cooperation could tackle, pandemics seem like they should be the easiest. Either you are dealing with one, or you aren't. Pretty stark contrast. So should make countries more comfortable ceding sovereignty, knowing it's going to be only in exceptional circumstances. Coupled with the fact that SARS-CoV-2 has proven that even the most stringent border lockdowns fail in the face of high…

Point of order- The most stringent border lockdowns actually worked shockingly well, see New Zealand, for example. Also “you are either in a pandemic, or you aren’t” isn’t the important part of a response framework. The far more important part is preventing novel diseases from becoming a pandemic in the first place, even if they have the potential to be.

New Zealand isn't very representative of the world, geographically and in effective population density.

Coupled with the fact that it's a fundamentally unstable system to mate "highly transmissible pathogen" with "single layer of protection." There's a reason network security is migrating to zero trust, and it shares many parallels with pandemic modeling.

Yes, border lockdowns will work if a country gets lucky. How long can they stay lucky?

I'm also suspicious we can identify novel diseases fast enough (presumably in animal reservoirs) fast enough to be effective. There are too many unseen places on this planet, and pathogens evolve too quickly. Again, it only takes one.

What should be boosted and universalized is disease surveillance. The patchwork (nationally and internationally) systems for stitching together sample -> testing -> result communication could bear a lot of improvement.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#83

Post by jimmydorry »

garmaine wrote: post #55
jimmydorry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a whole, the world is better off with the FDA's and their equivalent per nation. They approve and oversee the distribution of health and food products and set out minimum guidelines that influence how said products are marketed, recalled or banned; which on balance is a positive for society in the absence of a better regulatory body. By definition, these groups are political though. Almost none of them conduct the…

Anyone who lived through the AIDS epidemic can tell you that having a regulatory body is not automatically better than none at all. FDA bureaucracy and inaction has killed more Americans than WW2. Dissolving the FDA, or at least the gatekeeping branches of it, is a third option that ought to be seriously considered.

I think the more straight forward upgrade to the status-quo would be funding it to a level where it actually does not have to rely on data that the manufacturers / creators supply.

Actually sample testing new and existing products against guidelines as well as being an active participant in trials would go a long way towards moving the FDA from being "paper-pushers" towards a more hands-on regulatory body.

They should also have enough expertise in-house to not rely on lobbists and industry experts for new regulations, when these outside forces by nature have competing interests.

Straight abolishing any part of it without proposing a substitute doesn't strike me as being in the best interests of society.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#84

Post by garmaine »

jacquesm wrote: post #72
garmaine wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who lived through the AIDS epidemic can tell you that having a regulatory body is not automatically better than none at all. FDA bureaucracy and inaction has killed more Americans than WW2. Dissolving the FDA, or at least the gatekeeping branches of it, is a third option that ought to be seriously considered.

> Dissolving the FDA, or at least the gatekeeping branches of it, is a third option that ought to be seriously considered. Yes, so that the supplements industry can run amok on an unsuspecting public. No really, that's just what we need, especially now.

I called out the gatekeeping job of the FDA specifically. The agency does two things: (1) blacklist food products with deceptive or harmful ingredients or advertising, and (2) whitelist the medications you’re allowed to put in your body, with or without the assistance of a doctor.

It’s (2) that is the problem. With informed consent, you should be allowed to put whatever you want in your body without going to jail. It’s your body.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#85

Post by garmaine »

topkai22 wrote: post #70
garmaine wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO did measurable damage throughout the pandemic, but particularly in the beginning. They played down covid, were against travel bans, was anti-mask, and have hindered investigation into the origins of covid. They also did good, like getting PCR testing available worldwide on a compressed timescale. But let’s not pretend that the good didn’t come with a healthy helping of truly terrible decisions along the way.…

I agree we should be skeptical of the WHO, but they are valuable as a coordination mechanism. I don’t see a scenario where we can restart a truly global health agency from scratch, and I don’t think a series of bilateral or multi-lateral arrangements will work as well.

But counterpoint: TFA is about the WHO asking for more authority, the power through treaties to control what governments do or don’t do. However the countries which handled COVID correctly (Taiwan, New Zealand) did so by outright ignoring WHO and telling them to shove it.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#86

Post by philliphaydon »

dirtyid wrote: post #62
philliphaydon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of asia did well in the beginning by ignoring the WHO. Even NZ ignored the WHO and managed to keep it under control for a long time. If the CCP spent more time being open and honest and less time arresting people for talking about covid and documenting it this would probably have ended up better than they are now. Even now the CCP propaganda is still trying to convince Twitter and Facebook users that covid star…

Countries that did well responsibly implemented WHOs basic epidemiologic principes of test, trace, isolate to contain spread - 101 epidemiological strategy WHO recommended. Including NZ. Import statistic numbers of covid cases oringated from PRC has demosntrated it was managable because PRC never allowed it to get bad in the first place via draconian lock downs. CCP quarantined entire province of Wuhan, they did more…

> Countries that did well responsibly implemented WHOs basic epidemiologic principes of test, trace, isolate to contain spread - 101 epidemiological strategy WHO recommended. Including NZ.

NZ and Taiwan didn't follow WHO in the early days. Going against all the recommendations of the WHO of not using masks, not closing boarders, not locking down. And both countries did super well at controlling the pandemic.

> CCP quarantined entire province of Wuhan, they did more than enough to buy time for any country with capability to execute competent containment.

The CCP welded people into their apartments, boxed them up in metal boxes and shipped them off to quarentine, dragged them out of their homes. The whole time lying about the number of cases, and the seriousness. They shut down domestic travel and stopped incoming international flights. But allowed outgoing international flights while calling anyone who stopped flights from China racist.

> And? Of course CCP is going to tit-for-tat origin propaganda started by US.

There was no propaganda started by the US. The lab theory started in Asia in the Janurary. It wasn't until the US/Trump mentioned it that it got shutdown as a conspiracy by Trump.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#87

Post by jacquesm »

garmaine wrote: post #84
jacquesm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dissolving the FDA, or at least the gatekeeping branches of it, is a third option that ought to be seriously considered. Yes, so that the supplements industry can run amok on an unsuspecting public. No really, that's just what we need, especially now.

I called out the gatekeeping job of the FDA specifically. The agency does two things: (1) blacklist food products with deceptive or harmful ingredients or advertising, and (2) whitelist the medications you’re allowed to put in your body, with or without the assistance of a doctor. It’s (2) that is the problem. With informed consent, you should be allowed to put whatever you want in your body without going to jail. It…

(2) is not a problem, it is to prevent problems. If you think (2) is a problem you are probably doing something very stupid.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#88

Post by jacquesm »

tcmart14 wrote: post #20

The treaty would be great, if we forget and forgive some missteps of the WHO, besides this point. This is the single most important point. Who in the hell is going to actually enforce the treaty? Most of the UN security council are permanent members who all have some ideological bent against each other. Not to mention, the US doesn't really allow itself to be accountable to international courts. Why would any other c…

These are all fair points that lay bare some of the major issues the world will have to deal with sooner or later.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#89

Post by jacquesm »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #22
wesleywt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a biologist looking at comments like these make me concerned that the general public has not learned its lesson on pandemics yet. It is far more concerning our destruction of the environment and our encroachment of habitats will lead to way more pandemics.

I’m very much concerned with our government funding gof research in a foreign and adversarial weapons laboratory. Stopping that research would be a very important lesson to learn in this pandemic because it might actually be able to stop the next covid 19.

Yes, stopping such research is important.

But it has nothing to do with COVID-19.

Re: The WHO is seeking a new treaty on handling future pandemics

#90

Post by jacquesm »

throwawaysea wrote: post #61
ethbr0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the problems international cooperation could tackle, pandemics seem like they should be the easiest. Either you are dealing with one, or you aren't. Pretty stark contrast. So should make countries more comfortable ceding sovereignty, knowing it's going to be only in exceptional circumstances. Coupled with the fact that SARS-CoV-2 has proven that even the most stringent border lockdowns fail in the face of high…

> Coupled with the fact that SARS-CoV-2 has proven that even the most stringent border lockdowns fail in the face of highly transmissible, asymptomatic threats. Which makes this an "everyone" problem instead of a "head in the sand is okay" one. The “most stringent border lockdowns” didn’t happen, at least not in a timely way. The WHO is one reason why - even at the end of January 2020 they recommended against countri…

in January 2020, nobody, including you thought this was going to go as far and as fast as it did. By then, very likely the cat was already out of the bag and a worldwide travel ban would have helped but would not have prevented the pandemic outright. Was this a mistake? Yes, because that decision violates the cautionary principle when dealing with novel diseases. The WHO was concerned with being found to be 'alarmist' but this time around that would have been the right position to take. Ironically had they done so and prevented the pandemic from spreading you would now be berating them for being such idiots that they caused us all to stop traveling for nothing in 2020, on account of the prevention paradox. And that makes you part of the problem: there is nothing that the WHO could have done that in your eyes would have been a proportional response, and when you are dealing with a novel pathogen mistakes are inevitable.

A bit of restraint and some more thinking about this on your part would go a long way towards a more reasonable stance. But those that see the UN and the WHO as the root of all evil tend to do everything they can to avoid seeing reason, instead everything gets bent to the 'UN bad' talking point.

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