How Did the World Miss Covid-19's Silent Spread? (nytimes.com) 265
Long-time Slashdot reader hankwang writes: The New York Times has an article on how the transmission of Covid-19 by seemingly healthy individuals was discovered in Germany on January 27, but the report was discredited because of a quibble over whether it was really asymptomatic or rather presymptomatic or oligosymptomatic transmission. Oligosymptomatic means that the symptoms are so mild that they are not recognized as symptoms... It took until March before asymptomatic transmission was publicly acknowledged as playing a significant role.
From the article. (Alternate source here): Dr. Rothe, an infectious disease specialist at Munich University Hospital, and her colleagues were among the first to warn the world [on January 30]. But even as evidence accumulated from other scientists, leading health officials expressed unwavering confidence that symptomless spreading was not important. In the days and weeks to come, politicians, public health officials and rival academics disparaged or ignored the Munich team. Some actively worked to undermine the warnings at a crucial moment, as the disease was spreading unnoticed...
It is now widely accepted that seemingly healthy people can spread the virus, though uncertainty remains over how much they have contributed to the pandemic. Though estimates vary, models using data from Hong Kong, Singapore and China suggest that 30 to 60 percent of spreading occurs when people have no symptoms... The Chinese health authorities had explicitly cautioned that patients were contagious before showing symptoms. A Japanese bus driver was infected while transporting seemingly healthy tourists from Wuhan. And by the middle of February, 355 people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship had tested positive. About a third of the infected passengers and staff had no symptoms...
[P]ublic health officials saw danger in promoting the risk of silent spreaders. If quarantining sick people and tracing their contacts could not reliably contain the disease, governments might abandon those efforts altogether... Plus, preventing silent spreading required aggressive, widespread testing that was then impossible for most countries. "It's not like we had some easy alternative," said Dr. Libman, the Canadian doctor. "The message was basically: 'If this is true, we're in trouble.'" European health officials say they were reluctant to acknowledge silent spreading because the evidence was trickling in and the consequences of a false alarm would have been severe...
As the research coalesced in March, European health officials were convinced. "OK, this is really a big issue," Dr. Agoritsa Baka, a senior European Union doctor, recalled thinking. "It plays a big role in the transmission..." Since then, the C.D.C., governments around the world and, finally, the World Health Organization have recommended that people wear masks in public.
From the article. (Alternate source here): Dr. Rothe, an infectious disease specialist at Munich University Hospital, and her colleagues were among the first to warn the world [on January 30]. But even as evidence accumulated from other scientists, leading health officials expressed unwavering confidence that symptomless spreading was not important. In the days and weeks to come, politicians, public health officials and rival academics disparaged or ignored the Munich team. Some actively worked to undermine the warnings at a crucial moment, as the disease was spreading unnoticed...
It is now widely accepted that seemingly healthy people can spread the virus, though uncertainty remains over how much they have contributed to the pandemic. Though estimates vary, models using data from Hong Kong, Singapore and China suggest that 30 to 60 percent of spreading occurs when people have no symptoms... The Chinese health authorities had explicitly cautioned that patients were contagious before showing symptoms. A Japanese bus driver was infected while transporting seemingly healthy tourists from Wuhan. And by the middle of February, 355 people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship had tested positive. About a third of the infected passengers and staff had no symptoms...
[P]ublic health officials saw danger in promoting the risk of silent spreaders. If quarantining sick people and tracing their contacts could not reliably contain the disease, governments might abandon those efforts altogether... Plus, preventing silent spreading required aggressive, widespread testing that was then impossible for most countries. "It's not like we had some easy alternative," said Dr. Libman, the Canadian doctor. "The message was basically: 'If this is true, we're in trouble.'" European health officials say they were reluctant to acknowledge silent spreading because the evidence was trickling in and the consequences of a false alarm would have been severe...
As the research coalesced in March, European health officials were convinced. "OK, this is really a big issue," Dr. Agoritsa Baka, a senior European Union doctor, recalled thinking. "It plays a big role in the transmission..." Since then, the C.D.C., governments around the world and, finally, the World Health Organization have recommended that people wear masks in public.
Same way it is still spreading now (Score:5, Insightful)
Willful ignorance, refusal to accept something a little outside the scientific norm and money before people.
Science denial and saving face is widespread, this is the result.
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Other countries managed to stop it or control it much better. It might help if the president wasn't making a show of ignoring even the most basic precautions with his followers ignoring the same precautions as a bizarre form of virtue signaling.
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Re:Same way it is still spreading now (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Missed the news for the last two months? here [ucsf.edu], here [mayoclinic.org], here [cdc.gov], here [livescience.com]
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The GP stated:
New York has also shown that face masks totally prevent spreading -- but from an infected person not to a healthy person. So they only help other people than the wearer.
(emphasis added).
From your UCSF reference:
“I think there’s enough evidence to say that the best benefit is for people who have COVID-19 to protect them from giving COVID-19 to other people, but you’re still going to get a benefit from wearing a mask if you don’t have COVID-19,” said Chin-Hong.
Neither the CDC, livescience, and mayoclinic links that you provided make unambiguous statements about whether cloth masks are effective for outbound transmission (from the wearer) only or for both inbound and outbound transmission, nor that they "totally prevent". They imply that cloth masks "help slow the spread".
If masks scale outbound transmission by a factor o and inbound transmission by a factor i (say o=0.25, i=0.5), the maskless people around a
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Can you cite any of that? Serious question.
It's true, but the trick is that "pre-symptomatic" is now being separated out from "asymptomatic" (originally, if you look at news articles from January/February they were one thing). Pre-symptomatic people seem to spread the virus particularly heavily just before they start to get symptoms. Asymptomatic people seem to never spread it particularly, though they can given correct circumstances.
Re:Same way it is still spreading now (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be fooled by that, there is a statistical reason why asymptomatic people or oligosymptomatic people seem to spread the contagion less than other people, it is all down to testing.
So when will they ever test an asymptomatic person, only one time, when a very symptomatic person is tested 'FIRST' and then the test people who came in contract with them, so asymptomatic people get tested 'SECOND' nearly every single time. What is the order of the test results, that is the order of infection. So how many times did an symptomatic person 'ACTUALLY' spread the contagion, we don't fucking know because they always get tested after a person who shows strong symptoms, right fucking there, a glaring statistical stupidity and I mean it is really fucking stupid. Almost like it was 'DONE OF FUCKING PURPOSE'.
It is all looking as suss as fuck. The promotion of fear never ending, the really bad science, the really bad statistics (now beyond just being incompetence to purposeful intent), a continually changing story (often a sure sign of a bullshit yarn, the liars have to keep changing their story as they get caught out), the continued pushing of the shut down after all those protest and riots obviously spreading the infection far and wide and yet clearly purposefully corrupt governments kept the shutdown in place, WHY?!?
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Don't be fooled by that, there is a statistical reason why asymptomatic people or oligosymptomatic people seem to spread the contagion less than other people, it is all down to testing. So when will they ever test an asymptomatic person, only one time, when a very symptomatic person is tested 'FIRST' and then the test people who came in contract with them, so asymptomatic people get tested 'SECOND' nearly every single time. What is the order of the test results, that is the order of infection. So how many times did an symptomatic person 'ACTUALLY' spread the contagion, we don't fucking know because they always get tested after a person who shows strong symptoms, right fucking there, a glaring statistical stupidity
A nice story, but inaccurate.
A first person is tested, call him Adam, and is shown to be infected. They trace his contacts, and test Betty, Bob, and Bernadette. Betty tests positive but asymptomatic. They now test HER contacts, Charlie, Carter, and Cassie. Charlie and Cassie, WHO HAD NO CONTACT WITH ADAM, test positive. They got it from Betty.
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> Plus, it can spread from infected people who show few, if any, symptoms.
Actually no. Certainly some people show very minor symptoms, but the current evidence is that they are not very infectious.
That statement is very controversial. The most current evidence is actually that infection from asymptomatic people, and people with minor symptoms, is in fact the most significant part of the transmission.
Uh, quick question, did you actually read the article we're commenting on?
Re:Same way it is still spreading now (Score:4, Informative)
> Plus, it can spread from infected people who show few, if any, symptoms.
Actually no. Certainly some people show very minor symptoms, but the current evidence is that they are not very infectious.
DISINFORMATION WARNING!
This user is aliterate and has been led to believe false information by their social media. DO NOT listen to non-readers!
This idiot is recycling information about other viruses and presuming that it applies to COVID-19. Most respiratory illnesses have minimal spread by people with minimal symptoms; that does not apply to COVID-19. This idiocy is why it is spread this much. We still have morons who can't comprehend that there is a unified message from the medical community that this particular virus is spread by asymptomatic patients, is spread by symptomatic patients before the onset of symptoms, and unlike almost all other respiratory infections, continues to spread for up to two weeks after symptoms cease.
We still have morons testing positive and saying, "Don't worry, I'll isolate for two weeks." It is actually two weeks after symptoms end for this virus.
Re:Same way it is still spreading now (Score:4, Insightful)
Note how most of the news stories about the new spike in cases don't mention the protesters' mass gatherings a couple incubation periods ago.
Willful ignorance is nothing compared to an enforced counter-factual orthodoxy.
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Interestingly (Still needs more fact checking) it seems that protestors don't seem to be the ones spreading it, it is religious gatherings, people who deny it exists or can hurt them and outright selfish a-holes that do the spreading.
Re:Same way it is still spreading now (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Same way it is still spreading now (Score:4, Informative)
That you far right people think that no spike linked to the protests means it's ok to go ahead and cram people shoulder to shoulder inside in a poorly ventilated space are because there was no rise in cases linked to areas with protests, well, in your case, just intellectually dishonest.
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The protests tend to be outside, and a lot of protesters are wearing masks and maintaining at least some social sistancing.
I suspect there probably is some spreading among protesters, but those spikes wouldn't likely show up right away (given the incubation period and confusing the symptoms of covid for lingering effects of tear gas.
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From the article:
"there is no specific directive barring tracers from asking about protest participation"
So where are you getting "explicit orders not to ask people about their attendance in the protests"?
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Go ahead, check the link - Bill de Blasio (original name: William Wilhelm Jr [wikipedia.org]) and Andrew Cuomo put the tracers under explicit orders to NOT ask about their participation in the protests. Not really a surprise, given their orders to put infected, symptomatic SARS-CoV2 patients into nursing homes.
As far as my sig, intentionally withholding information [justthenews.com] from the incoming Administration, and conducting illegal spying on a Presidential campaign and subsequent incoming Administration [washingtontimes.com], is called treason.
What am I
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Your link of "proof" includes such statements as:
It's nothing but speculation, and not proof of anything that Obama did. You should be embarrassed by your claims.
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To repeat: your link has no proof that Obama did anything; it's all silly speculation and typical conspiracy bs.
But it does demonstrate that, yet again, engaging with you is a waste of time.
Have a nice day.
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The spike among younger demographics makes me think that this is unlikely. My read is that the lockdowns lasted too long, and made people stir crazy and irrational on risks when it ended. Lifting sooner and requiring masks might have made a bigger impact than the way it was done.
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Or lifting more gradually, actually requiring masks, and "leaders" setting a good example.
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Studies are showing that the raise is actually coming from bars and parties being held. Next, are people working in offices that have started up.
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Any assertion protests are not spreading the disease needs to be accompanied by an explanation of how protestors have learned not to exhale when infected, not to inhale when uninfected, or spy-satellite photos of their secret vaccine production facilities.
Obviously the dense crowds of tens of thousands of people are spreading it. I don't see the point of being purposefully obtuse about it. Deny physics and statistics if you want. It may (quite thankfully) be that there is lower transmission outdoors (or wit
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Totally agree, facts before anything else.
What I DO know is that masks are NOT for protecting YOU, outside a hospital environment, but they ARE effective at stopping YOU infecting others.
So in relation to protests, as long as masks were worn (I don't have that info either) and hand sanitising was done, they shouldn't* be a big spreader.
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Hmm, I see that mentioned in most stories I've see about the spike.
Re:Same way it is still spreading now (Score:4, Informative)
Note how most of the news stories about the new spike in cases don't mention the protesters' mass gatherings a couple incubation periods ago.
Probably because the spike in new cases aren't in the same cities and counties where most of the protesting too place.
I get it, science is hard. That's why we leave it to scientists, it prevents us from posting stupid shit on Slashdot.
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That's very few people .. not the biggest spreaders. Neglible. Almost ignorable.
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What exactly is your point? Why do you need to be snarky about facts?
This wasn't known at the start of the pandemic.. and we know it now... Yep, you are just a troll and I fell for it. Damnit.
Re: Same way it is still spreading now (Score:2)
Before the rest of the world found out, China knew that it was deadly, highly contagious and that they could not come up with a test for it.
They told the WHO and they concurred that it was no big deal. Even now stuff all is known about it.
Now you get âoeProtesters donâ(TM)t spread itâ even though LAPD is seeing noticeably more cases among officers on protest duty than those who have not been.
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Yes, some test kits are defective, sometimes even with a good kit, you get a false negative. Sometimes a person spreads covid, then clears the virus themselves before they get tested.
"World Miss Covid" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"World Miss Covid" (Score:5, Funny)
Ivanka.
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I'll bet you stop laughing when Trump dumps Pence and picks Ivanka as his VP.
(But I wish I had a Funny mod point for the 737-MAX joke.)
The world did not miss anything (Score:5, Informative)
The events in Wuhan were well publicized in January. The explosion in the USA did not happen until March.
The USA simply chose to ignore the available information.
Other countries much closer to China like Taiwan or Australia took notice and have had virtually no cases.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/0... [cnn.com]
Re:The world did not miss anything (Score:4, Interesting)
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yes, same scenario just about 2-4 weeks earlier than the us. if there wasn't already enough evidence, it kept piling up.
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absolute number of cases did mount more or less at the same time, but lockdown measures in usa lagged between 1 and 2 weeks behind depending on what you look at.
for reference:
https://covidtracker.bsg.ox.ac... [ox.ac.uk]
https://outbreak.info/epidemio... [outbreak.info]
don't remember the full week trump kept tweeting 'this is just a flu'? that wasn't free, as new york had soon to find out.
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All of those got it under control after 2 months of strict lock-down.
They did not reopen before it was under control, unlike the USA.
Because the richest country of the world "cannot afford" not to work, i.e. because the country with oine of the least fair income distributions of the world, practically enslaves many of its citizens and they must work or perish.
Re:The world did not miss anything (Score:5, Informative)
Is this a trick question? (Score:5, Insightful)
How Did the World Miss Covid-19's Silent Spread?
Because it was silent?
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but do you still spread?
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Scientists can't see forest for the trees (Score:5, Interesting)
In the early days of the outbreak (late January), I managed to get into a meeting of microbiologists/community health professionals discussing Covid-19 transmission. The consensus was that transmission wasn't "airborne" because the virus was in droplets of liquid exhaled by people. I asked "isn't that airborne?" and got a lecture on the different types of transmission; droplets, aerisolized (Influenza A) or actual virus molecules being carried in the air ("airborne" which is how smallpox is transmitted).
The message given by these professionals to the Ontario Ministry of Health was that the virus wasn't airborne (strictly true), which was interpreted as masks not being helpful (completely wrong). I don't think it was properly resolved here until late May.
From what I saw, I can completely understand that scientists could get into an argument about what were the names of the actual states when the virus was passed between people and miss the point that seemingly healthy people can infect others.
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Airborne transmission is very rare -- they were mostly correct. Most of the transmission is by being in close proximity to a symptomatic individual. Social distancing works best but scientists vastly over-estimated the median intelligence level of people --idiots turned out to be too stupid for that, so we've had to resort to masks which are a sub-optimal solution. Blocking symptomatic individuals from entering New Zealand along with one of the world's strictest social distancing enforcement appears to have
What's the difference ... (Score:5, Funny)
A: The Coronavirus is airborne.
Was in Thailand at the time... (Score:3)
In Thailand, they had 3-5 planes a day of people coming in directly from Wuhan well into the Chinese New Year. The only precautions that were made (around mid/late February) were taking temperatures at places of business and the airport... yet they magically dodged the bullet. There were a few cases of bus drivers or taxi drivers becoming infected, but in total they only had 3-4,000 infections.
While I don’t take the official numbers as at all accurate (the cost of a COVID test up through early March was about USD$1,000), by all accounts they didn’t have much of a problem... despite a huge amount of tourists travelling throughout the country presumably spreading things. Masks were not widespread, especially in January and early February. Yet...
How did the world miss it? (Score:2)
Um (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese health authorities had explicitly cautioned that patients were contagious before showing symptoms.
Um. In January, the WHO was uncritically tweeting that Chinese researchers had found no person to person spread.
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation please.
And what about in February?
USA did not rise until March.
This is not the fault of either the WHO or China, even though both may have not acted perfect.
But there are consequences of electing a self centered lazy idiot as President.
Re: Um (Score:2, Informative)
China lied through their teeth as always and WHO aided and abetted. How is the global spread anyone else's fault? Was Italy Trump's fault? Spain? Sweden? Belgium?
Smh
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China had closed down Wuhan in January, and that was widely reported. They were actually pretty open on this one.
But it helps if you don't limit yourself to Fox News.
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and WHO aided and abetted
The WHO's sole job is to aid and abet the spread of official government data from the whole world. They are also only advisory, the buck stops with the health organisation of every nation. Be that a nation in the middle of carnival which gets a lot of Chinese tourists, a nation that decides not to stop Las Fallas despite a known outbreak in Europe, a nation that ignores every other country while other countries go into knockdown, or a nation run by an orange toddler who takes out his ADHD on twitter.
Re: Um (Score:2)
Knowing a new virus that is highly contagious and deadly and spreading like wildfire and holding that back for 2-3 months, and theyâ(TM)re not to blame.
Clearly, the Chinese are innocent, and Trump is hugely popular amongst Democrats, especially with the Clintons.
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Should have restricted movement mid February, about a week before Australia did.
Australia has virtually no Covid-19.
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Really man start looking at the science and ignore your "colored president bad" hate.
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Ryan was correct. On 1 Feb there was still time to contain the virus if countries acted sensibly.
But they did not, and that opportunity was lost.
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Citation please.
Well the WHO's comments were common knowledge, as was the fact that this was China's line. It's TFS that is revisionist. China claimed there was no person to person transmission right until the day before they shut down Wuhan.
But you're right that what's going on in the USA is exclusively the fault of the USA.
Re: Um (Score:2)
http://timelinecovid.com/ [timelinecovid.com]
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Um. In January, the WHO was uncritically tweeting that Chinese researchers had found no person to person spread.
Indeed. TFA is revisionist. The Chinese specifically played down the possibility of it being contiguous. It's a position they only reversed MUCH later.
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Ah, so you're in favour of the UN disregarding sovereignty and just sending in their own scientists?
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YOU are the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole entitled delusional Western population. Your media and your governments are just pandering to you, you ignorant imbeciles obsessed with "universal unalienable rights"
Your best created this world that the whole 7B enjoy right now (Newton and Musk). Your worst (looting and rioting ethnoimbicles and ignorant hillbillies) is burning it down.
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Only the Elderly (Score:5, Insightful)
Truish. If you count elderly over 50 years old.
But that all happened in China in January and was well known. USA infections did not start to rise until mid March.
Normally, if you see your neighbor eaten by a Tiger, you do not wait until you feel the bite before thinking that there are dangerous Tigers about.
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We've already got that covered [youtube.com].
Re: Only the Elderly (Score:2)
When most of the people are being bitten by mosquitoes, yes, the person claim it's a tiger is viewed rather skeptically.
When it turns out that yes, in fact, there is a tiger and it mainly eats the old and obese EVEN THEN it's ridiculous to tell everyone they should hide under their needs quivering in fear of tigers.
Re:The WHO covered for China (Score:5, Insightful)
Source for the 90% not showing symptoms at all?
If that was the case then places like Australia could not have controlled the spread as they (stupidly) ONLY tested people with contacts or symptoms for the first few months.
The data casts much doubt on your claim.
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Source is likely a previous Slashdot article with CDC speculating that 10x more Americans may have been infected than previously thought, with most of those showing few or no symptoms. It's still very early days for understanding everything about this thing.
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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Possibly.
In countries that have huge testing compared to cases, this is not the case. It is just basket case countries that don't want to test, or their leaders don't want to look bad, that there is many more cases "untested".
The US tests SFA and is surprised when they get a 25% positive result. Well of course you get a high positive result when you ONLY test people showing symptoms...
90%? Math says no.
this is false (Score:5, Interesting)
China knew about it in December, locked down Wuhan in January, it did not take months for them to realize it was not like the flu, it took weeks.
Taiwan locked down before China because they realized China was not going fast enough. They also knew it was not the flu.
Li Wenliang, the doctor who got the unpleasant visit from the Chinese police for talking about Covid in an email to colleagues, died on 7 feb 2020, he was not "elderly".
etc etc etc.
of course incorrect comments get 5 votes on slashdot, my conclusion is that the World missed it because the World has too many places like Slashdot, where outright wrong information is upvoted which re-enforces more posting of wrong information.
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China knew about it in December
No, China knew nothing more than an abnormal high cases of pneumonia in December. The virus wasn't even discovered as the cause until mid Jan, and wasn't identified as unique until 4 days later.
Please stop trying to revise history.
of course incorrect comments get 5 votes on slashdot
Nah mate, you only made it to +4
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China knew about it in December
No, China knew nothing more than an abnormal high cases of pneumonia in December. The virus wasn't even discovered as the cause until mid Jan, and wasn't identified as unique until 4 days later.
Please stop trying to revise history.
Li Wenliang blew the whistle because it was another strain of SARS [wikipedia.org]
And on December 30th, Wuhan CDC issued emergency warnings to local hospitals about a mysterious pneumonia cases. The story that confirms your parent poster is in the first two paragraphs. So, please stop making shit up.
Re:this is false (Score:4, Informative)
No, China knew nothing more than an abnormal high cases of pneumonia in December. The virus wasn't even discovered as the cause until mid Jan, and wasn't identified as unique until 4 days later.
They did not know it was a Crona Virus now called Covid-19.
But they knew something fishy was going on.
I was in Thailand that time. And saw it basically life.
Please stop trying to revise history. /. is not the place to get one :P
Please get a clue about history, and
Re:The WHO covered for China (Score:4, Informative)
The truth is pretty unexciting, and so nobody wants to believe it
the truth is that prepared countries that had an option (e.g. south corea) took it seriously and swiftly controlled the spread.
other countries were just unprepared and the only possible response was a lockdown. a lockdown, however, is a very damaging and unpopular measure, so they waited until a few bodies piled up and the headlines asked for it. then the populace was ready to hear the bad news.
tfa is complete bullshit. scientific community knew this very well, early enough, no question and no debate. politicians did too but ... they're politicians.
Re:The WHO covered for China (Score:4, Informative)
We now know that COVID-19 was present in Italy in mid December. To me, this is consistent with a two weeks incubation period for symptoms and instant world travel. Italy locked down quickly.
The world has responded, and even if China is lying, the spread through international travel has all but been halted and any issues are theirs.
In terms of reported cases, a near majority of new cases are in Brazil and the US, along with a disproportionate number of reported deaths. In some way this makes sense as the Americas were a couple months behind the rest of the world. Most lockdowns did not happen until mid March.
Science is imperfect. We hypothesize, we test, we correct for new data. The lockdown in the US, as well as most of the world, worked. In the US the infection rate was lowered to about 50 per million per day. The country tried to open, infection rate spiked, and now most responsible states have locked down again.
The fact is this whole supposition is based on one paper, and in hindsight it is being used to fabricate a conspiracy. World wide you see a sharp rise in March, a settling in April and May, and then a spike this month when we tried to open.
Re:The WHO covered for China (Score:4, Informative)
The WHO didn't cover for anyone. The WHO reported on China as it was required to by the USA. Don't like it, well you shouldn't* have supported the creation of a health organisation that is only allowed to report on official government data.
*Actually yes you should support it. Nothing good would come of the WHO becoming the political organisation all Trump's fanbois seem to want.
Re:The WHO covered for China (Score:5, Informative)
The WHO is of necessity bound by what information it can get from the host country.
Unless of course you'd like to see organisations like the WHO get powers to disregard the sovereignty of every country on their say-so alone?
That question is rhetorical. Your shitposting already shows you as a 'UN black helicopters!!!111!' type of idiot.
Re: It's more than that (Score:2, Troll)
I'm unclear on what any of that has to do with asymptomatic covid 19 spread going undetected?
Can you clarify?
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If you can barely afford to engage in contact tracing and have no working test kits, then it's going to be damn hard to detect that coronavirus infections are popping up in individuals without known links to other individuals with coronavirus infections. The signal gets lots in the ordinary noise of people who do not recall everywhere that they went, everyone that they met, and the possibility that
Re: It's more than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I'm not disputing your statements about contract tracing, test kits and so on. But that's not what the above poster was talking about. Pretty much nothing in his post was about covid 19 in any sense. I'd have to go re-read it but I don't think he even mentioned the virus. It was global warming and orange man bad and oligarchs and etc.
Covid 19 doesn't care about anyone's politics. Asymptomatic covid 19 by definition is going to be really hard, if not impossible, to identify, especially during the early days of a new virus spread, no matter how much money, good will, and other resources are available.
I still don't know what he was talking about and how it related to covid 19 spreading around the globe unseen.
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He didn't even mention Cheeto Mussolini. Your TDS is flaring up.
Really? So who was he talking about when he said "has-been game show host"?
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TFS/TFA mentions Europe/Germany, not the USA.
Do you have any evidence that Germany in particular, or Europe in general, severely cut their pandemic response budgets?
Numbers, or it didn't happen.
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^^^^^^
Very good summary of the situation. And unfortunately COVID19 is really not a big disaster compared to the ones we will be facing in the next 50 years.
The President is not supposed to be an expert (Score:5, Insightful)
He is supposed to be the common man's representative in govt. No one person can be an expert on everything the President decides on. The govt has paid experts on each topic. However experts have a narrow worldview. They tend not to think outside their own field. The President is supposed to listen to various views from experts in various fields and then make a judgement call. Which is why Presidents are not elected on qualifications. They are elected on whether this guy will make the same type of judgement call I would as he is going to end up deciding for me basically likeability. Character used to be the main qualification for Presidents (of course when Clinton got elected that qualification went out the door leading to a Trump in the White House) now its likeability.
Re:The President is not supposed to be an expert (Score:4, Insightful)
Character used to be the main qualification for Presidents (of course when Clinton got elected that qualification went out the door leading to a Trump in the White House) now its likeability.
Look, Clinton was a rapey bastard who never should have been let near the presidency, but you really can't make this claim. There were even worse presidents before him. This is not a defense of Clinton, who was bad for the nation, only an indictment of your claim that his presidency was the beginning of the end.
If you had to point at one election of the modern age that really signalled the end of rationality in the selection process ('Presidents are selected, not elected.' —FDR) it wasn't Clinton, it was Reagan. He was selected on the strength of his celebrity. They should have made Bonzo president instead. Shit-throwing would have retained more dignity in the office.
Re: The President is not supposed to be an expert (Score:2, Informative)
There is that delicious tds!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My POINT, numbnuts, is that neither the summary nor the article mentions the USA - yet that idiot posted an off-topic screed about his view of AMERICAN issues. Not everything is centered on America, yet many around here want to make it that way. It's annoying and tiresome.
Does that clear it up for you?
Too bad I am out of mod points today. The first post I have seen in a long long time that delves into the real problems causing most of the idiotic dissonance on this forum. Instead of centring in on how early contact tracing in January did finally bring out the fact that the rapid spread of this particular infection happens because it is also spread by those who are asymptomatic we see another shit fest of American blinker posts to how early contract tracing in other countries brought out this information.
Re: The WHO covered for China (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd love to see a reference for that "China warned the world" part. I was watching this stuff in January and that was not what we were being told. In fact, it wasn't until much later that US government experts like Fauci even told us there was anything to be worried about.
Did Fauci not know about China's warnings?
Hell, we had various high level politicians in New York and California encouraging people to go out and party and hug someone well into late February and early/mid March.
References, please.
Re: The WHO covered for China (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically it is true.
In January the Chinese regime "warned the world" not to ban flights out of the People's Republic of China or else.
The WHO then parroted that same message in their official capacity.
https://twitter.com/WHO/status... [twitter.com]
PS. My Slashdot .sig is probably more than twenty years old by now. Watching the CCP steamroll their non-Chinese colonial subjects, civil rights activists and increasingly the freedom of expression globally though all these years while "business must go on" hasn't been easy.
Re: (Score:2)
the 'mean and evil' WHO already hinted at possible asymptomatic transmission as early as 26 jan in their official situation reports, reported actual cases of it 2 days later. it's all here:
https://www.who.int/emergencie... [who.int]
i knew. i have no idea why mr fauci didn't, he should have. you should ask him.
Re: The WHO covered for China (Score:5, Interesting)
WHO sure didn't think to seem it a big issues in January: https://twitter.com/WHO/status... [twitter.com]
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The WHO provided good medical information in January as required by their member deffined charter and the international travel rules set by UN members. If anyone thinks those rules were wrong then they can be improved, especially by states that supply a lot of funding like the US who set them in the first place. The WHO timeline was this https://www.who.int/news-room/... [who.int]
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"Make no mistake. This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one. WHO’s risk assessment is that the outbreak is a very high risk in China, and a high risk regionally and globally."
And here is their statement on human to human transmission:
"We know that there is human-to-human transmission in China, but for now it appears limited to family groups and health workers caring for infected patients. At this time, there is no evidence
Re:It's all academic (Score:5, Insightful)
A number of countries, including Switzerland, Italy, China, Vietnam, S. Korea, New Zealand etc have demonstrated that you can get the number of cases down without herd immunity.
SARS, MERS, are both basically gone, but no herd immunity.
Ebola - rare, but no herd immunity.
I don't know where the idea comes form that the only way to stop a disease is herd immunity or vaccine, when there are so many counter examples. Examples show that to be false.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Ooh look yet another new user ID spreading right wing bullshit, seems a lot of them recently, sad useless lying cunts.
Re: (Score:3)