Why the WHO Took Two Years To Say COVID is Airborne (nature.com) 113
Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic. Nature: According to Trish Greenhalgh, a primary-care health researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, the IPC GDG members were guided by their medical training and the dominant thinking in the medical field about how infectious respiratory diseases spread; this turned out to be flawed in the case of SARS-CoV-2 and could be inaccurate for other viruses as well. These biases led the group to discount relevant information -- from laboratory-based aerosol studies and outbreak reports, for instance. So the IPC GDG concluded that airborne transmission was rare or unlikely outside a small set of aerosol-generating medical procedures, such as inserting a breathing tube into a patient.
That viewpoint is clear in a commentary by members of the IPC GDG, including Schwaber, Sobsey and Fisher, published in August 20202. The authors dismissed research using air-flow modelling, case reports describing possible airborne transmission and summaries of evidence for airborne transmission, labelling such reports "opinion pieces." Instead, they concluded that "SARS-CoV-2 is not spread by the airborne route to any significant extent." In effect, the group failed to look at the whole picture that was emerging, says Greenhalgh. "You've got to explain all the data, not just the data that you've picked to support your view," and the airborne hypothesis is the best fit for all the data available, she says. One example she cites is the propensity for the virus to transmit in 'superspreader events,' in which numerous individuals are infected at a single gathering, often by a single person. "Nothing explains some of these superspreader events except aerosol spread," says Greenhalgh.
Throughout 2020, there was also mounting evidence that indoor spaces posed a much greater risk of infection than outdoor environments did. An analysis of reported outbreaks recorded up to the middle of August 2020 revealed that people were more than 18 times as likely to be infected indoors as outdoors3. If heavy droplets or dirty hands had been the main vehicles for transmitting the virus, such a strong discrepancy would not have been observed. Although the WHO played down the risk of airborne transmission, it did invite Li [a building environment engineer at the University of Hong Kong who suspected early on that SARS-CoV-2 was also airborne] to become a member of the IPC GDG after he spoke to the group in mid-2020. Had the organization not at least been open to his view that infections were caused by aerosols, especially at short range, "they would not have invited me there as they knew my standing," he says.
That viewpoint is clear in a commentary by members of the IPC GDG, including Schwaber, Sobsey and Fisher, published in August 20202. The authors dismissed research using air-flow modelling, case reports describing possible airborne transmission and summaries of evidence for airborne transmission, labelling such reports "opinion pieces." Instead, they concluded that "SARS-CoV-2 is not spread by the airborne route to any significant extent." In effect, the group failed to look at the whole picture that was emerging, says Greenhalgh. "You've got to explain all the data, not just the data that you've picked to support your view," and the airborne hypothesis is the best fit for all the data available, she says. One example she cites is the propensity for the virus to transmit in 'superspreader events,' in which numerous individuals are infected at a single gathering, often by a single person. "Nothing explains some of these superspreader events except aerosol spread," says Greenhalgh.
Throughout 2020, there was also mounting evidence that indoor spaces posed a much greater risk of infection than outdoor environments did. An analysis of reported outbreaks recorded up to the middle of August 2020 revealed that people were more than 18 times as likely to be infected indoors as outdoors3. If heavy droplets or dirty hands had been the main vehicles for transmitting the virus, such a strong discrepancy would not have been observed. Although the WHO played down the risk of airborne transmission, it did invite Li [a building environment engineer at the University of Hong Kong who suspected early on that SARS-CoV-2 was also airborne] to become a member of the IPC GDG after he spoke to the group in mid-2020. Had the organization not at least been open to his view that infections were caused by aerosols, especially at short range, "they would not have invited me there as they knew my standing," he says.
The Who (Score:4, Funny)
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Cherry picking should be limited to fruit. (Score:5, Insightful)
"You've got to explain all the data, not just the data that you've picked to support your view," ...
Advice applicable to so *many* things ...
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"You've got to explain all the data, not just the data that you've picked to support your view," ...
Advice applicable to so *many* things ...
Cherry picking should be limited to cherry trees, unless you know how to graft them onto an apple tree.
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I use it a lot in Git too.
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Re:Why do some people still think it's a hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
They're supposed to be the experts we rely on for advice and knowledge. Just because some people are idiots doesn't mean supposed world-leading experts are also allowed to be incompetent.
The last big mistake I can recall was claiming that the US didn't need to administer booster shots yet, which I think came right before our biggest spike of Covid infections, and before data clearly showed effectiveness of vaccine shots was falling over time. Oops again.
How many times can "experts" be so badly wrong before the average person just stops taking them seriously? That's just going to exacerbate the problem with hoaxes spreading so virulently (if you'll forgive the pun) online.
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And if the "average person" you portray is like the hair trigger, only-remembers fault, need-an-answer-yesterday, and can't deal with uncertainty person?
Yes, that person is a problem in many ways.
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The booster shot debacle I think was only partly related to science and mostly tied to political handwringing over the pace of vaccination in the developing world.
I think the science angle was limited evidence of waning effectiveness and some slight goalpost shifting to the purpose of the vaccine from "it keeps you from getting sick" to "prevents severe disease and death".
The WHO is dominated by the developing world and they are predictably prickly about getting the short end of the stick on access to medic
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Maybe we can cut WHO a little slack - at least, they're not as slow as some of us.
To be generous, one of the drivers of the hoax-believers is distrust of experts.
It's one thing to get predictions wrong based on insufficient data. "At the time, the data available indicated..." It's another thing to discount or disregard available data.
When your conclusions go counter to common-sense wisdom, you need extraordinary data. I think most people suspected this was mostly airborne from the very early days. That's intuitive (which doesn't preclude being wrong). But when you ignore data th
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The article also seems to be splitting hairs, the WHO always said it was transmitted through airborne droplets, just not aerosols, so it's always been airborne, just a different type of airborne. And given the ocean of data you'd have to wade through to make the distinction between airborne-as-in-droplets vs. airborne-as-in-aerosol, I can see why it'd take awhile to split that particular hair.
In addition, to the person coughing up their lungs and barely being able breathe, the distinction between breathin
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It's a different level and type of precaution. Droplet precautions are exclusively relevant to the ~6ft range and can be largely avoided even there with things like face shields or simple surgical masks. Airborne precautions can't really be handled indoors aside from limiting exposure time and use of tested, fitted high cost masks. Most hospitals handle these situations with things like negative pressure rooms as well so that no particles escape when the door opens.
The thing is none of this information t
Re:Why do some people still think it's a hoax? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: Why do some people still think it's a hoax? (Score:1)
Didin't look at the data (Score:5, Insightful)
These biases led the group to discount relevant information -- from laboratory-based aerosol studies and outbreak reports, for instance.
They had an early test case [cnn.com] which gave them a clear indication covid is airborne [cnn.com] but chose to ignore it. As the article relates, they didn't look at the big picture but relied on what happened in the past. The above case was a clear example covid is airborne.
No one reported physical contact between the attendees at the practices, but they sat close together. The report said the chairs were 6-10 inches apart, but there were empty seats between some of the members.
The choir broke into two groups for part of the practice. Members moved closer together for that 45-minute session, they said.
"The act of singing, itself, might have contributed to transmission through emission of aerosols, which is affected by loudness of vocalization," the report said. The report also said that some people, known as superemitters, release more aerosol particles during speech than their peers.
There was also a 15-minute snack break with cookies and oranges. Members moved the chairs before and after the rehearsal and congregated around a chair rack, the report said.
"This underscores the importance of physical distancing, including maintaining at least 6 feet between persons, avoiding group gatherings and crowded places, and wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain during this pandemic," the report said.
This also correlates well with the anti-vaxxers who died after attending covid parties [abc7ny.com] or other gatherings [yahoo.com].
Re:Didin't look at the data (Score:5, Interesting)
Very, very early - circa march 2020 - a group of mixed aerosol and airborne disease experts had a conference with the WHO in which they presented the clear evidence that covid is airborne via aerosols, and the WHO simply refused to listen. They were hysterically attached to a single very specific definition of what constitutes "droplets" and what constitutes "aerosols" - a particle size of five micrometers - which is an arbitrary and irrelevant artificial line.
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It was more than just that. They were not experts, or even apparently amateurs, in terms of droplet/aerosol aerodynamics.
Which makes then incompetent and non-experts in general. Actual experts know what the limits of their expertise are. This is in fact one of the most important things an expert needs to know.
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Who did they pick to decide? Is this another example of "total years of practice" (old) and "friendly at gatherings" (political) not equating to "decisions based on the latest science" (good)?
Laboratory leak more likely if aerosol (Score:2)
While it is easy to mistake incompetence for conspiracy, I strongly suspect that played a part, at least for some of the "experts".
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Correct, the evidence was there very early, but it was systematically suppressed and ignored.
A simple N95 mask for every person could have made a massive difference to the early course of the pandemic. (Omicron is something else, and it seems to just happen no matter what you do. Some think it is the most infectious disease ever.)
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Re:Didin't look at the data (Score:5, Informative)
Trump was right to defund them, though probably for the wrong reasons. That money should be redirected to the CDC instead.
The con artist effectively gutted [reuters.com] the CDC unit positioned in China so any early warning we would have received was unavailable.
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Really, because everyone knew this was coming since November/December 2019, the CDC didn't give its first warning until March 2020
False. The con artist was warned in January of 2020 [theguardian.com] of the devastating impact of covid if steps weren't taken. He did nothing in response.
and just downplayed it
False again. That was the con artist who admitted he downplayed the potential severity because it would make him look bad [npr.org].
The CDC was most likely passing the information along in the background because of the con artist'
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I don't know about that, but what I do know, and this is even more bothersome, is that the senate was aware of what was about to occur, and kept quiet about it while many of them sold off their equities. Dianne Feinstein was among them, and to this day remains a beloved senator of California.
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The PRC's response, while radical and too heavy-handed for Western-style democracies (including the Asian ones like Japan and South Korea), was correct for the time. After the initial surge, understandable given that it was country zero, the PRC's relatively low death rate per million is probably testament to the effectiveness of its 0-Covid strategy.
Unfortunately, that strategy failed to evolve along with the virus. Its initial success blinded the CCP to the need to develop alternative courses of action, m
Australia, NZ, Taiwan.. (Score:2)
We seemed to get it right, by luck and judgement.
Closed and zeroed until vaccines then open. That said, Victoria went through a cruel extended lock down. In Queensland we hardly noticed Covid until recently.
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Actually, it nearly broke the federal system. Police manned the state borders, you could not cross for a long time which created much hardship as some of those border run through the middle of cities. Very parochial.
We did set up a national cabinet to coordinate things a bit, NZ sometimes joined in on that.
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After the initial surge, understandable given that it was country zero, the PRC's relatively low death rate per million is probably testament to the effectiveness of its 0-Covid strategy.
China's death rate is without a doubt deliberately understated, though to what degree is anybody's guess. Their government's power structure is built around nothing more than perceptions. Basically, it only works if everybody believes that it is doing a good job. This is why in China, everything anybody says is just a rumor until the government affirms that it happened, and any information outside of what the government says is subject to being censored. It would be very damaging to the Chinese government i
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After the initial surge, understandable given that it was country zero, the PRC's relatively low death rate per million is probably testament to the effectiveness of its 0-Covid strategy.
China's death rate is without a doubt deliberately understated, though to what degree is anybody's guess. Their government's power structure is built around nothing more than perceptions.
It's certainly higher than those of the other East Asian countries but lower than the US and European death rates. This is enough for the government propaganda to claim success. The thinking still seems to be that it's okay to lock people up (virtually or otherwise) so long as they don't die in visibly large numbers.
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Even if the WHO wasn't saying it was airborne, it seems like most of the Asian countries considered it to be.
I remember Japan did a lot of early work on what kinds of barriers were effective (masks, plastic dividers) and how important ventilation was.
For some reason UV wasn't widely deployed, despite it being a proven way to reduce airborne spread of viruses.
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You can buy a wall or ceiling mounted UV light that keeps the light away from humans. It needs to be properly installed to ensure the light only illuminates the ceiling and upper walls where it can't hurt people.
Studies have shown that reduces transmission by about 50%.
Philips make them, among others. They are 1000 Euro, but that's not too bad for say an office or hospital.
Naomi Wu did a video about a DIY one recently, which you can make from laser cut cardboard.
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> Even if the WHO wasn't saying it was airborne, it seems like most of the Asian countries considered it to be.
Yes, the Asian countries ignored the WHO, and used their experience of SARS1. And that worked much better than anything the western countries did.
Re: Didin't look at the data (Score:2)
For some reason? Some?
Who was deriding Trump for it? Who was marking every post about it here as Troll?
Who was supporting the closure of parks and mountains during summer?
Who was insisting that we should wear masks while riding a bycile on a sunny day?
Ohh, it was the regressives gang of which you are a prominent member.
Hey, you even bundled the vitamin B story with healing crystals. /. doesn't remove posts. Someone should comb through it and show who consistently put politics above science while claiming vi
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I agree, the assessment is very generous. They were pigheaded ignorants, completely ignoring the overwhelming evidence that COVID-19 is air-born. And the data was there right from the start: N95 masks as used in intensive medicine were over 99% effective in preventing infections, while surgical masks were only somewhere around 70% effective, and home-made masks more around 50%. The difference cannot be explained if COVID-19 is not air-born.
This whole process has exposed massive weaknesses at both the WHO an
Melodramatic much? (Score:2)
"Reserved for... "???
Really?
Even ignoring the uses of the term outside of the field of immunology, the common cold itself is airborne, yet it is hardly considered to be particularly virulent in most cases.
Re: Melodramatic much? (Score:2)
Exactly right. Nearly all respiratory disease can transmit airborne. The outliers are the droplet-only ones. When you cough, (not just sneeze,) you spew out particles of various sizes, many of which are the necessary size to be airborne. If your respiratory tract is shedding viruses into its moisture, many those droplets created from coughing or (definitely) sneezing will be of the right size to linger bouncing around in the air currents. We even knew that the original SARS coronavirus spread airborne. We k
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> We even knew that the original SARS coronavirus spread airborne. We knew that since at least 2004.
Exactly. When the WHO said that "there is no evidence that SARS2 is airborne", they were bending the truth quite a bit. There was plenty of evidence from SARS1, and it was rather stupid to assume that SARS2 would be completely different.
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I think the term "virulent" may be misused for "highly infections" here. It actually means "does fast damage once somebody is infected and does a lot of it".
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Someone with your creative vernacular and that fucking ignorant of Greed? Sit down and shut the fuck up now. We know who you shill for.
I swear, your kind of attitude will be cutting the ribbon at the Cuomo Care chain of nursing homes in Florida by next year.
Enjoy your market crash(es) soon. Not like we did fuck all to punish Greed for that in 2008 either.
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Well, if it's greed you want to punish . . . you might consider that blend of Russian Red and Chicken Yellow that is Agent Orange. I hear he's a greedy bag of hair - hell, I hear he's proud of it. Only reason he called Covid a hoax is because he couldn't figure out how to make money from it.
The man who pushed and promoted COVID treatments that cost pennies instead of pushing to rob taxpayers of trillions...you're telling me he couldn't figure out how to profit from it?
The same man we accuse of being an idiot while corruptly profiting off real estate for decades using nothing but his name?
Don't even like Agent Orange, but thanks for entertaining; you're more of an idiot than he ever was.
Do (did) WHO also think the Flu is not airborne? (Score:2)
Wait... What? Does this mean WHO also think (or thought) the Flu is not mostly, or significantly, spread by air?
Have they looked at the missing Flu infections in the presence of mask usage?
Are those decreases solely due to isolation caused by COVID-19 or is the Flu also similarly misclassified?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flu-has-disappeared-worldwide-during-the-covid-pandemic1/
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If you want to see a good example of that go find the Myth Busters episode for the spreading of mucus at a dinner party. I believe the episode is called "Flu Fiction" or something like that.
Re: flu is NOT airborne (Score:5, Interesting)
The flu is primarily droplet spread and there are multicentered RCTs showing the non-superiority of N95s over surgical masks for preventing influenza spread which is exactly what you'd expect if it was droplet borne. Flu isn't infecting dozens of people around an auditorium from one signer on stage, or people in the next room over through the HVAC system, or someone who walks through a room an hour after the infected person left. These are hallmarks of airborne transmission. You can aerosolize flu only under certain circumstances.
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This sounds like more dogma. Physics says that fairly large droplets can aerosolize and spread long distances.
https://www.wired.com/story/th... [wired.com]
This means it is airborne. If empirical evidence shows that aerozolized flu is not infecting people, that's interesting and needs study, but it doesn't invalidate the physics.
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Implicit in ascribing "airborne" as a mode for a pathogen is the durability of infectious virions after droplet desiccation leaving the nuclei (aerosol). If there is not durability, viable virus, then you don't get airborne transmission, just droplet, as with flu, except in unusual circumstance.
SARS-CoV-2 is durable as first evidenced by demonstrated airborne transmission scenarios in January and February 2020 and then laboratory testing published at the start of March 2020.
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Perhaps you are right, but I'm skeptical. The article I linked is a bit sensationalized, but it says that's not the issue doctors had with covid. Instead they had an incorrect rule about particle size to decide w
Viability vs particle size, COVID vs Flu (Score:2)
First, TFA vs COVID, then Flu and is it airborne:
TFA is all about whether or not you can get aerosol behavior of larger particles than 5um with longer distance of travel and longer airborne residence times. This is predicated on infectious aerosols. What did we know and when, in addition to TFA articles? What were we deciding on how to operate at the hospital level?
In early March 2020 we had data showing apparent aerosol durability:
https://www.medrxiv.org/conten... [medrxiv.org]
And in late march 2020 we had data showing
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They lied for sure, but what was the purpose? Were they just ideologues? Was it a political fight between droplet and airborne disease specialists? Did somebody want to hurt mask manufacturers?
I struggle to construct any credible motive.
Blame TB (Score:5, Informative)
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Humans are lazy. We take simplified rules for old situations and apply them poorly to the future. I can't wait until we can augment our minds better to remove some of the biases.
More and more I wish we had public decision tools created ahead of time that create fact based policy for us. Things that simulate and show what happens if various factors are true. I don't trust the figure heads in charge to make rational decisions in the heat of the moment.
Try Dialogue Mapping with IBIS (Score:2)
While this is not exactly what you are suggesting, Dialogue Mapping with IBIS is the simplest and most robust social process for making good decisions given uncertainty and disagreements that I know of:
"A Tool for Wicked Problems: Dialogue Mappingâ FAQs"
http://cognexus.org/id41.htm [cognexus.org]
You can do that process with a group, a plain text file, and a shared screen.
Although software like Compendium that supports IBIS can be worth learning.
http://projects.buckinghamshum... [buckinghamshum.net]
Related books:
"Dialogue Mapping: Buildin
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I have been waiting for someone to post that Wired article. I had read it and admired it, but then forgotten where it came from.
It clearly demonstrates the heavily dogmatic thinking in the medical field. There's an element of scientific puffery in many aspects of medical (as opposed to biological) research.
Let us never forget the decades of confident statements about stress causing ulcers, only for the cure in the end to be proven as a simple antibiotic. Disbelieved by many an M.D. of course, at least at
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I was in the same boat, but did some serious Google searching to find it for a friend, so I was ready for Slashdot.
While the modern medical field can be dogmatic, I believe the root cause is a lack
Would scientists of 25 years ago reacted similarly (Score:2)
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I agree. Something is broken with the people selected for these roles and it stays broken afterwards. It seems that independent thinking, critical and careful consideration of all available evidence, forming your own opinion, etc., are not desirable anymore. Instead there is a desire for consent and harmony. That is the behavior of a cult (or people caught in groupthink), not the behavior of qualified experts.
See the book "Disciplined Minds" (Score:2)
https://disciplinedminds.tripo... [tripod.com]
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
Re:Would scientists of 25 years ago reacted simila (Score:5, Informative)
I have a gut feeling that is is a more fundamental problem with this generation of science "leaders" and experts. I don't think the same data presented to these same institutions 25-30 years ago would have been ignored.
Your gut feeling (like many people's gut feelings in all sorts of contexts) is inaccurate. 25-30 years ago the medical community was undergoing, among other things, an eye-opening ruction over the bacterial causes of ulcers.
Strong evidence that ulcers have bacterial origin was published by Mitchell in 1984. By the early 1990s only 1% of MDs with ulcer patients were prescribing antibiotics. This, despite the precautionary principle and relatively low risks of antibiotics. The matter was really only settled, medically, in the early 2000s. You can read more in a href="https://www.jyi.org/2005-february/2005/2/9/delayed-gratification-why-it-took-everybody-so-long-to-acknowledge-that-bacteria-cause-ulcers">this review article.
The problem with COVID had nothing to do with a change in the medical community and its abilities. That community has long been victim to overconfidence, bias and unquestioned dogma. M.D. training is not really very scientific, and that shows.
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A documentary about the Challenger disaster says engineers knew full well about the o-ring problem for years (they could see it failing when they recovered the boosters and pulled them apart), but NASA as an institution couldn't go against its commitment to increasing launch frequency to achieve the mythical cheap access space bus vision. Fixing the problem would have meant stopping the program for years.
So it's simple. The people in charge have an agenda.
A problem with health is that companies are primaril
Funders should not also set policy / Just Culture (Score:2)
Thanks for your insightful post. A major problem has been that the same government agencies in charge of almost all science and health research funding in the USA are also the same agencies in charge of setting science and health policy. Disagree with a policy or idea supported the head of such an agency (e.g. asking "What if Covid is airborne?" and your science career you worked so hard to get started may be immediately over as far as ever getting a grant again.
As if science careers in research weren't har
I suspect ... (Score:1)
At one point, there was a proposal made on some social media boards to assault individuals caught wearing N95 masks in public.
Lack of N95 masks (Score:3)
Not just to stop people hording them, but to cover up the fact that there were not nearly enough of them available. And no urgent programs to produce more.
OUTRAGEOUS - Downgraded transmission to match PPE! (Score:5, Insightful)
My hospital ALWAYS treated it as airborne from January 2020 onwards.
As a medical professional focused on infection prevention and epidemiology, I concluded IN JANUARY 2020 that the virus was likely airborne based on small scale, but compelling data out of China. Additional studies released in February compounded this, including work done in the US, and by early March there was NEJM preprint I distributed to anyone who would listen showing the aerosol viability of the virus. We built negative airflow rooms in February 2020 and marshalled supplies to ensure airborne PPE for staff. Nobody EVER walked into a known COVID room in our hospital with subpar respiratory PPE because of a BS recommendation for "droplet precautions."
The CDC guidance on PPE in March was to use droplet precautions when airborne (N95/PAPR) couldn't be used. This was in part because of the WHO insistence and in part because of a national failure to allocate sufficient resources PPE and facility prep. But justifying that lack of preparation by downward adjusting the transmission mode led to the insistence by various healthcare leaders that the virus actually was droplet, and WHO was the most persistent in this denialism. It led to the use of subpar protection even when the means became available because it cost a little more and "wasn't indicated."
Healthcare workers got sick and died because of this insistence on droplet precautions. I hold the WHO, CDC, and US hospital corporations responsible.
The reality was the world was not equipped to handle an airborne virus and droplet precautions were more available and cheaper, so the WHO, which serves who whole world with a focus on the poor, biased their thinking toward avoiding an (airborne) conclusion on transmission in order to avoid the perceived difficult-to-follow recommendations (for most countries) that would follow that conclusion of airborne transmission: N95s, negative airflow rooms, etc.
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Plausible, perhaps likely, but pragmatically and ethically wrong! Any study of previous pandemics shows that misleading people lowers trust and endangers lives, which is what happened here. Hospital corporations prepared for the declared mode of transmission instead of the real one, even when the means became available, at which point it was about saving money. It would have been better to be honest and prepare to the best of ability.
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They didn't need N95 masks. The FFP2 mask worked fine. $20 bought me 100 pack on ebay at the time I couldn't get a N95. I bought a 100 pack off of ebay and they were making them as fast as they could. I had them a week later. I think those masks probably prevented me from catching it. I always took precautions and I never got it.
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FFP2, N95, and KN95 are all very similarly performing PPE, and were in short supply in early 2020.
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FFP2, N95, and KN95 are all very similarly performing PPE, and were in short supply in early 2020.
That's why I bought the ffp2. I felt it was good enough and I could buy them. The N95 and KN95 were also a LOT more expensive at the time. I think they still are. I checked on ebay. That same company out of Orlando still makes them. They say they are a reputable company. Definitely a mass produced mask with just enough material to get the job done, including the bag of 50 they came in.
So cheap I use them where I didn't used to use a mask. Wood working, laying fiberglass, cleaning out gutters, etc.
Sounds like "groupthink" (Score:3)
A classical failure mode in groups of low-level and sometimes even mid-level experts. The WHO needs better people in these roles.
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If you were a smart, upcoming and well paid medical expert, would you want work for the heavily political and bureaucratic WHO?
Public health does not pay nearly as much as private practice. And is a lot more painful to anyone with initiative.
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If you were a smart, upcoming and well paid medical expert, would you want work for the heavily political and bureaucratic WHO?
Public health does not pay nearly as much as private practice. And is a lot more painful to anyone with initiative.
I am not blaming the experts. I am blaming the WHO. And others. It is hard to hire really good experts when you do not have budget.
The fact is (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact is that practically any infectious disease can be spread through the air. Not all, but a hell of a lot of them.
Even the ones that aren't normally spread that way can be spread by airborne particulates if the conditions are right.
It was bullshit to say it didn't spread through the air, and anyone with a handful of brain cells knew it.
I expected it could and would, as did most of the people I know.
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jaog posting anon to avoid unmoderating
Still no explanation (Score:3)
This article shows they failed completely to apply the principles, techniques, and methodologies that every first year scientist and medical student has ingrained in them by their superiors and by the entirety of scientific and medical history.
It does not say why in any shape or form.
There is no explanation other than malice that can describe stupidity of this staggering proportion.
An uneducated idiot would not have made the fundamental errors that these so-called experts made.
How are they still employed in the medical field?
Why would anyone trust them to be in a building where the care of humans is discussed with any sincerity and intention?
Simply stating that the people who are trusted and paid to know better went against every tenet of their profession to reach an unsupported conclusion contradictory to all evidence is not explaining how it happened.
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Or they adhered too strictly to methodology. The null hypothesis is a tricky bastard. It leads you to deny something till it is proven definitively. When the null hypothesis is itself on very solid ground the damage is limited but when it is not you get arbitrary garbqge.
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You are really tedious. Can you take your grievance based identity politics to twitter and stop trying to derail threads here?
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You are really tedious. Can you take your grievance based identity politics to twitter and stop trying to derail threads here?
The best way to stop discrimination is to stop it. Don't hire based on race, sex, how crazy they are. Hire qualified people.
It all had to do with (wrong) particle size (Score:2)
'Consensus' is always politcal and thus dangerous (Score:2)
FTFA: "... were guided by their medical training and the dominant thinking in the medical field ... "
Just because an idea is 'dominant' does not make it correct.
The 'consensus' is NOT necessarily the truth. It is the result more often than not, and particularly in science, of the politics of the field. Pity the researcher that tries to take an opposite stance.
The real reason: (Score:2)
The real reason is that WHO is staffed by political toadies who subscribe to groupthink and CYA at all costs. Yes, political toadies with MDs and PhDs, just like CDC and even NIH.
Let us remember... (Score:2)
Is this WHO the same WHO that initially and repeatedly proclaimed, "Hey guys, we can totally nip this pandemic right in the bud, all we gotta do is a whole bunch of things that no modern government would ever feasibly agree to do unless their feet were held to the fire!"
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