No, the 4% was based on academic papers and epidimeoligists. Granted there was and is disagreement, but the whole "it's less than 1%" thing was from nonreperts.
> but this is widely regarded as a cover-up
By who? Some people believe China wasn't forthcoming with evidence, sure. That's possibly true.
> Which is identical with not restricting global air travel.
Well no, general travel restrictions and reductions, and travel bans instituted by areas under outbreak are both within the WHO policy.
That is, Italy can ban all travel out (which they did). But the US shouldn't ban all flights from China.
> They wrote for individuals without respiratory symptoms
Yes, and if you read into the underlying papers, not just the headlines the reasons they recommend this are to prevent shortages and because it's easy to mishandle masks.
I am not sure what your goal is here, you seem to be disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing.
The figure was actually 3.4% and it was just the dumb fatality-divided-by-cases estimate. IMO they failed to convey the uncertainty in this estimate.
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-who-di...
> Well no, general travel restrictions and reductions, and travel bans instituted by areas under outbreak are both within the WHO policy.
The point is that it is obvious that a pandemic is prevented by restricting all travel. The economic damages of a late lockdown are extraordinarily higher than a few weeks of travel restrictions. It was extremely predictable what was going to happen and the WHO somehow did not act swiftly. This YouTuber's videos were much more informative than most info from the WHO and made much more accurate predictions which is extremely weird to me.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Campbellteaching/videos
> Yes, and if you read into the underlying papers, not just the headlines the reasons they recommend this are to prevent shortages and because it's easy to mishandle masks.
I've cited the raw source, not a "headline". The point is it was an outright lie which decreased trust in the institution as someone at the NYT also noted. Arguably, a much better lie would have been that DIY masks are just as effective as professional masks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...
> By who? Some people believe China wasn't forthcoming with evidence, sure. That's possibly true.
Yeah, it's highly likely the case.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/07/c...
I don't believe you're referring to the same statement as the prior person. In the case that you are, that statement is very precise, very correct, and ultimately uninteresting if you're wondering how dangerous COVID is. It's observational (and has minimal uncertainty) as opposed to trying to understand the actual case fatality rate.
> The point is that it is obvious that a pandemic is prevented by restricting all travel.
Yes, if you do so before the thing spreads. If you can't, then no, localized bans aren't really useful. By the time, for example, Trump, was considering a ban on all travel from China, it wouldn't have helped. I'm not sure what the point of linking to a random youtube channel is.
> The point is it was an outright lie which decreased trust in the institution as someone at the NYT also noted. Arguably, a much better lie would have been that DIY masks are just as effective as professional masks.
It's not though. Cite me a paper that shows that cloth masks prevent the spread of corona. The best you'll find is a paper that Zeynep Tufecki (whose tweet you cited), a literature professor at UNC Chapel Hill, coauthored, that concludes that Cloth masks and handwashing limit the spread of COVID-19.
So here's the chain of reasoning:
1. that there is no reliable data that shows that cloth masks are helpful
2. there is data that shows that misuse of cloth masks can be harmful
3. Therefore, we should be cautious and perhaps not recommend cloth masks
Which of those three statements do you feel the WHO got wrong? Please give cited evidence for your disagreement.
I am the same person.
> that statement is very precise, very correct, and ultimately uninteresting if you're wondering how dangerous COVID is
Indeed, but they've compared that figure to the CFR of the common flu. IMO when saying X% have died, they should rather say "between X and Y" and add that this figure is much more uncertain than the CFR of the common flu under normal circumstances. That's my entire point of critique. I know they need to dumb things down to be consumable by the media, but still.
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...
> Yes, if you do so before the thing spreads.
Well, of course. The earlier the better, the smaller the impact on the economy. The WHO and most countries reacted way too late.
> I'm not sure what the point of linking to a random youtube channel is.
I've linked to the YouTube channel because it's by an epidemiologist who covered the early outbreak in detail and repeatedly he called out the WHO not being proactive enough. It was obvious it was going to spread and stopping global travel for a couple of weeks would have saved us presumably trillions of USD if one could predict most countries would indeed do a full lockdown later.
> Which of those three statements do you feel the WHO got wrong? Please give cited evidence for your disagreement.
Those three statements are detached from the part I quoted, which is "a medical mask is not required, as no evidence is available on its usefulness to protect non-sick persons". This sentence is a lie at worst and overconfident at best. Other coronaviruses have similar transmission characteristics and molecule sizes and there was literature that even simple DIY masks help reduce the spread of e.g. SARS-CoV-1. The reason being that the highest viral loads are suspended in droplets which are large enough to be caught by simple fabric or a face shield. AFAIK the evidence that people tend to misapply masks is rather slim by comparison.
No, they advised "against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks." Which is identical with not restricting global air travel.
https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/updated-who-re...
> When this claim was made (in early january), there was not clear evidence of human to human transmission. It was revised a few days later when there was.
True, the exact wording was "no clear evidence", but this is widely regarded as a cover-up, especially because it is known there were attempts at covering up the outbreak.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/who-haunted-by-old-tweet-sayin...
> This isn't what was said. They said that random people shouldn't go out of their way to acquire medical PPE (save it for medical personnel).
Again false. They wrote for individuals without respiratory symptoms, "a medical mask is not required, as no evidence is available on its usefulness to protect non-sick persons".
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/330987/WHO-...
> 4% seems like a reasonable estimate there.
All epidemiologists seemed to have agreed at that time that CFRs were inflated when compared with a more stable situation with more testing kits being available due to the unknown denominator. Simply using the country average was extremely silly data. There were much better data available from Wuhan and that cruise ship.