Logic would dictate that a novel virus -- novel in that we don't know everything about it -- is a threat to the survival of our species as a whole until disproven otherwise and that we should collectively do everything that we can to minimize its spread.
What I know to be true is that to curb the infection rate, we should stop spitting in each other's mouths. Yes, there is science at the base of that assertion, but mostly it's just common fucking sense.
If you can tell me how basic common sense is being subverted on a massive scale without the use of a platform of social manipulation, I'm willing to hear you out.
I’m strongly on the Swedish/Trump side here. We know that the virus is practically harmless for youth and young adults. If immunity persists, we should let them get infected ASAP while protecting the old/vulnerable. If immunity fades, then waiting for the vaccine is pointless anyways. As a young person, I won’t be taking the vaccine anytime soon anyways, not because I have anything against vaccines, but because I have many doubts about barely tested drugs in general (I’ll take it after it’s been tested for a few years).
But hey, say this on YouTube and I’ll be banned!
It could be invisibly weakening your lungs just enough that a flu can come through and kill you.
I would suggest a deep dive on mercury poisoning, radiation poisoning, lead poisoning, asbestos, and whatever other reminders you may find throughout history that assuming you know what nature is up to without the benefit of lengthy scientific review never turns out well for the cocksure.
And say we get a vaccine next year. Don’t you worry that if we relax lockdowns, we’re just gonna trigger the next devastating virus?
Let’s face it, life is a risk, and we accept a certain amount of elevated risk in exchange for comfort/utility (e.g. unprotected sex, industry-produced food, driving). This virus seems in line (at least for young adults). So the only real risk here, is government repression.
Seeing the downvotes, I suppose the majority here disagree with the statement. But at least the comment is still readable/visible. I think it's healthier for public discourse to have differing sides and points of view expressed, to argue in a good sense of the term, by logic and evidence, to hopefully arrive at some common understanding.
"Fact checking" and judgements of "misinformation" are necessary, I can see, but a question remains - who checks the fact-checkers, and judges the censors?
I don't trust Google to be a neutral party in such decisions - maybe in this particular case they're right, but we shouldn't depend on a for-profit corporation to be a trustworthy judge of anything in general.
Do they have the right to ban whatever they see unfit on their platforms? Yes, I think so.
To not saturate the healthcare system.
> practically harmless
We still don't know the long term effects of the disease, or please define the term "practically harmless".
> If immunity persists... If immunity fades
So you want to expose an entire healthy population to a deadly virus and stop looking for a vaccine based on a couple of "if"?
> But hey, say this on YouTube and I’ll be banned!
Saying it here wouldn't get you banned (probably) but your comment will probably go grey (whenever you care or not).
This is demonstrably untrue. There is measurably more bullshit on Facebook groups than there is coming from the WHO and other institutions.
They did a horrible job that has cost many, many lives. I've been in Taiwan and was gritting my teeth while diffing what they were saying vs local reporting from December through March.
I'm not sure what one would expect from an organization that voted in a director general with this track record: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-dire...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/20/coronavirus-sp...
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳.
There is nothing false or misleading, and they updated the public as new information came to light.
I can't emphasis enough how correct this behaviour is for a scientific organisation.
And for the sceptics who will claim China was covering something up: why didn't they shut down Wuhan until 23 Jan?
Their co-lead on COVID-19 even went so far as to hang up on a journalist[2] who asked about Taiwan.
If this is your idea of "correct behaviour" for a scientific org, I cringe to imagine your vision of a poorly run one.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi....
Your link says (about the Dec 31 email): "Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease. However, because at the time there were as yet no cases of the disease in Taiwan, we could not state directly and conclusively that there had been human-to-human transmission."
That's no different to what China or the WHO were saying in this timeframe. The constant "no confirmed human transmission" were because everyone was watching for it.
Again, there is no evidence China hid anything here, and Taiwan doesn't say anything different.
Here's more background:
Dr. Li Wenliang's email warning colleagues about the outbreak was sent on December 30th. Multiple Taiwanese doctors were working in Wuhan at that time. Taiwan's very early and very small outbreak was from people evacuated from Wuhan. The CDC warnings weren't about what was seen in the Covid positive evacuees in Taiwan. The warnings were based on direct experience in Wuhan and they did suggest human-to-human transmission.
There was no hard proof, but there was a great deal of circumstantial evidence. Yes, it's possible Taiwan's CDC was overly suspicious due to memories of how SARS was covered up in 2003. However, given the way epidemics spread, the wiser course is to take circumstantial evidence of transmission very seriously.
I agree with this entirely. But I don't think there is any evidence that the WHO - or China - thought otherwise.
I'd note that the WHO bulletins from both Jan 5[1] and Jan 12[2] mentioned "Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported." (Jan 12, Jan 5 was similar).
Now this turned out to be wrong, but that doesn't indicate a cover-up. As your link from Taiwan said, no one definitively knew.
I'm very aware of the messages (not emails) shared by the doctor. I know he was forced to retract them by the regional government, and later exonerated by the central government. I think the dates here are important - as you mentioned it was Dec 30 he sent them, and by Jan 20 the central government had taken over. I do think the Wuhan regional government did try to minimise news of the outbreak, and I think criticism of that is fair - but needs to be tempered by acknowledgement that the central government acted relatively quickly and didn't try to hide things.
I think it's likely that external pressure from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and elsewhere made it clear to the central government that they needed to intervene.
[1] https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...
[2] https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...
The WHO is a politically captured organization lead by a man who covered up three separate cholera outbreaks in his own country. I have little respect for or interest in them.
They were talking about it a lot then: they had daily situation reports on the WHO website. I know because I was reading them!
Ok then!
There’s a lot of alternative sources, including actual doctors, you don’t get to pick out only the lunatics to strenthen your point.
It is still not possible to tell whther the Swedish way was the bast way or not. Lockdowns worked in the early days, the goal was to avoid overloading hospitals. Stuff like SARS and MERS didn't spread by planes to a large extent, did they? So not banning them kind of made sense, until people learned more and their opinion changed.
Lockdowns helped halt the spread when the virus wasn't already everywehere, at least much better then they would now where the virus has spread across the globe, more or less.
And just yesterday, Germany and France reinstituted lockdowns. Things change, and I'd rather listen to people who change their minds with changed facts instead of broken clocks that a right twice per day.
There is very little science (we don’t yet have enough data, and not enough time has passed), so all we have to go on is “broscience” (smartly connecting anecdotal facts and whatever little data we have, and drawing sensible conclusions). By designating one opinion as “officially correct science”, YouTube is seriously damaging humanity.