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A comment on Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, says WHO. Parent comment

Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by rootusrootus on Friday October 16, 2020 @10:48AM (#24801323)
IIRC the 'masks wrong' accusation was more about the CDC than the WHO. As I recall, the WHO caught a lot of flak early on for press releases written in strict scientific language that were easily construed to mean something entirely different. They earned a bit of criticism for that, since they should have written those PR bits for the lay audience that it was intended for.
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Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by vharuck on Friday October 16, 2020 @02:35PM (#24803667)
I've always thought of the WHO as serving an audience of public health experts for the member nations. Then those nations can decide what the best response is within their borders.

When I remember back on the news about the other recent pandemic scares (ebola, swine flu, zika), I don't remember hearing any mention of the WHO. I'm sure it happened, but not nearly as much as CDC. We hear about their announcements a lot more often now, but how much is that due to being cast as antagonists by DC?

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Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by rsynnott on Friday October 16, 2020 @05:30PM (#24805240)
That is what the WHO used to do, certainly. It does seem to talk more directly to the press these days, and it's honestly probably not a great idea.
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Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by vharuck on Friday October 16, 2020 @11:11PM (#24807179)
Going by their news releases page, it doesn't seem like even 2020 has more listings than most years:

https://www.who.int/news

I'm now leaning more toward my hypothesis that they haven't changed behavior much, but US reporters are citing them now because the current administration brought them into the story. In the past, reporters probably read the WHO announcements but quoted from CDC same academic experts. Again, WHO info is dry.

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Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by vkou on Friday October 16, 2020 @04:09PM (#24804552)
If the Ebola epidemic killed 200,000 people in the United States, due to a completely bungled response by the CDC, you could bet that the supporters of the administration in power at the time would be burning effigies of the WHO.
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Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by andybak on Friday October 16, 2020 @01:11PM (#24802837)
The sibling post was rather unjustly flagged. I'm often on the other side of the fence on this but in this case I think it was unfair.
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