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longtom

The WHO seems to have been embarrassingly wrong or overconfident on many accounts:

1. Global air travel does not need to be stopped.

2. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

3. There is still a "window of opportunity".

4. Masks don't work (but health workers need them!).

5. The CFR is like 4%.

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> 2. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.

> 4. Masks don't work (but health workers need them!).

They don't say masks don't work either, they say that health workers need them more. Here you need to remember that the W stands for "World". They worry the most about the poorer countries who have much fewer masks available.

> The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted

They did, however, say that there was "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission". That claim in GP's post is at least partially accurate if disingenuous for argument's sake (I would counter that "no clear evidence" is a much less strong claim than "no evidence".)

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

"they said that healt workers need them more" -> WHO could say that normal people should use cloth masks (not surgical/N95 masks). Problem solved. I still think WHO made a blunder in their recommendation about mask usage.

Why would they say that when there is no scientific consensus yet?

We already had experience with similar type of virus (SARS). Based on this experience, Korea and Taiwan did just fine. Why couldn't WHO?

Go to their daily situation report and search it for "Taiwan". An entire country isn't there.

Now I don't particularly care whether they want to list Taiwan or not, but the only reason for that decision (when they are listing places like the Holy See!) is because they are moderating their position based on Chinese interests.

This is basically conversation ending evidence that the WHO is willing to act as a mouthpiece for Communist Party positions. That really should be it as far as YouTube's decision is concerned. The WHO are not an appropriate source for deciding what media people see. No body where the CPC is involved is. The CPC is not trustworthy; they can and will abuse the trust YouTube is placing in a body they have serious influence.

Why should the WHO recognize Taiwan as a country when the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and all of Europe do not?

Expecting more from the WHO than you expect from the members who fund it seems insupportable.

Many countries do "recognize" Taiwan unofficially, but surely matters of life or death should be treated a bit differently.

It's disgraceful that WHO refused information requests from Taiwan and to see senior officials feigning deafness when questioned about Taiwan.

> Here you need to remember that the W stands for "World".

So they give dubious advice to the entire world since the good advice doesn't perfectly fit the world in entirety? There are many better options: don't give advice, explain two sets of advice, ask for advice from governments to be followed, make the advice generic enough that it still applies to the world.

An example of advice that might apply anywhere in the world:

"Face coverings will help to reduce transmission. In most parts of the world, masks will be in short supply and needed by health care workers much more than the general population. Masks can be made from any type of cloth. Although these may not have the same efficacy as high grade masks and the efficacy will be dependent upon the material used as well as the degree of seal against the face, these will help to reduce transmission."

Just because countries have mandated a mask requirement doesn't mean there is a scientific consensus yet. You all talk like this it's a fact that masks for the broad public will actually help. In my country the general advice is the opposite. We simply don't know so I'm not surprised that WHO hasn't taken a firm stance yet.

Is there any credible hypothesis on it not reducing transmission?

> Global air travel does not need to be stopped.

This isn't what the WHO said. They said bans on air from specific places (especially those that disrupt supply chains) are bad. This is true. Banning all air travel to/from china would have hurt medical supply chains in the US, with very little benefit.

> 2. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

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.

> 4. Masks don't work (but health workers need them!).

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)

> 5. The CFR is like 4%.

Depending on the country, the CFR varies between 1.5% and like 15%. 4% seems like a reasonable estimate there. Unless you rely on the unfounded belief that there are large completely undetected swaths of the population that are infected but entirely asymptomatic, (which would have been found in South Korea, for example), the WHO's estimate is reasonable.

> They said bans on air from specific places (especially those that disrupt supply chains) are bad.

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.

> All epidemiologists seemed to have agreed at that time

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.

> No, the 4% was based on academic papers and epidimeoligists

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...

> 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.

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 don't believe you're referring to the same statement as the prior person.

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.

https://masks4all.co/the-science-masks4all/

Was the fact that it kept spreading not strong evidence of human to human transmission? It seems they just went with the Chinese government instead of asking why people kept getting infected.

No, because at the time the statement was made, most of the known cases were directly linked to a single wildlife market. (Also keep in mind that this announcement is within 2 weeks of discovering the virus, sequencing its genome, inventing the first ever tests for it, and deploying those tests!) Luckily, enough evidence came in that they were sure a few days later.

In those few days it began spreading internationally, I'm not sure I'd call that "lucky".

In the WHO's defense, China was actively trying to cover up the outbreak. People were starting to panic because more people were getting sick, so they went full authoritarian and banned mention of it on social media.

More people kept getting sick because it was spreading between people, people were getting worried, then WHO announced no evidence of human to human transmission and recommended no restrictions on travel to Wuhan. We know full well in hindsight that was a mistake.

Having watched their briefings each day in Jan and Feb, this is absolutely not what the said. If you're going to misquote them, at least provide sources.

There are large swathes of the population that have been infected asymptomatically: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-anti...

There are similar studies and similar findings in both the US and Europe.

tl;dr The virus is much less lethal for the average person than models predicted before we had more data.

CFR is case fatality ration and is literally defined as "people who we know are sick to people who died". It does not mean overall lethality and it never meant that. CFR is not prediction nor model, it is input into the mode.

Asymptomatic non tested population is literally not supposed to be counted into CFR.

'asymptomatic non tested population' is an interesting way to refer to people with covid 19 antibodies found via immunoassays. This sizeable population shows that our cfr estimates have enough error to be meaningless.

CFR does not have "error rate" this way. It is just defined differently then you thought it is defined. You thought it is mortality, it never was. It is the only number available at the beginning of epidemic (no matter which one).

"asymptomatic non tested population" is the most exact description of people who were not tested, had no symptoms and therefore don't count as "cases". Yes, we measure them by measuring antibodies if precise tests are available.

> There are large swathes of the population that have been infected asymptomatically: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-anti....

No, there are tests that have high false-positive rates. The studies in both the US and Europe used similarly flawed tests and didn't correctly account for the false-positive rates of those tests. [0]

There are two ways to think through how these results are flawed: the first is that the false positive rates of the tests is vastly higher than the prior (which we'll assume is approximately the confirmed case rate per capita) is. There were three studies, NYC, Santa Clara, and one in Europe that I know of. All three tests had false positive rates over 2%, and one test had a false positive rate of like 10%. So when a study shows that a large percent of the population have the virus, and that percentage is suspiciously similar to the false-positive rate of the test, you pause.

The second is a much more grokkable one. Let's assume that 2% of people in Santa Clara were infected (per the study), then 40,000 people are infected, and of them around 2000 people were symptomatic enough to get tested and be hospitalized/tested (per available stats). Or 5% of infections are symptomatic enough to get noticed, ish. Then we'd see that NYC would have ~3.5 million people infected now, or something like 40%.

So we'd expect to see 40% (or more actually) of people tested in NY and NYC test positive for covid. But we don't[1]. We see that as NY adds more tests, the positive rate of the more reliable tests is going down, because they can test more people and because NY appears to be over the hump. At peak, 20% of people were testing positive daily, now it's down to closer to 10%.

And note that most of the tests are going to people who have some symptoms of something, which is why it's that high. 40% of NY residents were infected, we'd expect to see more than 40% of the tests positive, but we don't.

If you do the same calculation but with death rate, you find that there are more people in NYC with Covid than live in NYC. In conclusion: those studies are bad because the tests they use are unreliable.

[0]: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaw...

[1]: https://health.data.ny.gov/d/xdss-u53e/visualization

Are you equally skeptical that we have a test that reliably detects Covid?

And I suppose all of the 2+ dozen studies done are completely inaccurate as well? List below includes the revised study from Ioannidis. Your criticisms are from a preprint.

May 4: 370 workers test positive in Missouri. None had symptoms.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/triumph-foods-outbreak-mis...

May 1: revised Santa Clara study: 2.8% of the population had antibodies. Study came out on April 14.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v...

May 1: Dutch Royal Institute of Health 13884 healthcare workers test positive in the Netherlands. 9 have died. 0.06% CFR among healthcare workers 3% hospitalization rate 6/9 underlying conditions 9/9 above 45

https://www.rivm.nl/documenten/covid-19-en-zorgmedewerkers-3...

May 1: 15.5% seroprevalence in German Community. 0.36% IFR

https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Str...

April 30: partial results give 61% of population infected in Bergamo

https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_aprile_30/cor...

April 27: 36% infected in homeless shelters

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765378?gu...

April 27: Governor of NY claims their study indicate 24.7% on the island. Up to 2.7m people in nyc had covid : https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/cuomo-outlines-reopeni...

April 26: 96% symptom free out of 3300 positive https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prison...

April 26: 17,000 healthcare workers tested positive, 60 dead in Italy

https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Bolletti...

April 26: Seroprevalence in Kobe Japan 300x to 800x higher then expected

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079822v...

April 26: 25% of seroprevalence in Iran, 0.08 to 0.12% IFR. 518k to 777k infected

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079244v...

April 24: between 123k and 221k cases in Miami-Dade

https://www.miamidade.gov/releases/2020-04-24-sample-testing...

April 24: Denmark 1.7% seroprevalence 0.082% death rate among 17-70 real-time screening / antibodies test

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075291v...

April 23: governor of ny tweets that 13.9% of the state could have virus https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1253352837255438338

April 22: Sweden health official claims 20% of Stockholm could be infected, weeks away from herd immunity

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-st...

April 22: LA County could have between 223k and 442k cases. Mortality between 0.1% and 0.3%

http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/media...

April 22: 5.5% of residents could be positive in Geneva county

https://www.hug-ge.ch/medias/communique-presse/seroprevalenc...

April 22: 20% of Stockholm infected, heard immunity weeks away

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-st...

April 20: Up to 10% of the people in Wuhan developed antibodies. 1.2M

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.25904

April 19: 49% of the population of Orties developed antibodies. About 50x official stats.

https://www.stol.it/artikel/chronik/flaechendeckende-tests-i...

April 17: 32% of the residents tested for antibodies in Chelsea Massasuchets could have had Covid

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third...

April 16: 3% of blood donors have antibodies in Netherlands

https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/16/3-dutch-blood-donors-covid-19-...

April 15: 50% homeless test positive in a Boston Shelter

https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-uni...

April 15: Coronavirus probably dozens of times more common then official stats

https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/number-of-people-with-coron...

Right, and my entire point is that most of the antibody tests appear to be inaccurate with false positive rates that are egregiously high. Quoting a bunch of antibody tests with egregiously high false positive rates doesn't address that at all. You'd need to show that the antibody tests are accurate, and independent tests have shown that they aren't.[0]

The conclusion there is that the serological tests have false-posdtive rates of 15-20% in the worst cases, and 2-3% in the best cases, on blood samples from before covid-19 existed.

So using those tests, on a population where not a single person has covid-19, you'd see results showing that 2-20% of the population was previously infected.

These independent numbers often differ from the official reported numbers from the test makers. And the seroprevalence studies you cute either use those numbers, or worse just ignore the possibility of false positives entirely.

Again, if 20% of New Yorkers had covid, (much more than) 20% of people tested using reliable tests would show that.

> Are you equally skeptical that we have a test that reliably detects Covid?

No, because we have evidence that the seroprevalence tests are god awful. We don't have that for viral presence tests, unless you believe the god awful seroprevalence tests.

To humor you, I'll run through some of the links you posted:

May 4: 370 workers test positive in Missouri. - Reliable (PCR, not serological) tests, people may be presymptomatic, since this just happened.

May 1: revised Santa Clara study - From the paper There is one important caveat to this formula: it only holds as long as (one minus) the specificity of the test is higher than the sample prevalence. If it is lower, all the observed positives in the sample could be due to false-positive test results, and we cannot exclude zero prevalence as a possibility.

May 1: Dutch Royal Institute - Unreliable sero test

May 1: 15.5% seroprevalence in German Community - Unreliable sero test

April 30: partial results give 61% of population infected - Unreliable sero test (likely compounded by bad stats, but I can't read french)

April 27: 36% infected in homeless shelters - Reliable test, but unclear if the people were asymptomatic or presymptomatic. Needs followup.

April 27: Governor of NY claims their study indicate 24.7% - Based on sero test

April 26: 96% symptom free out of 3300 positive - No info on which to base an opinion

April 26: 17,000 healthcare workers tested positive - Unclear, can't read french

April 26: Seroprevalence in Kobe Japan 300x to 800x - Seroprevalence says it all

April 26: 25% of seroprevalence in Iran - "Seroprevalence"

April 24: between 123k and 221k cases in Miami-Dade - Blood (sero) test

April 24: Denmark 1.7% seroprevalence - Sero test

April 23: governor of ny tweets that 13.9% of the state could have virus - Based on sero testing

April 22: Sweden health official claims 20% of Stockholm could be infected - Based on sero testing

April 22: LA County could have between 223k and 442k cases - Based on sero testing

April 22: 20% of Stockholm infected - Based on sero

April 20: Up to 10% of the people in Wuhan developed antibodies - Antibodies (sero)

April 19: 49% of the population of Orties developed antibodies - Sero

April 17: 32% of the residents tested for antibodies - Sero

April 16: 3% of blood donors have antibodies - Sero

April 15: 50% homeless test positive in a Boston Shelter - You cited this already

April 15: Coronavirus probably dozens of times - Sero

So, removing duplicates and serological tests, we're left with 3 things:

May 4: 370 workers test positive in Missouri. - Reliable (PCR, not serological) tests, people may be presymptomatic, since this just happened.

April 27: 36% infected in homeless shelters - Reliable test, but unclear if the people were asymptomatic or presymptomatic. Needs followup.

And one more, that you didn't mention: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/05/417356/initial-results-mis...

This third study is by far the most reliable, and it's conclusions were that 50% experienced no symptoms, and 1.4% of a working class population (the 2.1% included non-residents, which is less controlled) was infected, which would trend higher than average (Ninety percent of the people who were PCR positive had no capability of working from home during shelter in place.)

The other two studies just show that people in close proximity can all be infected quickly, and so be presymptomatic at the same time.

[0]: https://covidtestingproject.org/index.html

Can you provide evidence that every antibody test used in all of the studies above are as inaccurate as you claim? Your 1-word opinion on each of them is useless.

> We don't have that for viral presence tests, unless you believe the god awful seroprevalence tests.

https://www.livescience.com/covid19-coronavirus-tests-false-...

> Can you provide evidence that every antibody test used in all of the studies above are as inaccurate as you claim? Your 1-word opinion on each of them is useless.

To my knowledge, there are basically no reliable antibody tests, which is the problem. Some are more reliable, but most are terrible, and there are very few places that publish exactly which test they use have, from my reading, used unreliable tests.

The point, which you seem to keep ignoring is that seroprevalence tests aren't reliable. So citing a bunch of them doesn't convince me. You're just citing something which I've already explained isn't reliable.

> https://www.livescience.com/covid19-coronavirus-tests-false-....

So let's assume this is true. My understanding is that PCR tests have gotten a bit better since February when that paper was published, but it sets a decent lower bound.

Let's assume the test has a 30% false-negative rate, and a .05% false-positive rate. If 1% of people are infected, and you test everyone, you'll find that (.01 * .70) + (.99 * .0005) = .75% of the population will test positive.

What about 10% of the population? (.1 * .70) + (.9 * .0005) = 7% of the population is infected according to the test. Given that PCR tests are reporting ~1% of the population is infected, we can expect that no more than 2% of the population is infected. And that assumes an incredibly good false-positive rate.

If instead the PCR test has a more reasonable false-positive rate of half a percent, and we assume an underlying 1.5% infection rate, then with a 30% false negative rate, then P(FP|N) > P(FN|P), or in other words, your test would overestimate the true infection rate (to be 1.54%, precisely).

That is to say, when the underlying infection rate is relatively low, false-positives are much more impactful than false negatives, because there are many more chances to be a false positive. This is the base rate fallacy in action.

So the upshot? Even assuming a better than real world[0] false-positive rate of the PCR tests, and a likely worse than real world false-negative rate, the PCR tests show that the true infection rate is still far below what serological tests show.

[0]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v... suggests that PCR tests have a false-positive rate of ~4%, on average.

> They said bans on air from specific places (especially those that disrupt supply chains) are bad. This is true.

The idea that bans on travel are 'bad' is nonsense. There's a global ban on civilian travel precisely because it is effective.

> There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

Sending out a message only to contradict it days later is poor communication and management.

> They said that random people shouldn't go out of their way to acquire medical PPE

No they said masks were not effective: ‘very little evidence of widespread benefit from masks use outside of these clinical settings’. Study after study contradicts this.

Additionally, as a cynical example of subterfuge, their Director-General made up some lies about Taiwan being racist while at the same time, in mainland China, Africans were being banned from shopping malls and evicted from their homes.

The WHO messed up, repeatedly. And now their word is apparently sacrosanct on social media by threat of deletion which is simply outrageous.

> The idea that bans on travel are 'bad' is nonsense. There's a global ban on civilian travel precisely because it is effective.

There's not though.

> Sending out a message only to contradict it days later is poor communication and management.

I can hear the goalposts scraping by.

> very little evidence of widespread benefit from masks use outside of these clinical settings’

The WHO never said this, I'm not sure what you're quoting, it appears to be some British group. Please stop spreading misinformation.

My mistake, here is what the WHO said:

> "If you do not have any respiratory symptoms...you do not need to wear a medical mask"

Which is somehow worse.

I've yet to see any actual evidence that wearing a cloth mask while social distancing helps you, as a healthy individual. And I've seen some to the contrary[0].

One of the WHO's main concerns is to prevent shortages and supply chain issues (see their statements about travel and import bans). A run on medical masks is problematic, and the WHO's guidance prevents that.

I'll note that basically no government suggested (or suggests) wearing medical masks[1], unless you are symptomatic, which is in line with the WHO's guidance.

Social distancing is much more important, and while masks may help, especially in areas that are crowded (which you should avoid if possible anyway), they only really help if you are symptomatic, in which case you should absolutely not be outside.

The bay area is fairly unique in requiring mask wearing, and while it's not a major imposition, the utility is probably pretty marginal.

[0]: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/data-do-...

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7118603/

> One of the WHO's main concerns is to prevent shortages and supply chain issues (see their statements about travel and import bans). A run on medical masks is problematic, and the WHO's guidance prevents that.

This argument does not pass smell test. In countries where masks were mandated, there was simultaneously lock on medical masks. People used homemade ones at first and then later you could buy non-medical cloth masks.

> they only really help if you are symptomatic

This does not make sense either. You spread virus before having symptoms. Asymptomatic people spread virus too.

> This argument does not pass smell test. In countries where masks were mandated, there was simultaneously lock on medical masks. People used homemade ones at first and then later you could buy non-medical cloth masks.

Right, and there are no studies that I'm aware of showing that cloth face masks are effective at stopping the spread of covid-19. They're good at stopping large particles (which afaik you only really have if you're coughing), but not small/aerosolized ones.

Again, if you're being careful with your mask and making sure to clean it regularly and treat it like a dangerous object and washing hands after using it etc. It might help. If you aren't, it might hurt. Hence the WHO's guidance.

To be clear, I'm not saying "masks are bad", or even "masks aren't good". I'm saying "the evidence that masks are helpful is not strong enough to decry an organization that doesn't recommend them."

> which afaik you only really have if you're coughing

Which is something people do. The general advice is changing last weeks, it is more and more recommended to wear them even in countries that were super opposed a month ago.

You dont need mask to be 100% effective to be useful.

> The bay area is fairly unique in requiring mask wearing

Assuming you mean "in the USA" there since a whole bunch of places around the world made them compulsory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19...

In the USA, if travel restrictions hadn't been put in place in late January (going directly against WHO recommendations at the time), the virus would have propagated much quicker into the country and the US would have been in way worse shape today than it is now.

You don't know that. Italy had early travel restrictions, and had it very bad. Canada had no travel restrictions until much later, and has it better than (parts of) the US. That so many believe the travel restrictions were warranted seems to solely be the product of them having been considered an outsize response at the time, rather than evaluating the arguments against them not qualified on the danger of the pandemic.

In particular, travel restrictions become actively harmful when they reduce the capacity to detect and therefore apply extra scrutiny to those travelling through affected countries. Insofar as people will travel anyways, they only serve to hide that fact from authorities. This of course does not apply to the US, which had no testing capacity at the time. But we can no more suppose that the US would have been worse off as we can suppose they would have been better off.

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