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> They said travel bans don't work. This defies basic logic.

> They delayed declaraing the pandemic to be a pandemic.

I have come to think that a major problem with the WHO might be that it is not independent enough from the political interests of major countries.

Banning non-essential travel from/to highly affected countries early would probably have helped to slow down global spread, but political opposition made that impossible.

> I have come to think that a major problem with the WHO might be that it is not independent enough from the political interests of major countries.

Yeah unfortunately the WHO showed it lacked any credibility and is sounding like a major tool.

https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1243889673207832577?s...

I think they were trying to keep china on their side by not offending them. Politics intrudes into medicine. Perhaps they were even right to do so, they appeared to uncritically accept and repeat China's blatantly lying figures (though behind the scenes I think they knew exactly they were being lied to) and perhaps that was necessary - I'm not a politician so I can't say - but I don't like it at all. But I am not in a position to judge as I don;t have all the facts.

> Banning non-essential travel from/to highly affected countries early would probably have helped to slow down global spread

I think the point was that people tend to get round those travel bans - people instead of going from A to B (now banned) go A to C to B. But again, I don't know and would like to understand why they though that way.

> They claimed it does not spread through atomized particles, only droplets. This has been demonstrated to be false by experiment.

Do you have a link on this for further reading?

Unfortunately I never saw the papers on this and I'm looking for them now, so take this bullet with a grain of salt. Two lines of research were relayed to me verbally.

1. In one experiment in a hospital room detected virus on surfaces but not in the air, but it did so many (I vaguely recall it was 4) hours after the patient was in the room. I think I heard this in answer to a press question during a New Zealand official 1pm broadcast on COVID-19. They didn't categorically claim it can't be atomized, but suggested strongly that this wasn't expected to be a significant vector for transmission.

2. The other source was a paper someone linked to on Twitter. And I neglected to download it. But someone physically atomized material with the virus and then after some time period was able to detect the virus still atomized in the air. This proved it was possible to remain atomized, but not that sick people actually atomize the virus well. Again, perhaps not a significant mode of transmission.

I'll keep looking. I'll temporarily retract that bullet point.

I believe the incident you're referring to was actually an apartment building outbreak, not a study. As an event it seemed to confirm the airborne/atomized/fecal-oral spread early on. Somebody got someone in another part of their building sick.

Cheers, yeah my reading on it tended to the conclusion that it could aerosolise, but that was a limited vector compared to droplets (but limited doesn't mean none).

It was only mid March when the WHO finally admitted that SARS-CoV-2 could potentially remain airborne for an extended period of time. They still go out of their way to deny that it's common for it to spread in the air, they're clearly skeptics (when it's the only great explanation for how it spreads so rapidly and effectively among large crowds of people).

The WHO has been an epic disaster this entire time, wrong several critical times and behind on everything. They should not be regarded as to have much credibility after their failures on this pandemic.

This tweet by the WHO on Jan 14 will go down in history for the 21st century as one of the dumbest things said by anyone prominent in the medical sphere (it's astounding they left it up):

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

Here's a recent article on the topic

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/28/823292062/who-reviews-availab...

Here's a Reuters article about the experiment in question: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-study-...

The UK deputy chief medical officer was questioned on the UK deviating from WHO advice at a press conference.

She pointed out the W was for World and suggested they have a different focus. I thought it was a brilliant swerve. Accurate, but I suspect not the whole picture.

To be fair, the UK started off with a long string of facepalm official policies towards the covid19 epidemic. I mean, they were famous for jumping enthusiastically into the "let everyone catch it in one go and get it over with" bandwagon.

> but I will stop short of suggesting any conspiracy

But that's what you're doing.

> They held that there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission for far too long in the face of evidence out of China

Possibly true. Any pointers to that?

> They claimed for far to long that if you weren't showing symptoms you weren't contagious

If you make these claims, provide refrences please. This is new to me.

> They've been completely silent about ACE inhibitors and ARBs upregulating the expression of ACE2 receptors, and that available evidence strongly suggests that people on these medicines have much more severe reactions to the disease

Provide a link. If you're going to post stuff that sounds relevant and important, post references to it.

> But that's what you're doing.

I don't think the WHO is trying to get people sick, or that China is doing this to the USA, or anything like that. I do think that something doesn't smell right, but I'm unwilling to make any kind of conclusion on what it might be.

As for the person-to-person thing, I lived through the storm of data and information and distinctly remember them claiming there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission after I had seen multiple bits of evidence out of China. To prove that, I'd have to do a lot of wayback machine work.

People have been contagious before symptoms and also without showing any symptoms. I thought this knowledge was widespread at this point. The 3rd case and 5th case in NZ were a couple where the 5th case (wife) travelled to Iran. The man got sick after she returned. She was not sick. They tested her and she was positive and became the 5th case. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object... https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object... Probably sexual transmission, so not too suprising. But there are many other reports which the CDC acknowledges on this page: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

The question on ACE/ACE2 has references itself: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

I agree WRT china something stinks. My guess is it is just realpolitik. A lot of useful info was coming out of china (as well as lies) and maybe the WHO needed to bite its tongue to keep that channel open (China being... odd in its reactions to criticism).

I'll accept your point about no P2P transmission claim as I remember it too, and I suspect that was just parroted back from China early on - but they've not said that for a while.

The ACE stuff from your links just says 'we suspect'.

The WHO has indeed spoken on this recently (https://mobile.twitter.com/WHO/status/1240409217997189128):

"WHO is aware of concerns on the use of #ibuprofen for the treatment of fever for people with #COVID19. We are consulting with physicians treating the patients & are not aware of reports of any negative effects, beyond the usual ones that limit its use in certain populations"

You're being unfair here, they have spoken and it's clear they don't feel enough to recommend for or against at this point. Getting clean yes/no info out of a filthy cloud of murk like this covid situation - I'm glad I'm not them.

Nonetheless, thank you for a civil and informative reply

Ibuprofen is one thing. ACEI and ARBs are another. I'm prescribed the maximum dose of an ACE inhibitor and I really want to know whether or not the scarcity of Angiotensin II has caused the ACE2 receptors to upregulate in compensation. It seems like it would, and studies on animals show it does at least in some contexts (https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m810/rr-2). I completely understand it would be dangerous to suggest publicly as people might suddenly stop their blood pressure medicines and we'd have a spate of heart attacks and strokes. But it might be equally dangerous to not phase them off, at least for a few months, and onto something else in the meantime.

Other links I have on this topic that might be relevant:

https://www.healio.com/cardiology/vascular-medicine/news/onl...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0147-1

https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m810/rr-2

https://www.eshonline.org/spotlights/esh-statement-on-covid-...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32064853/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1829448/

I understood ibuprofen was relevant: "ibuprofen could increase the expression of ACE2 receptors that the virus uses to bind to cells" (https://www.popsugar.co.uk/fitness/should-you-avoid-taking-i...)

And you originally said

> upregulating the expression of ACE2 receptors

So ibuprofen is relevant.

And your first link says

“This speculation about the safety of ACE inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blockers treatment in relation to COVID-19 does not have a sound scientific basis or evidence to support it,” de Simone wrote in the ESC statement. “Indeed, there is evidence from studies in animals suggesting that these medications might be rather protective against serious lung complications in patients with COVID-19 infection, but to date there are no data in humans. The Council on Hypertension strongly recommends that physicians and patients should continue treatment with their usual antihypertensive therapy because there is no clinical or scientific evidence to suggest that treatment with ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers should be discontinued because of the COVID-19 infection.”

THEY DON'T HAVE THE INFO TO MAKE A DECISION ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

STOP SPREADING YOUR NON-EXPERT OPINION AS IF IT WERE FACT.

WHO repeating CCP bullshit is one thing, but you are not being honest here. Stop this.

Now I'm going to stop because I have some work to do that is laterally related to covid and I need to get on with it.

A number of people have brought up ibuprofen in relation to the expression of ACE2 receptors. There was a long thread on reddit about it. My point is that any reliable information on ibuprofen does not necessarily allow us to make the same conclusions about ACE inhibitors and ARBs.

The bullet point about this topic was the final bullet point, and I put a clear warning in place on the bullet point (originally too, not as an edit). I did not pass off my opinion as if it were fact, nor did I claim to be an expert. I questioned why we still don't have better data on this, given how strong the coorelation is in people who have conditions that are treated with these medicines.

But I will concede one point: The list about the WHO was not the right place for me to bring up this topic, and putting it there was misleading.

I appreciate the way you've taken my criticisms. You acknowledge you're not an expert which is much to your credit, and haven't amended your posts or done the usual wankers trick of just downvoting someone who disagrees. I like that.

I can't speak for ACEs and ARBs.

Let's agree to disagree on why we don't have better data on these. I trust doctors and the WHO on this. You maybe feel they can do more. I can't take the time to look into it, nor if I did, to interpret what I found.

I repeat I appreciate your constructive attitude and have upvoted several of your posts and this one, because it's done in the right spirit. Good luck.

On asymptomatic spread:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2001468 A woman from Shanghai traveled to Germany for a business trip between January 19 and January 22. She had no symptoms of coronavirus during this time and only became sick on her flight back to China. She was diagnosed with COVID-19 on January 26. But on January 24, a businessman who met with the woman on January 20 and 21 developed symptoms of coronavirus. He went back to work on January 27 and later tested positive for COVID-19. “We discovered that shedding of potentially infectious virus may occur in persons who have no fever and no signs or only minor signs of infection,” the report’s authors concluded.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2001899 two individuals who had recently returned to Germany from Wuhan, China, appeared to be asymptomatic, but tested positive for COVID-19 when they were given a throat swab. "We discovered that shedding of potentially infectious virus may occur in persons who have no fever and no signs or only minor signs of infection,"

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/scie... A majority of cases in China were transmitted by “undocumented infections” in the period before the country placed travel restrictions on Hubei province on January 23. “This high proportion of undocumented infections, many of whom were likely not severely symptomatic, appears to have facilitated the rapid spread of the virus throughout China"

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031815v... a significant number of infections can be attributed to people who had not yet developed symptoms

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2003762 Bill Gates "COVID-19 is transmitted quite efficiently," he wrote. "There is also strong evidence that it can be transmitted by people who are just mildly ill or even pre-symptomatic. That means COVID-19 will be much harder to contain than the Middle East respiratory syndrome or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which were spread much less efficiently and only by symptomatic people."

These - that I've scanned - don't back up your point. They say that P2P transmission is happening (no argument with that these days), but your claim was that the WHO was silent for too long on this. I don't know what 'too long' is.

However, quick dig in wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_outbreak_of_no...)

<<< On 12 January, based on additional information from the Chinese National Health Commission, WHO stated that "at this stage, there is no infection among healthcare workers, and no clear evidence of human to human transmission." >>>

So, fuck.

(you provided references in good faith, which I really appreciate).

After this huge list and today's farce of pretending to drop a call to avoid talking about China, I think we can safely ignore the WHO from here on out. They're either in China's pocket or don't know their head from a hole in the ground.

> today's farce of pretending to drop a call to avoid talking about China

Source?

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3906512

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/who-official-appears...

Wow. Thanks for sharing.

That puts the whole "China is doing brilliantly" WHO comedy show into perspective.

Médecins Avec Frontières ?

At some point you have to put it down to enemy action, even if they don’t realize they’re acting on behalf of the enemy.