Great write up. It’s so strange the WHO would release a statement like that.
Specifically this part:
> People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice.
So, first of all, I think the concern is on its face totally unwarranted because people likely do have immunity to reinfection for several months, but regardless the presence of the immunological memory (provided they avoid getting infected with Measles which causes immunological amnesia) means that the second infection will be really not very bad and unlikely to transmit easily.
But more importantly:
Our public health organizations (and the media) have adopted the following belief: It is worth it to either mislead the public or to outright lie in order to achieve compliance. If it's not clear from the article, I find such a position detestable, not only on ideological grounds but also because functionally it causes people to endanger their health by engaging in superstition.
This is my theory on why we've seen so many articles from previously-respectable organizations like CNN that seem to focus on the narrative that young people are dropping like flies from this. Why? Because they believe that if young people are not scared shitless for their personal health, that they will not comply with the lockdown measures.
So, the WHO is really not trying to hide their motivation here.
Now the irony is I oppose immunity passports on ideological grounds, at least when used _within_ a society. As far as being used as a literal passport, that's fine by me. If the rest of the world wants to practice containment, it's welcome to do so, but I think from an evidence-based perspective, containment seems like an incredibly dangerous proposition.
In Italy it's pretty evident from the communication from the government, the experts (which released a "disaster story" of possible 150,000 ICU cases in a month, a number so high that should have been at least explained) and the media (including tabloids).
Since Germany has started reopening, media here (but, according to what I read - but please correct me if need be - not the case with the major German papers) started saying that "infections are accelerating elsewhere! See? Our model of lockdown is the only one that works!"
It might be true, but it should be grounded in facts and not in misrepresentation of them.
P.S.: Since you mentioned a critique of the widely-used model for this epidemic, do you have any more links to dig further? I simply do not know enough and I want to inform myself more.
The most important point of criticism is this section: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QuzAwSTND6N4k7yNj/seemingly-...
I don't mean this is as a criticism, but it struck me as some dissonance as I was reading.
I've also heard that there might be criticism to other models like the Imperial College one, but so far I've never found anything with some substance.
The IMHE model, after re-estimating, _was_ too optimistic. My argument does not hinge on the IMHE model being too pessimistic; but rather simply that the IMHE model is basically useless and thus we shouldn't base policy on it.
I expect us to have well over 100,000 COVID-19 deaths - indeed probably 3x that but I admit I haven't sat down and done the age-bracket-weighted mortality napkin math. (Basically, take each age group's IFR and multiply by that age group's population in the US, after multiplying by some constant <1 which represnts the sum of herd immunity threshold plus overshoot)
So basically, I think that COVID-19 mortality is going to be way worse than the model predicts, but given the way I view the cost of lockdown, etc, I still think the approach I am proposing is superior to locking down.
Does that make sense?
Some models (not published) from our expert panel in Italy are instead, in my ignorant view, very pessimistic (they say they elaborated 90 of them). The lockdown will be "eased" (quotes, for most people it's the same as before) on May 4th and one of the predictions said we'd get 150K ICU cases (as I wrote in the parent post). This looks very hyperbolic, at least on paper, because there are many measures still in place, so it's not the same as "no social distancing, no protection, everyone free".
This whole thing has really shaken my understanding of people.
In this case they keep mentioning uncertainty and the argument is that otherwise the public may behave in a way they don’t want. Whatever your opinion on the arguments, that’s not science and it is also poor politics because sooner or later they’ll lose credibility and really that’s all they have.