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Comment by ciguy | Hacker News Reader

Are we really expected to believe anything the WHO says at this point? They are unreliable narrators saying whatever the CCP/China wants them to say at best, maybe outright malicious at worst.

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Unsubstantiated conspiracy theories are such a poor man’s distraction.

What conspiracy theories are you referring to exactly? Because just based on facts (Their handling of Taiwan, their statements parroting CCP propaganda in January claiming the virus was not transmissible between humans, their condemnation of travel restrictions as xenophobic etc...) they are pretty clearly not on the side of facts or truth. Make of that what you will, but you can't deny the facts.

Your comment that I replied to directly describes a conspiracy and you did not substantiate it with evidence.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspiracy

No it does not? Stating facts is not a conspiracy.

A conspiracy is any agents coming together, even if unknowingly, to a achieve a common objective. This is very directly what you wrote whether or not it is factual, though the writing appears very much an opinion.

I have looked at the fact that the United States formally endorses the Chinese position on the 'One China' policy, and its president repeatedly thanked China for its transparency over Coronavirus and conciuded that the United States is also a mouthpiece of the CCP...

What I remember reading was something like "there is no evidence that the virus can be transmitted by humans" , was it uncovered that there was such evidence and was hidden?

I see that is a lot of China blaming but I seen US politicians and media were also pushing strong into "there is no evidence" and is just the flu.

Anyway this entire "show" just confirms my view on politics, the big trick to use is "Blame the others, we had the power but all the other parties are at fault we have no blame",

Taiwan's response to Covid-19 is based on WHO's advice. It's working quite well.

The WHO is an international organization trying to do its best in a complex international political field. They can't straight away say Taiwan is independent or they will be banned from China and what good would it actually do. The best they can do is avoid answering this kind of question which they unsurprisingly did.

Also, please stop paroting the Republican media nonsense. The WHO did warn of human to human transmission in January [1]. They also didn't say travel restrictions were xenophobic by the way. They said they were not usually the solution to this problem while robust contact tracing, isolation and testing broadly were. A recommendation a lot of governments have apparently found very hard to follow.

You can't deny facts but the facts you are putting forward just don't exist.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/who-cited-huma...

I'm not big in to conspiracy theories, but this is my take on the WHO. Their handling of the Corona virus has been a huge blunder.

What part of their narration is unreliable ?

In January they said the virus doesn't transmit between humans. Then they said travel restrictions are xenophobic. Then they said the world should thank China for its efforts.

A representative also pretended his audio went out when asked about Taiwan.

UN does not recognize Taiwan and WHO is part of it.

This still does not justify this bizarre behavior by the WHO representative.

WHO, being staffed by scientists, should recognize that Taiwan indeed exists, that it has its own government that responded to the pandemic, and that China is not in charge there. Pretending otherwise leads to losing credibility, as everyone knows Taiwan does indeed exist. I've actually seen it.

Scientists should recognize because it exists but the politicians and governments that pay those scientist don't have to recognize Taiwan because they live in Wonderland I guess. Your logic is impeccable.

Yes, and when he came back and was asked about Taiwan again, he said he already discussed China and ended the conversation. Taiwan doesn't exist according to WHO.

Taiwan is not a member of the UN so WHO kind of have to act that way.

It sucks, but that's a problem with the UN, not with WHO specifically.

Perhaps you could inform your own government?

Unless you happen to live in one of a handful of central American, Caribbean or South American states which do recognise it.

It's a f*cking minefield, if you'll pardon the language, and I can't blame scientists who don't want to touch it with a fifty foot pole.

Pretending that horribly complex geopolitical issues are simple does not magically make them simple.

February 1st to be specific, that was when they tweeted that it doesn't transmit between humans.

The tweet was different though (and AFAIK, much earlier): "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."

It clearly mentions that they're relaying what Chinese authorities are saying.

If you read e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/09/trump-vs-... the timeline of things is quite different than what you state.

I also don't see how this influenced anything. It took almost every country way too long to respond. Loads of countries thought it'll be fine for them.

Like most of what is not strictly “scientific “ (quoted because this term is being abused so much today that it would be hilarious were it not for the inflicted suffering).

And no: just trying to clear China’s laboratories from guilt is NOT scientific.

I think I'm missing something here, which chinese laboratory would be guilty of what? Are you talking the claim the virus has been engineered in a lab? If so I think there is a consensus of scientits that reckon it is not the case.

In the same city district as the wet market that was visited by a number of the first cases, there is a Chinese laboratory that does research on bat coronaviruses, and that has had accidents and international criticism on its safety in the past.

It is hard to provide evidence, but the accusation is that it somehow originated there.

Scientists seem to agree that it isn't an engineered virus, but that doesn't mean it isn't a wild virus first transmitted from bats to humans in that lab.

The lab you are describing is 13 km away from the market.

This is a misleading statement. There is consensus that there are no traces of gene editing in the virus. But this statement is not equal to "it wasn't produced in the lab".

They said wearing masks does not help decrease infectious spread. They actually claimed that wearing masks can increase infectious spread because of improperly wearing it.

There is ongoing debate about this because the evidence shows only a small positive effect for wearing them, and mask wearing can change behaviour.

There has been masks around for more than 100 years to protect from infectious diseases. Why is this still an ongoing debate?

The ongoing debate is whether getting the general public to wear masks is actually helpful or not.

See my other response for ways in which that differs from medical staff doing it. It's psychology and sociology as well as pure "can a mask stop the virus", which are important factors when looking at disease transmission in a population.

There is no debate. Healthcare workers are invariably wearing masks around all patients, regardless of known COVID19 status.

It is simply irresponsible to claim that wearing masks offers only marginal benefit. This is a respiratory virus, it is transmitted by droplets.

The downvoting of this plain truth ought to scare anyone who values science over politics.

Healthcare workers wear masks of a known quality, which they have fit tested, and they know how long to use them and when to dispose of them. They wear them as part of a full protective strategy along with other context-appropriate equipment and have training to know how to conduct themselves in the situation too.

You can't just claim the same benefits for an old piece of t-shirt stretched across your face. An old piece of t-shirt which may give you a false sense of security and lead you to take risks and get closer to other people, and which may make you touch your face more, and which you may not clean or replace etc etc...

> They said wearing masks does not help decrease infectious spread. They actually claimed that wearing masks can increase infectious spread because of improperly wearing it.

Can you please point to the studies claiming that masks significantly lower transmission rates? The only think I ever read was it lowers a bit the transmission FROM infected people by blocking some of the droplets sneezed/coughed, but just wearing them doesn't protect healthy people anyhow. Unless you have N95 + good glasses and perfect hygiene.

The behavior of 'I have a basic mask therefore I am protected' - I've seen it quite a few times personally. It really can lead to false feeling of security and lowering one's guard. I've seen folks wearing them incorrectly too, especially in the beginning - ie not over nose, huge gaps around it, putting it down in store for a call etc.

I think your statements are taken out of context of what was claimed. Not claiming WHO is perfect (far from it), but trump-ish bashing everybody and everything external instead of admitting one's utter failure and working on fixing things won't change much.

WHO said that masks are very helpful for Asia. Netherlands government also mention that the usefulness of masks is questionable at best. This despite that the masks obviously do help.

It seems that this was said because there's a huge shortage of masks. People starting hoarding them, plus stealing them from hospitals and so on.

So yeah, WHO did mention masks aren't super useful for the general public, but seems like the reason is mostly because to prevent people going crazy for masks.

The bit about people thinking their safe due to a bad mask is also mentioned by the Dutch government btw. And they decide for themselves, they do not just follow whatever WHO says.

I completely agree with you and even "crazier" I don't hang out with Alex Jones type of people, though the vast majority of I've recently talked to about it also agree with us.

I don't get why you're being downvoted, I had to create a throwaway for obvious reasons; I usually find myself not ready to "out" any of my opinions.

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