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Comment by dan-robertson | Hacker News Reader

Note that the WHO has declared 7 of this specific category of emergency since it was defined 2009[1], so a little more frequently than every other year. Likely only one of those emergencies significantly affected most people in developed countries. I’m not in a high risk group and I personally won’t change my behaviour because of this, just as I didn’t for Ebola or Polio.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_Emergency_of_I...

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> Note that the WHO has declared 7 of this specific category of emergency since it was defined 2009

I too read the second sentence in this article.

> Likely only one of those emergencies significantly affected most people in developed countries. I’m not in a high risk group and I personally won’t change my behaviour because of this, just as I didn’t for Ebola or Polio.

This declaration isn't calling for you to change your behavior. On the contrary, it's for international health communities to start coordinating before the disease has a chance to become widespread so that you can continue with your unchanged behavior.

I thought it was a pretty important sentence.

Mainly I wanted to balance out the comments on this thread a bit as there were many which seemed overly cautious/mildly alarmist and there were too many comparisons to covid which is not particularly similar except for being a virus and causing one of these declarations.

6 mos ago when this pathogen entered the news cycle, virologists reassured that monkey pox was a stable, well-researched dna virus that didn't mutate rapidly like Covid does. Except, come to find out a few mos and a few thousand cases later, it does. https://www.dw.com/en/monkeypox-virus-mutations-challenging-...

Is it hard to believe that the WHO declaring something a global health emergency might be the direct cause of reduced infections/spread of these diseases?

Well, yes.

> I’m not in a high risk group and I personally won’t change my behaviour because of this, just as I didn’t for Ebola or Polio.

That's irrelevant.

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