Mask early, serious lockdown as soon as it becomes serious, and don’t end lockdowns before numbers are way low. We masked late, put lockdowns in place late if at all, and ended them way too early, which means that some countries went through several ones. And we’re not through yet.
That said, I don’t share the optimism of the parent poster. This would be a heavy burden in terms of freedom and human rights for a result that is far from certain. There have been some resurgences, the extent of which is of course unknown because the truth would be damageable to China. And there is no knowing whether the next variant would start it all over again, in which it would be back to square one.
>> If the Western world would have done what the WHO advised at the time, we all more or less would have a COVID stuation like the Chinese have for some time.
Thank you for putting this stuff together. In the past, I did the same when people asked for "source?" for things like "Fauci and the HHS recommended against masking". After I go through the painful process of reacquiring each of the sources, these people disappear.
"Source?" is now the dual of the Gish Gallop strategy. It is a meta-rhetorical strategy to amplify work done by some perceived "opponent".
After all, for anyone who truly believes in sourced claims, they would say "I found these sources that do X. What have you found?" This is natural because they are more interested in the truth than in an argument against an "opponent".
So now I don't respond to disproportionate requests for work. I am glad you did, though. And looking through them, it's exactly as I remember: anti-mask advocacy.
I'll give credit to the WHO for not deleting their tweets. It would be even better if they offered a mea culpa explaining how they came to this position that was incorrect in hindsight. But not just disappearing things already is better than some others do.
Haha I mean the people disappear after firing off their "Source" calls. They're not really interested in sources. It's a technique to get you to waste your time.
Right, yes, that was early March. The guidelines evolved as more information became available and they released new advice in early April, which is far from ideal but better than a lot of governments reactions.
Their official stance before that was rigorous test, isolate, and trace, which was not done seriously anywhere outside China.
I was in China during the initial lockdown that started in late January/early February. The instructions from the government were clear from day one: stay home as much as possible, wear a mask when you go out, wash your hands when you get home, open your windows and keep your place well-ventilated. All that advice holds true today, just as it held true for SARS, MERS and other similar viruses.
I feel like the reporting from the WHO was deliberately sub-par for political reasons. For example the vacillating on masks - everyone knew that masks helped, but the WHO tried to be on the fence about it because some countries were experiencing shortages. Another example of the WHO playing politics was when they neglected to publish the advice not to trust folk remedies, since that would have gone against a Chinese government campaign to try softly promote TCM, perhaps as a form of psychological comfort to the hundreds of millions stuck in lockdown.
Living through corona has helped me to realize that successful public health policy isn't just about giving everyone the raw facts, it's also about managing people's morale and trying to influence their behavior through propaganda. I think the WHO tried to do this, but it wasn't universally successful.
There was a concerted effort from government officials,
bandwagon-joining academics (aided by journalists) in the West to downplay masking, and to ridicule and shame those who wore masks. Here is a Time article from eary March where it was described as the equivalent of “knocking on wood”. https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/
I am fairly certain that the US government reversed itself on masks before the WHO did (Wikipedia says WHO changed its advice in June).
Well, mask early may not have been the best choice of words then. Taiwan's reaction would qualify as early. And Taiwan is the thing that the WHO has been very conspicuously be silent about even when asked explicitly.
Most of those tweets were discouraging the use of masks for the purpose of protecting yourself from Covid. This still holds true today. At the time, a lot of people were hoarding masks, thinking it would protect themselves. Letting them continue wouldn't help control the spread, and probably would have increased the spread in hospitals.
I agree the fourth tweet has aged particularly terribly.
I’m not sure the federal government has the plenary power to enforce such things in the United States. So it was never an option. Authoritarian governments or single-state nations are better able to mandate behavior.
The lockdowns, even as implemented, extracted an enormous toll on small businesses and mental health.
> I’m not sure the federal government has the plenary power to enforce such things in the United States.
I am certain it hasn’t. But the same reasoning applies for state governments. Having public health decisions taken at the county level is sheer madness.
> The lockdowns, even as implemented, extracted an enormous toll on small businesses and mental health.
This is entirely true, and I hope this will make people and governments take health issues and depression more seriously. Now, we don’t have an alternative earth to experiment, but whether one strict lockdown for 6 months followed by progressive reopening is better or worse for people and the economy compared to a succession of waves and partial lockdowns with no end in sight should certainly be discussed.
This is even more skewed in countries that do not have a proper safety net and where people have the choice between going to work ill or not having a job.
I think it's more of a cultural difference rather than government one. Korea and Taiwan are democracies and managed to control the pandemic as well. The US government has the authority to declare martial law, but doing so would completely undermine people's faith in the government.
There is certainly a cultural element, but it is literally a legal difference as well. The federal government in the US does not have the same broad powers as the federal government in Korea. Remember the US is a collection of states that consented to let the feds take on certain powers while retaining many, whereas South Korea is “just” South Korea. Provincial autonomy in SK is not anything like the “state’s rights” issue in the US.
I am curious about this “pro-lockdown, pro-mask” advice from ethe WHO.
I am almost certain that they took a long time to recommend masking. I also am fairly confident that the WHO was/is opposed to lockdowns and it certainly still opposes travel restrictions.
> I am almost certain that they took a long time to recommend masking.
They did. Initially they recommended testing and isolating (which obviously could not scale much). Their guidelines were still happily ignored as they were updated, though.
I remember that at the time when we were masking up in the Czech Republic (first half of march, maybe..?), WHO was actually talking a lot about the dangers of face masks when used too eagerly and improperly. Or at least that was what had gotten through our mainstream media.
In much of the world, people who wore masks were subject to ridicule, especially on social media because of the cynical public health messaging, which seemed to be about preserving stocks of masks for healthcare workers by telling the public that “masks don’t work” (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...).
The New York Times op-ed above, and efforts from the Czech Republic made discussing public masking more acceptable in the US, and then the rest of the world.
