Strawberry Pyramid posted:

No joke, I will legit never fully trust the WHO or CDC in matters regarding infectious disease outbreaks again. They've proven all too willing to suppress critical time-sensitive information to placate political interests.

Gynovore posted:

Oh god, between this and the Trade Wars mention on another thread, I feel like I'm back on a BBS.

no pubes yet sorry posted:

Alan Smithee posted:

probably cuz you're going through puberty

no pubes yet sorry posted:

painfully horny

Strawberry Pyramid posted:

No joke, I will legit never fully trust the WHO or CDC in matters regarding infectious disease outbreaks again. They've proven all too willing to suppress critical time-sensitive information to placate political interests.

Blitter posted:

The messaging should continue to be to wear masks, and you are very, very wrong about masks not being effective at reducing viral load and transmission.

There is no shortage of literature, new and old.



How are you so loudly wrong about this one loving year in?

teen witch posted:

If they had the Covid one year ago thing for Sweden you can show poo poo from six months ago and it’ll be drat near identical.

This pandemic loving obliterated my little trust in the government here and I was an idiot for having it in the first place. I’m an American, I should have known better. But I’m just floored at the stubborn incompetency of it all.

I weirdly keep thinking about the end quote from Fargo “There's more to life than a little money, ya know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are. And it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it.”

wilderthanmild posted:

I dunno if it's the same as placating political interests, but I remember being incredibly insulted by a bunch of health officials suddenly saying masks wouldn't be effective or necessary. All because they wanted to make sure people didn't hoard masks and kill the supply for hospitals. It was some serious bullshit to try to outsmart their own citizens and only made it more of an uphill battle when they wanted people to start wearing masks.

It really really shook my faith in organizations I had seen as very trustworthy before that.

quote:

Of course, masks work. Everyone knows that. Dozens of research papers have proved it. In South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, the rest of Asia—where coronavirus has been kept under control—masks were key.

So look, we understand there's a shortage of masks. We understand only certain people should get them because it's a triage moment. We get it.

But stop lying to us. It makes us cynical. It divides the country. Tell the truth. We can handle it.

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Of course the messaging should be to continue to wear masks - we should not assume 100% efficacy of vaccines and I never said otherwise. What I said was that a few idiots who stop wearing masks will not ruin the world for the rest of us, if they are vaccinated. I'm trying to tell user "Pakistani politics" to not panic about hypothetical mask-less vaccinated people in particular. Vaccine rollout will bring the R number below 1, and there is a pretty good chance that a particular mask-less vaccinated individual is not actually able to transmit the disease.

I get from that graph that masks have some effect at preventing spread but I'm not aware of any community where mask-wearing by itself has been a successful measure. You seem to be saying something like "masks are by themselves effective at stopping Covid spread", correct me if I'm misunderstanding you. The truth is that masks are just one among many layers of protection needed, and not the most effective one at that. (The most effective one being isolation.)

I don't mean to go and derail the thread into a mask/anti-mask discussion, I'm really not opposed to mask wearing like you seem to be assuming. I'm just worried about how many people seem to think that as long as they're wearing a mask, it's fine to go ahead and hang with your friends etc. That attitude is getting people killed everyday and I think it's sad and unnecessary. The public are clearly not educated about the swiss-cheese model of protection.




I don't mean to defend any particular idiotic statements (because I don't know which particular ones you're referring to) but at this point I don't see that Sweden has done that much worse than other countries in terms of deaths per capita. We did have a huge amount of elderly people die in spring 2020, disproportionally more than comparable countries, but since then I don't think it's been worse than others. I track 128.6 deaths per 100k right now at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105 which puts us between France and Brazil on the list.

Edit edit: I guess in any country, you could always say that the lockdowns could have been harder and lives would have been saved, I guess that's not an unreasonable opinion to have if that's your case.

I. M. Gei posted:

what does “horny on main” actually mean?

I get the “horny” part, but where does the “on main” part come from?

teen witch posted:

On the main account, vs a side account/finsta.

Strawberry Pyramid posted:

No joke, I will legit never fully trust the WHO or CDC in matters regarding infectious disease outbreaks again. They've proven all too willing to suppress critical time-sensitive information to placate political interests.

quote:

In part, Tedros was perceived to be over-praising China because the rest of the world’s media were still picking over the chaos and deception of the early weeks; the first signs of China’s fightback seemed from the outside, as one Italian put it later, ‘like science fiction’. But much of the resentment at Tedros’s warm words for China was based on a misunderstanding of WHO’s role and powers. Lacking any means to force countries to give it information, but desperately needing to get it, it is obliged to fall back on consensus, persuasion and flattery – in other words, diplomacy. The half-hearted cover-up by Wuhan’s local health officials showed what happens, on a national scale, when leaders fear humiliation. Theirs were not the actions of people who expected to be rewarded for the speedy delivery of bad news. ‘You have to keep positive incentives for countries to report,’ Devi Sridhar, a professor of global public health at Edinburgh University, said. ‘If there are negative incentives – WHO comes out and grabs a headline saying “They did it badly” – what other countries are ever going to come forward and report when they have an outbreak going on?’

quote:

Of course, masks work. Everyone knows that. Dozens of research papers have proved it. In South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, the rest of Asia—where coronavirus has been kept under control—masks were key.

teen witch posted:

We could have sucked it up and had lockdowns, a cohesive mask strategy that didn’t start like a loving month ago, mandatory working from home for those who can, not letting people go on loving sportlov, and maybe the EU and AZ couldn’t have hosed up the vaccine rollout but honestly I’m kind of not shocked that that happened.

freebooter posted:

a significant factor in East Asia handling it is cargo cult epidemiology - Americans looking at a bunch of Asians wearing masks and thinking "oh it's just that easy." Japan, South Korea, and most definitely Taiwan also closed their borders to some extent and had proper contact tracing, testing and isolation measures. Masks are a last resort, not a first resort.

freebooter posted:

Masks are a last resort, not a first resort.

Greggster posted:

If I'm not completely wrong (and chances are I am) the whole reason for us swedes not being put in lockdown is because of laws in our constitution which prohibits the government from denying people their right to go wherever they want, and it's only if people are carrying a disease that they can legally force people to stay at home.
Which sucks

no pubes yet sorry posted:

horny on main
a slang term for posting or engaging with sexual posts on your main social media account, rather than a secondary one that you’d usually use for that purpose. the phrased spawned on tumblr, after ted cruz liked a vore fetish drawing on his main, verified account.

Xaintrailles posted:

WHO should have admitted that they're unable to respond usefully to a pandemic because of the way they're constituted and suggested a new body do it.

Pennywise the Frown posted:

I think someone mentioned in this thread the middle of last year that companies might be hopefully starting to realize how worthless middle management is. (they probably aren't)

freebooter posted:

You should of course wear your mask in places like American and Europe where the pandemic is rampant, but I still think the notion that masks were a significant factor in East Asia handling it is cargo cult epidemiology - Americans looking at a bunch of Asians wearing masks and thinking "oh it's just that easy." Japan, South Korea, and most definitely Taiwan also closed their borders to some extent and had proper contact tracing, testing and isolation measures. Masks are a last resort, not a first resort.

quote:

The test results came back the next morning and I was surprised to find out that I was positive, since I had no symptoms. What shocked me was that officials from the local district’s public health service then came to take me to a government facility. Not long after I was taken away, more officials in full PPE came to disinfect our apartment, check on my parents and tell them to get tested.

Self-quarantining at home if you have Covid-19, no matter how mild the symptoms, is not an option in Korea. Thus began my 14-day stay in a youth hostel in the heart of Seoul that had been converted to a quarantine facility for mildly symptomatic Covid-19 patients.

Antigravitas posted:

This is hysterically out of touch with reality.

The WHO has its status by the graces of sovereign nations. It does not have powers except insofar as sovereign nations allow it to have any. The WHO has no mandate except insofar as sovereign nations give it one.

Antigravitas posted:

This is hysterically out of touch with reality.

The WHO has its status by the graces of sovereign nations. It does not have powers except insofar as sovereign nations allow it to have any. The WHO has no mandate except insofar as sovereign nations give it one.

It is not in the WHOs mandate to suggest a new body and it is absurd to think that nations, again, being sovereign, would vest it with powers beyond what it has now. If anything, it would lose what precious little ability to affect actual change in the world the it has managed to carve out for itself. Its role is to facilitate coordination between sovereign nations. If a nation doesn't play ball, there is literally nothing the WHO can do, should do, or will be enabled to do in the future.

This is the American myth of the UN army coming to take over their country all over again, except even dumber somehow. Blaming their own anemic response and the failure of their own institutions on some foreign scapegoat that they themselves starve of resources borders on caricature for how stereotypically american it is.

If you're a yank and you have a problem with pandemic response, the institutions responsible are those of your own nation.

freebooter posted:

You should of course wear your mask in places like American and Europe where the pandemic is rampant, but I still think the notion that masks were a significant factor in East Asia handling it is cargo cult epidemiology - Americans looking at a bunch of Asians wearing masks and thinking "oh it's just that easy." Japan, South Korea, and most definitely Taiwan also closed their borders to some extent and had proper contact tracing, testing and isolation measures. Masks are a last resort, not a first resort.

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Spot on. China and Korea succeeded because of a default tendency for people to trust and accept authorities, and strong peer pressure, combined with pretty draconian measures by their governments. Japan has the same tendency to somewhat lesser extent and has done slightly worse as a result.
That they all have a habit of wearing surgical masks when ill probably contributes but there has been absolutely 0 evidence to say that this was the key factor.

I am not in the least surprised that Sweden or the USA, where people value individual freedom over respecting authority, have done a lot worse at stopping spread.
In Korea, the government pulled people's credit card history and cell phone locations, to see who had been near an outbreak. Would the American public have accepted that measure, if it were legal? You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Spot on. China and Korea succeeded because of a default tendency for people to trust and accept authorities, and strong peer pressure, combined with pretty draconian measures by their governments. Japan has the same tendency to somewhat lesser extent and has done slightly worse as a result.

sale on Banksy art posted:

Japan did jack and poo poo. In fact Japan promoted a domestic travel and dining out campaign throughout a large part of 2020.

teen witch posted:

Swedes are way WAAAAY more trusting of the government and respecting authority to a really ridiculous fault, especially compared to the US. The issue here is when the government and authority is repeating bafflingly stupid poo poo, and the people don’t question it (among other factors, but this is a big one), is how we got here. There are some similarities with Sweden and the US but many key differences.

quote:

In Individualist societies people are supposed to look after themselves and their direct family only. In Collectivist societies people belong to ‘in groups’ that take care of them in exchange for loyalty.

Sweden, with a score of 71 is an Individualist society. This means there is a high preference for a loosely-knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of themselves and their immediate families only

quote:

Swedish mentality seems to have two opposing tendencies: one towards individualism and the other towards collectivity. The explanation for this is the different meaning that can be given to the concept of individualism. Swedes seem to need social autonomy strongly and not to be dependent on other individuals, such as neighbors, relatives, employers, and so on. At the same time, Swedes seem to need collective support for their opinions. Collective solutions are a hallmark of Swedish society and dominate Swedish politics. Survey data are used to illustrate this theme empirically.

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

I'm pretty sure Japan closed their borders early on, at least to foreign travelers. Which I wish had been possible in the EU, but unfortunately the free movement of labor and goods has continued to trump safety.

Xaintrailles posted:

Not American and I don't blame the WHO for national responses. I do blame them for lying, for exploiting the influence they have to promote those lies, and for not being clear about their limitations. They did act as an enabler for the abysmal responses in many countries, although a minor one.
The WHO in general is a good thing but if they can't deal with an issue due to politics they should say so and step away from it.