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Our choices with respect to masks and WHO are... they were right back then (masks are useless), they were wrong (masks are useful), or they were lying purposefully to mislead. People insist that authorities were lying... I prefer to think they were wrong. 1/

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Natalie Christie Peluso

Replying to @StuartJRitchie and @MWStory

Great piece, although I personally continue to flinch whenever anyone suggests the WHO didn't recommend masks because they don't work. Global PPE shortage was insane in March & there was a clear motive to preserve what they had for hospitals. Plus clear evidence China used them.

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I think lying is too strong, and wrong is too weak: they were far too confident that they were right and paid insufficient attention to evidence that they might be wrong.

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Many authorities did deliberately lie and mislead about masks. It isn't a secret that they lied. They openly admitted that they were misleading the public about masks due to concerns about shortages for health care professionals. They weren't doing it maliciously but they did it.

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For other issues, they were simply wrong and overconfident, but it when it comes to this, it was primarily deliberate misinformation aimed at avoiding shortages of masks for health care workers. Is there really much doubt about that? The alternative is they're complete idiots.

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Either way, the WHO in particular is not a trustworthy source of information. They've been far worse than even the CDC which has been hobbled by political pressure and incompetence. WHO downplayed it and discouraged most effective ways of reducing the spread of the virus.

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The reason we talk about it as the COVID-19 virus at all (which is a circular definition) instead of SARS-2 is because they didn't want people to be concerned about it. who.int/emergencies/di This is hardly our first experience with variants of Coronavirus variants.

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They didn't just discourage masks. They discouraged travel restrictions, enforced quarantines, early lockdowns, etc. Hard for me to understand why people would trust them in the future. Goes for anyone who made the evidently false claim that masks only work for nurses/doctors.

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My question is how do they live with the blood they have on their hands? Don't see many admissions of fault, apologies, etc. Are we just supposed to move on pretend they didn't do it? It seems that way. It builds up the anti-mask movement, conspiracies about the pandemic, etc.

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Unfortunately, the WHO doesn't really seem to consider it's mission to be about public health. It looks like it's more important to them to play politics and say what the governments providing funding and exerting influence over them want to hear. I learned not to trust them.

1:53 PM · Oct 27, 2020Twitter Web App

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Perhaps they were very concerned about not being taken seriously in the future if they were seen to have cried wolf. I think it's a mix of different factors. I want my information from experts not playing these games and who don't hide from their previous actions / statements.