WHO does a lot of amazing health work, including on COVID-19. I respect their medical staff greatly. But mark my words: this one will be a case study of how to bungle the messaging/strategy—from the top.
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Excuse my bitterness, also to media who pooh-poohed those of us who were alarmed in Jan/Feb and lectured us about the seasonal flu. We already knew our government was likely going to fail us but all the other institutions that should have helped us save ourselves failed us, too.
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In contrast, look at Hong Kong. Government is unelected, unpopular and unresponsive. A lot of travel from mainland China. But the people stepped up immediately, in early January: hygiene, social-distancing, universal mask-wearing. Only three deaths, almost no new cases anymore.
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So terrible. China could have contained ALL OF IT back in December when Wuhan doctors were desparately trying to warn of the tiny, local outbreak. Chinese authorities sent the police to shut them up and unleashed the pandemic. Rest of the world could have gotten ready. Alas.
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Wonder if "what about the flu" crowd even understands that the places with better precautions will also have much less flu spread (hygiene/social distancing/masks) *plus* what flu they get, they can treat better because their hospitals won't be overrun with COVID-10 patients.
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SARS permanently damaged lungs of survivors so that's another concern. I hope this turns out to be seasonal and there's sustained immunity after exposure—and if and when anti-virals and vaccines are figured out, we don't also screw up scaling up production and distribution. Sigh.
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I'm going to end here: we didn't learn from SARS, so here we are. We should learn from this. That means: do not absolve the Chinese government, they unleashed this pandemic through a cover-up—just like SARS. Do not absolve our governments. Do not absolve institutions that failed.
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concur. everyone casually following the now-pandemic:
me: oh really? now you've decided it can't be contained? now?pic.twitter.com/QdXkc4TsKSThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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was there such a time? didn't the WHO sleep on calling HIV/AIDS a pandemic until like ... well into the 90s?
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Dragged its feet on ebola for five months too.
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