[conanbatt]

The WHO arguably made the pandemic worse by discouraging the use of masks, propagating information that turned out to be false and dangerous saying there was no human-to-human interaction and generally sided with china in the informational flow.

Easier to ignore the WHO if you don't give them any money.

[sg47]

Not as dangerous as calling it a democratic hoax or that it'll go down to zero or like a miracle, it'll go away one day.

[parineum]

Unfortunately we don't live in a world of one or the other. Both things happened and both were bad.

Either thing not happening (along with countless others) would have been best.

[Fjolsvith]

I don't think any people died from those things.

[evgen]

The body count from those statements will probably be in the mid-100k or so. By instantly trying to politicise any criticism of his many failures Trump incited his moron followers to ignore the situation in the critical early weeks. States resisted shutdowns to score points with their cheetoh-fuhrer and that will end up killing thousands.

[Fjolsvith]

Show me a death certificate with the cause of death saying "Trump failure".

[gowld]

As bad as WHO may be, the US Federal government was and is far worse on all the same points.

Swapping in Trump and Kushner for WHO is not an improvement.

[0xy]

As far as I was aware the US government issued a travel ban on China while the WHO was still wrongly claiming travel bans are ineffective.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/30/275959/the-china...

"Tedros, as he is called, said the WHO does not recommend limiting either trade or travel to China at this time. “In fact, we oppose it,” he said. The health organization said it would question border closures, quarantining of airplane passengers who aren’t ill, and similar steps."

This organization is either totally incompetent or complicit with spreading CCP propaganda. In fact, they reacted significantly slower than the US government.

[llamataboot]

Travel bans are not effective unless they can be strict and from everywhere. Like, if you are a small island country that can keep everyone out or do strict quarantine, sure. But the travel ban on China was just theatrics and "microbial theatre" as is evidenced by, uh, reality.

[throwaway48472]

Italy was one of the first countries to issue a travel ban on Chinese travelers.

South Korea never issued a travel ban.

In order for a travel ban to be effective, it has to be for all incoming travelers. Not just for a specific country.

[aeternum]

>In order for a travel ban to be effective, it has to be for all incoming travelers. Not just for a specific country.

This is not true. A ban on a specific country cannot eliminate the risk but it can still slow the spread just like any mitigation.

[nikofeyn]

there are plenty of ways to slow the spread that doesn't unnecessarily break up families, keep people away from their jobs, create job loss, keep people stranded, and harbor poor goodwill towards another country. the travel ban has uprooted lives, and now here we are, and the u.s. government is still phoning this in. the travel ban against china was a pointless exercise in political posturing and akin to a clam's defense strategy. it isn't a big surprise that the virus still got here, primarily from europe, and we weren't even aware of it because the u.s. wasn't testing nor were they tracking, the two things that have time and time again shown to be extremely effective.

there are plenty of models that quarantining the source only does not work. china even proved this. the initial quarantine of wuhan only was not working, so they had to expand it to everywhere. south korea showed testing and tracking worked better than shutting down travel.

the u.s. travel ban against china was ineffective. however, it will now continue indefinitely because the u.s. is in the middle of a shit show, and this will continue to harm people and businesses affected by the travel ban. it will add months if not years of delays to visa processing everywhere.

[conanbatt]

I'd be on board defunding the fed gov as well!

[ksk]

If masks are so amazing, how come we don't see Fauci or any of the other experts regularly wearing masks?

[henearkr]

In some other countries they do, especially in Europe.

[ksk]

I'm a little suspicious when the real experts don't wear masks, and the internet experts berate you over the head for not wearing one.

[henearkr]

Maybe that's because in front of the media some experts consider to uncover their face as a worthwhile risk, in order to reach to people understanding more easily.

That's not all experts, though, many of them still wear their mask in front of the camera.