Today’s entry: Doesn’t the lack of straight forward info. as the benefits of wearing or not a mask proof the complete incompetence of “health experts”, CDC & WHO? I know this is a new virus, but is it different from other Coronaviruses where this is not known?
Bottom Line: This question comes on back of my recent story presenting a study showing that the use of masks by at least 80% of the population in pubic would be more effective than the use lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus. In fairness to the CDC and other American institutions, like the National Institute of Health, the issue of misinformation has been facilitated by the WHO. Occasionally we’ve heard health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci or Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams cite the WHO’s misinformation, but they haven’t been the source of it. Whether it was the WHO’s deadly falsehoods in January or their bogus mask recommendation in March, they’ve been the consistent source of bad information during this pandemic.
As US intelligence has come to learn, the WHO was on the ground in China as early as last November investigating what turned out to be COVID-19. In December, Taiwan reported a new contagion to the WHO and asked for any guidance they had in dealing with the new virus. They were ignored by the WHO. The first official diagnosis of COVID-19 was on December 31st in Wuhan, China. On January 14th the WHO issued Tweeted, "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel (2019-nCoV) identified in#Wuhan,#China".
This statement proved deadly around the world. Not only was the WHO colluding with China, they now were misleading health experts around the world regarding its severity. Some have pointed to statements from Dr. Fauci in January and February which seemed to downplay the threat. In fairness to him, the National Institutes of Health had no reason to believe the WHO, which had been on the ground studying the virus, had been lying. This continued with misleading information regarding masks.
During a live web-streamed conference on March 30th, the WHO did not recommend masks for healthy individuals. What was this based on? Good question. Again, as the study showed there’s nothing better that we can do as a society to combat the spread than to wear masks. This is likely why Asian countries have generally fared comparatively well with the virus, as wearing masks were already culturally common. We know during this time China had been rapidly storing PPE and it’s possible the WHO issued the recommendation so there wouldn’t be a run on masks until China had procured all of the masks they’d desired. Another deadly and false recommendation.
This underlines the problems with the World Health Organization. President Trump has threatened to withhold funds from them until there’s significant reform within 30 days. Frankly, that’s generous. Whether news media generally chooses to cover this accurately or not, the WHO’s decisions and recommendations have led to the proliferation of illness, death, and the destruction of economies around the world. The United States foots 80% of the tab for the World Health Organization. I never want another tax dollar or yours or mine to go to this corrupted institution. We should defund them and the principals, prosecuted. It’s also my view that we should provide the benefit of the doubt to our health experts like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Adams. I’ve seen no evidence they acted irresponsibly – only with the misinformation they’d been provided.
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