Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #306 - WHO's Quackery during Pandemic
With millions dead, while authorities were busy in arguments over crossing of the t's and dotting the i's, one wonders. Were these deaths massacres or deaths out of incompetence?
Photo by vishnudeep dixit from Pexels
“But there's a sacredness which is not of thought, nor of a feeling resuscitated by thought. It is not recognizable by thought nor can it be utilized by thought. Thought cannot formulate it. But there's a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word. It is not communicable. It is a fact.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurtis Notebook
There are times for precise measurements. And, then there are times when the time taken to measure more precisely will lead to innumerable deaths. At such times, the 80-20 is the right Dharma. For, precision can mean greater massacre.
WHO, whether out of incompetence or otherwise, took stances that had no basis in science. It was either red tape or mere quackery.
The world has suffered for that.
When one comes face to face with death, it is then time to fight through the situation collectively. This can happen if you have identified the non-negotiable. After that decision can be easily made.
In the battle against COVID, that is where the world lost.
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WHO’s denial of Science
Linsey Marr is an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech. She also studies infectious diseases.
On April 3rd, 2020, she was in a Zoom call with some other folks including folks from the WHO.
Marr was now almost sure that the virus could “hang in the air.” That meant anyone who would breathe enough of it could get infected.
So, people indoors were exposed to greater risk.
Strangely, the WHO “experts” in that meeting seemed to be on their own trip. They were aggressively against this message. Or so it seemed. They had just tweeted this.
Do you see something strange?
No mention of a mask!
They were “certifying” absolute falsehood - “COVID is not airborne” with great confidence.
And in their infinite wisdom, they were sharing and promoting COVID quackery.
Meanwhile, even when Marr tried to explain and lay out her case, the WHO “experts” kept pushing her for “more conclusive evidence”.
Of course, by the time, that “conclusive evidence” was available to overturn the quackery from WHO, many would get infected!
They ticked through a growing list of superspreading events in restaurants, call centers, cruise ships, and a choir rehearsal, instances where people got sick even when they were across the room from a contagious person. The incidents contradicted the WHO’s main safety guidelines of keeping 3 to 6 feet of distance between people and frequent handwashing. If SARS-CoV-2 traveled only in large droplets that immediately fell to the ground, as the WHO was saying, then wouldn’t the distancing and the handwashing have prevented such outbreaks? Infectious air was the more likely culprit, they argued. But the WHO’s experts appeared to be unmoved. If they were going to call Covid-19 airborne, they wanted more direct evidence—proof, which could take months to gather, that the virus was abundant in the air. Meanwhile, thousands of people were falling ill every day. (Source)
And, they were!
The acceptance of the diagnosis of the scientists by the WHO and CDC took over a year!
A quiet revolution has permeated global health circles. Authorities have come to accept what many researchers have argued for over a year: The coronavirus can spread through the air. That new acceptance, by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comes with concrete implications: Scientists are calling for ventilation systems to be overhauled like public water supplies were in the 1800s after fetid pipes were found to harbor cholera. (Source)
Between the warning by the scientists and the acceptance of the obvious fact the numbers went from under 300,000 in the US to close to 34 Million!
In fact, in the meeting, Lidia Morawska - Polish-born Australian aerosol physicist, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject tried to explain that the infectious particles of different sizes could travel a long distance. The WHO “experts” cut her off rudely and shut her down.
His rudeness shocked her. “You just don’t argue with Lidia about physics,” she says. Morawska had spent more than two decades advising a different branch of the WHO on the impacts of air pollution. When it came to flecks of soot and ash belched out by smokestacks and tailpipes, the organization readily accepted the physics she was describing—that particles of many sizes can hang aloft, travel far, and be inhaled. Now, though, the WHO’s advisers seemed to be saying those same laws didn’t apply to virus-laced respiratory particles. To them, the word airborne only applied to particles smaller than 5 microns. Trapped in their group-specific jargon, the two camps on Zoom literally couldn’t understand one another. (Source)
Was this incompetence or something even more sinister?
For, it led to millions of deaths!
What the lack of understanding of the real nature of transmission translated in was the confusing recommendations on mask-wearing. Which were all over the place!
In the early weeks and months of the COVID outbreak, the CDC and WHO stated that face masks were not necessary for the general public unless a person was experiencing symptoms or caring for someone who was. The agencies also initially urged people not to buy high-filtration N95 and surgical masks because they were needed for health care workers and were in short supply because of inadequate government stockpiles. Though perhaps well-meaning, the WHO’s and CDC’s guidances sent a mixed message about masks’ effectiveness—and about who deserves protection. The CDC changed course and recommended cloth face coverings in April. The WHO did not do so until June, citing inadequate evidence of their efficacy before then. The CDC did not respond to a request for comment, and the WHO referred Scientific American to press briefings that addressed these issues. In these briefings, experts pointed to a lack of high-quality evidence for mask use. The WHO’s director general also stated that, in the absence of other public health measures, “masks alone will not protect you from COVID-19.” (Source)
Everyone remembers the “joint China-WHO investigation” on the origin of COVID where China took the lead.
It was supposed to offer insight into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. But since its release on Tuesday, the long-awaited World Health Organization investigation has drawn criticism from governments around the world over accusations it is incomplete and lacks transparency. In a joint statement, the United States and 13 other governments, including the United Kingdom, Australia and South Korea, expressed concerns over the study's limited access to "complete, original data and samples." The European Union issued its own statement, expressing the same concerns in slightly softer language. The criticism follows an admission from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, that investigators faced problems during their four-week mission to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in December 2019. (Source)
In fact, throughout the pandemic, China has been indulging in propaganda
A study produced by the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which tracks disinformation and propaganda, found that China, Iran, and Russia are increasingly converging on disinformation narratives about the United States and the pandemic. (Source)
That is interesting.
So, everyone and his brother in the West believed that China did not allow the WHO team to do its work while they still went ahead and addressed a joint session without as much as calling out the perfidious manner in which the sham was being laid out by the Chinese authorities. (Source)
Despite the sabotaging of the investigation, and the sham of it all, not one intelligence agency or the government has come out in the West to unequivocally lay the blame where it lies.
The world has seen not just a high level of incompetence from WHO but almost an aggressive posture to deny scientific facts that surely led to many deaths.
Going forward one wonders what good the World Health Organization is anymore. Its pronouncements still carry weight, unfortunately. And these pronouncements are at best, glorified quackery!
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nota bene
Indian Mobile OS challenging Google: Payments firm PhonePe is in the final stages to acquire mobile operating system startup IndusOS for $60 million, sources said, the latest sign of large startups rallying against Google to build and launch apps on their own platforms. IndusOS will work with PhonePe’s Switch -- a service that enables multiple apps such as Ola, redBus, Goibibo, Myntra, Delhi Metro, Grofers on a single platform. Indian entrepreneurs have increasingly been rallying against Google, which recently announced its plans to charge companies 15-30 percent for using its app store and processing payments on other apps. (Source)
Calling out attack on Kumbh: Swami Avdheshanand Giri, the Acharya Mahamandaleshwar of Juna Akhara, the oldest and largest order of sadhus in India, has called out the intense attack and propaganda against the revered Kumbh festival of Hindus. In a video, Swamiji stated that the misleading attack on the Kumbh festival is totally inappropriate. He added the truth of the statistics is that during the Kumbh period, the intensity of the corona was much higher in other states and not in Uttarakhand. (Source)
AAP’s Singapore Diplofuggery: After being slammed by Singapore officials and the Ministry of External Affairs, the AAP government continues to further its claim of the Covid-19 ‘Singapore variant’ in India. Coming out in support of his party leader, Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain said, “Wrong to say, there is no #COVID19 strain particular to Singapore. There are many strains in India, Will give clarification on the Singapore strain soon. But we assure you there is a new strain in India.” (Source)
Successful Anti-COVID therapy: An international team of scientists, from Australia and the US, has developed an experimental direct-acting antiviral therapy that can reduce the viral load by 99.9 percent and maybe a new treatment against Covid-19. (Source)
World’s 2nd largest country running out of land: Canada’s housing market is running hotter than just about anywhere else in the world. But despite the anxiety about irrational bidding wars and fears of the bubble bursting, what's fundamentally driving it is a worsening imbalance between supply and demand: Buyers want large homes but increasingly can’t have them because there isn’t enough space in and around the major cities where people work. The world's second-biggest country by landmass is effectively running out of space, and that has Canada on course for a reckoning. (Source)
video corner: Ahmed Shah Masood
On September 9, 2001, a suicide bombing killed Ahmed Shah Masood. The Lion of Panjshir. The man was a lion in his lifetime. He had told the CIA that if someone was to kill him, then the US should know that something big will happen on its soil! He was the one who defeated the Soviets. Not the Pakistanis or their flunkies the Taliban.
This is a good film on a guy who had a very strong relationship with India. His disciples continue that tradition. For they know the truth.
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