There’s something not clear for me… maybe someone can help to understand.
1: Apparently WHO is saying nations need to prepare for a pandemic, that the situation of H5N1 is very dangerous and that they need donors: in fact thay last week had 2 billion dollars from donors!
2: there are clear signs of H2H (even if obviously not sustained, elseway for now we had hundreds of cases) but WHO continue to keep alert on stage 3
3: WHO continue to say they are worried for this virus… but if so why they are so slow to react? Why leave more than a week serum sample in Turkey because in Turkey is holyday?? This is a non-sense!
So… IMO or people at WHO are completely incompetence OR maybe they’re not so warried as say. And if so, why they are not?
These only to speak about WHO, but also other experts seem to me to have a double behaviour: they seem worried, but nobody actually does anything!
“Doing things” may take far more time than people on this board are used to or wanting.
Maybe WHO should clarify their mission, to include what they are capable of doing. If they made their mission and capabilities public, we might not be so uneasy.
Or we might be even more uneasy.
I completely agree dubina… let’s hope they’ll do it!
I have to second Marco’s sentiments. I’m growing increasingly frustrated with WHO.
Amidst all this, they remain at the same threat level as a year or two ago, despite major changes on the face of things, which implies that this is still a very distant and remote possibility. And at the same time, they describe a pandemic as “imminent” and warn that the pandemic could jump right out at us from infected birds at any moment. To most people, that means certainty and immediacy — Run out and start stocking up! — it certainly doesn’t imply the expectation that this is still most likely years away. Talk about mixed messages!
The truly worrying part is that they appear to be trying to project an image of being in control, and at the same time to cover their butts for every eventuality, when they don’t seem to know what is going on and don’t seem to have the capacity to do what they suggest they can do.
I am very disturbed. This threat worries me and I need to have confidence that WHO is as on top of this as they can be, and — more importantly! — honest about what they know or don’t know, and about what they can and cannot do. That I can deal with. It’s certainly preferable to writing them off and trying to make important decisions guided by Internet chat discussions and maverick scientist/entrepreneurs like Dr Niman.
Their PR approach may have worked in the 1950s, before the Internet, in the days when we believed everything our doctors told us and didn’t challenge authority. It will be a disaster if they continue this way today.
Name…you read my mind: The Name of the Game is the Spin Drs vs the Med Drs…
My view is that WHO is being stepped on by others. Did you notice how WHO was accused of overreacting which put them on the defense. The controlling elite have a lot to lose if this gets out of control.
I’ll be the devil’s advocate and argue that:
I don’t work for WHO and don’t feel like everything they’ve done is perfect and that they’re totally transparent. They need to be. We all depend on them. But some of the expectations on this and other boards are somewhat unreasonable in regard to turnaround time, ease of data transmission, etc. At the same time, if we push them to do daily updates, share seroprevalence data and sequencing data, communicate better, etc. that’d be a very good thing.
Name, Marco, all (except unique so far on this thread, unique) I totally agree. Now, we should adorn our collective consciousness with a bit of attitude.
Yesterday, I got the following op-ed piece from a good friend, a staunch anti-Bush Democrat. Notice the title, then notice the ‘tude. Here’s a lady who’s had enough of the bozo spin noted above and below.
High time for this sensibility, folks. No time to get hot when Lake Pontchartrain comes flooding in.
I Will Not Support Hillary Clinton for President
by Molly Ivins
I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.
If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, “Look, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.” Bobby Kennedy — rough, tough Bobby Kennedy — didn’t do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.
What kind of courage does it take, for mercy’s sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush’s tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.
The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do “whatever it takes” to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway (“First, you have to win elections”). Can’t you even read the damn polls?
Here’s a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, “There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008.”
This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by “a string of bad new from the Middle East … into calling for premature retreat from Iraq,” versus those pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.
Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.
You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I’m telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven’t got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.
Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I’m serious as a stroke about this — that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who’s ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.
Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I’ve said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were “German dogs.” They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless “string of bad news.”
Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can’t get up and fight, we’ll find someone who can.
Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let the Dogs In?
Dem,
“I don’t work for WHO and don’t feel like everything they’ve done is perfect and that they’re totally transparent. They need to be. We all depend on them. But some of the expectations on this and other boards are somewhat unreasonable in regard to turnaround time, ease of data transmission, etc.”
In the oil bidness, that spends god-awful money on all kinds of stuff for every reason under the sun, there’s a phrase commonly used: “fit to purpose”.
Given what you said above, is WHO fit to purpose?
It might well be the system they’ve grown into over the years makes our expectations of something more nimble and transparent unreasonable. I submit the consequences of their organization and operational capabilities being inadequate are so profound that something more fit to purpose is needed. That would be evident in such concern in Europe that a joint EU response force has been proposed. It’s suggested by WHO’s call for more funding (what, only 2 billion?).
Yesterday, Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford announced deep job cuts and plant closing as the campany’s “Way Forward”. He explained the need to close plants was structural; Ford’s designs and production had been driven by plant production capacities, not the wants and needs of people who buy cars. Thus, Ford was organized and operated to the wrong purpose, and Bill Ford saw some urgent necessity to restructure. It was a matter of survival, he said.
As Yoda might say, Fit to purpose WHO is not.
OXFORD, England — The World Health Organization Tuesday responded to accusations that the threat of a global avian-influenza pandemic had been exaggerated.
www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060124-122619-7695r
Dem, I can’t disagree with what you’re saying apart from reiterating the point I made before. WHO has made and is making some mistakes and just pretending that everything’s dandy won’t work like it did in the old days. They will lose credibility. And as you say, we really need them to have credibility.
Without commenting on American politics, a big more frankness and a bit less condescension, as Dubina’s article suggests, would be very effective.
TPTB that orchestrate and control global system are financially and structurally more than capable of assembling the best scientists, managers, equipment, etc and plotting the best course of action. What is happening (regarding HPAI and WHO) is almost exactly what they supposed.
Almost everyone thinks that pandemic must be stopped or delayed and that we need to “prepare”. That is current mind set*.
What if the best (computer simulated) response in future pandemic is to DO NOTHING? If everyone is infected (simultaneously) pandemic will approximately last for a month, avoiding consequent pandemic waves, minimizing social and infrastructure disruption, economic losses, vaccine development cost, etc. Virulent “Shock and Awe” …
For outside observer to assume that perfect information is publicly available is cardinal mistake.
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis - Richards J. Heuer, Jr.
Mind boggling, informatic.
“What if the best (computer simulated) response in future pandemic is to DO NOTHING?”
Does your rhetorical question mean you think doing nothing would be the best thing? For all concerned? For survivors only? For future generations? How does that work? Have you seen such a simulation?
Put ‘er on the table; let’s have a look.
Doing nothing is always an option in any analysis.
I never seen “do nothing” simulation, but IMO it should be the first one in order to measure effectiveness of consequent strategies.
dubina, informatic,
Your brains are admirable. Level 4, I’d say (unless we’re using 40 levels, in which case I’d say 39).
I read an essay long ago in which the essayist talked about a teacher he once had who proposed that there were 4 levels of thinkers (or was it writers? oh well). Either way would pretty much work the same. And the thing is, was, that level 4 thinkers are very rare ( and probably almost never in politics - my personal aside), people (brilliant writers like Shakespeare or Faulkner), who are able to set aside personal biases, beliefs and prejudices, and look at evidence most wisely.
Just today the same idea crossed my mind (again, after a few months): what if we do nothing? Well I guess it depends. If we know in advance that the two worst waves will come before vaccines, that disruption will be worse than the disease, and maybe a few other points I can’t think of now, then that would be the case. But the virus might be more deadly than disruption - or disruption less than currently imagined. We just don’t know, which makes this stuff terribly fascinating - as when a rabbit stares at a snake.
Do nothing…wasn’t what that happened in large measure in 1918 when they had little warning? It did not stop 3 waves then…
About that essay…I realize now that I was confusing two different things: the essay I mentioned and something in Stephen King’s book about writing. Oh well, irrelevant to most here.
Don’t really want to bump this thread, but I realize my last comment could be misconstrued as an insult. I should have said, “unimportant to most here.” Sorry.
Nature is angry with human beings! There is anger at the molecular level! And if there is a god, s/he got busy doing something else and when s/he turns back and looks at the Earth, s/he will say, “Oh, shit, there’s an infestatation!” So doing nothing might be a good human pestcide!
closed for volume issues. Note date of last post.