Upstanding would be more apt, no?
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This is amazing. Both the UK and the US did so many things wrong over the first 12 months of this, but we’re now both seeing some pretty encouraging morbidity and mortality metrics, largely because of the vaccination efforts. I think we as a society have an amazing capacity to learn the wrong lesson from a big event (or learn the right one and then forget it before the knowledge needs to be used again) and a big part of me is now nervous that what we’re going to take from this is “dont worry about communicable diseases, we’ll vaccinate our way out of any trouble we have.”
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And they can’t spell vaccinations.
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126.259 yesterday, best so far.
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On a related note can anyone let me know how the EU’s legal actions against Sanofi, Curevac, and Moderna are going?
I got my first shot this morning, all good so far, the arm is still there. 
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If the WHO had declared a global emergency (7 days earlier in Jan 2020 than it did), but also added the recommendation of travel restrictions, I wonder how many nations would have followed the advice and banned all travel?
Last year when things opened up at a lot of nations, still in the midst of the pandemic, things got worst through 2nd spikes etc. The situation now in some places is so dire, but there’s been over a year to work on it.
Can’t see how the WHO failure to recommend the ban and announce it earlier would truly have prevented the situation we find ourselves in now. I’m not defending the WHO for their decisions, and agree with reforms to how it works, where change is needed.
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Yeah, there’s definitely an element of hindsight to all of this and, as you say, how many countries would have seriously heeded the advice at a time when the seriousness of the virus was still not fully understood?
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Yep - and if every virus that could/may transform into a global pandemic results in the WHO suggesting travel bans etc, but none of the viruses do go global it could end up as a case of boy WHO cried wolf once calls for bans are ignored. Lets hope that changes are made that are effective!
Suppose the media etc will use this report to point the fingers and absolve blame.
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I think before this pandemic gets better, it will get worse. Countries who previously are thought to have fought a good battle are seeing a spike, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan and some other countries are seeing a worrying trend in unlinked clusters. While the numbers are relatively low, this should send a warning to all nations, even those who are progressing well in vaccinations that the virus is not going away anytime soon.
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The seriousness of the virus was already very well understood even that early. The issue was what lengths did countries need to go to for them to proactively prevent it being a local problem for them, and to a degree the lack of it being designated a global emergency provided some cover to some governments to not do much. But the reality is, this report is quibbling about a week’s worth of time. Even after that point numerous countries still faffed around for weeks after the WHO made this designation suggesting what the WHO said/did wasnt really much of a factor in whether government’s acted properly.
For instance, we have a woman here who has been lionized for speaking truth in late Feb about the prospects, completely going against the Trump admin’s line, and that of her own agency (CDC). She was removed from her position and has frequently been pointed to as an marker for what could have been our response had she been listened to. But even she was a month late in speaking. Her first public warning came in late Feb, but we’d identified community transmission in the US as early as late Jan. So that’s a month of silence even when there is evidence that the country is already on fire.
EDIT: And actually, after skimming the report, it appears the focus on criticism of the WHO in the headline is a bit misleading as the general theme is that leaders everywhere were slow to acknowledge the issue and take it seriously, regardless of what the WHO was doing/saying.
134.148 again a new record.
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And to me worryingly, that we might be repeating a mistake here with thinking that vaccination means we can relax measures too fast too soon. Over in Singapore we have 32% of population with at least one dose, 22% who completed both does but yet we had to reverse our relaxed measures which has been in place for almost 5-6 months, now to a stricter one including shutting down public access to some hospitals and our Airport except for travellers and other restrictions. We had thought the progressing vaccinations mean measures are relaxed further but instead we are seeing a resurgent virus with unlinked clusters and new variants entering the country. While the vaccination is still the best way forward to normalcy, its going to be a longer fight that people think it is. Lets not repeat the mistake we make of taking measures too slowly by now relaxing measures too quickly.
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I think one of the issues is that when you look back at the data you see patterns that are informed by what has then transpired, patterns that you didn’t see at the time. It also takes time to get data in and assess it such that by the time you have the data in that might indicate community transmission there has been a ‘lag’ in that the data you are looking at applies to events two, three, four weeks earlier. By that stage it is already too late (depending on the steps you would otherwise have taken had you had the information in real time).
For example, even those looking to develop a vaccine in the early part of last year were originally thinking that this would be a vaccine just for China. The appreciation that this really was going to manifest into a much greater problem globally really only began to filter down in around late January/early February.