> the WHO contradicted itself many times during the pandemic

Did they? I remember them revising their guidance, which seems like something one would expect during an emerging crisis, but I don't remember them directly contradicting themselves.

▲ rogerrogerr 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As super low hanging fruit:

June 8, 2020: WHO: Data suggests it's "very rare" for coronavirus to spread through asymptomatics [0]

June 9, 2020: WHO expert backtracks after saying asymptomatic transmission 'very rare' [1]

0: https://www.axios.com/2020/06/08/who-coronavirus-asymptomati... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/who-expert-bac...

Of course, if we just take the most recent thing they said as "revised guidance", I guess it's impossible for them to contradict themselves. Just rapidly re-re-re-revised guidance.

▲ margalabargala 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The difference between a contradiction and a revision is the difference between parallel and serial.

I'm not aware that the WHO ever claimed simultaneously contradictory things.

Obviously, rapid revisions during a period of emerging data makes YouTube's policy hard to enforce fairly. Do you remove things that were in line with the WHO when they were published? When they were made? Etc

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dazilcher 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I'm not aware that the WHO ever claimed simultaneously contradictory things.

Whether they did or not is almost irrelevant: information doesn't reach humans instantaneously, it takes time to propagate through channels with varying latency, it gets amplified/muted depending on media bias, people generally have things going on in life other than staying glued to new sources, etc.

If you take a cross sample you're guaranteed to observe contradictory "parallel" information even if the source is serially consistent.

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zmgsabst 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You’re removing people who were correct before the WHO revised their position.

	▲	margalabargala 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is the problem I discuss in my third paragraph, yes.

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brailsafe 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The difference between a contradiction and a revision is the difference between parallel and serial.

Eh, ya kind of, but it seems more like the distinction between parallel and concurrent in this case. She doesn't appear to be wrong in that instance while at the same time the models might have indicated otherwise, being an apparent contradiction and apparently both true within the real scope of what could be said about it at that time.

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naasking 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A censorship policy that changes daily is a shitty policy. If people on June 8th criticized that official position before they reversed the next day, do you think it was right or a good idea for them to be censored?

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xracy 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's a nice hypothetical. Do you have any examples of people getting censored for WHO changing their stance?

Like, we're getting pretty nuanced here pretty fast, it would be nice to discuss this against an actual example of how this was enforced rather than being upset about a hypothetical situation where we have no idea how it was enforced.

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margalabargala 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> A censorship policy that changes daily is a shitty policy.

Yes.

> If people on June 8th criticized that official position before they reversed the next day, do you think it was right or a good idea for them to be censored?

Obviously not. Like I pointed out to the other commenter, if you were to read the comment of mine you replied to, I have a whole paragraph discussing that. Not sure why you're asking again.

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gjsman-1000 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Screw that; and HN needs a place to frame the most incredible takes so we never forget.

	▲	margalabargala 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The person I replied to edited their comment after I replied making it look like I was saying the opposite of what I was. Is that what you were referring to?

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IIAOPSW 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's only two ways one could have been contradicting information from the WHO which was later revised prior to them revising it. Either:

1. They really did have some insight or insider knowledge which the WHO missed and they spoke out in contradiction of officialdom in a nuanced and coherent way that we can all judge for ourselves.

2. They in fact had no idea what they were talking about at the time, still don't, and lucked into some of it being correct later on.

I refer to Harry Frankfurt's famous essay "On Bullshit". His thesis is that bullshit is neither a lie nor the truth but something different. Its an indifference to the factuality of ones statements altogether. A bullshit statement is one that is designed to "sound right" for the context it is used, but is actually just "the right thing to say" to convince people and/or win something irrespective of if it is true or false.

A bullshit statement is more dangerous than a lie, because the truth coming to light doesn't always expose a bullshitter the way it always exposes a lie. A lie is always false in some way, but bullshit is uncorrelated with truth and can often turn out right. Indeed a bullshitter can get a lucky streak and persist a very long time before anyone notices they are just acting confident about things they don't actually know.

So in response.

It is still a good idea to censor the people in category two. Even if the hypothetical person in your example turned out to get something right that the WHO initially got wrong, they were still spreading false information in the sense that they didn't actually know the WHO was wrong at the time when they said it. They were bullshitting. Having a bunch of people spreading a message of "the opposite of what public health officials tell you" is still dangerous and bad, even if sometimes in retrospect that advice turns out good.

People in category one were few and far between and rarely if ever censored.

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natch 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They would not utter the word Taiwan. That’s an huge red flag that they are captured and corrupt. Are you claiming this has changed?

	▲	margalabargala 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Did you reply to the wrong comment? We're discussing whether the WHO put out simultaneously contradictory information. Whether the WHO's politics matches your preferred politics for southeast Asia doesn't seem topical?

▲ danparsonson 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

OK and if you said something that you later realised to be wrong, would you be contradicting yourself by correcting it? What should they have done in this situation? People do make mistakes, speak out of turn, say the wrong thing sometimes; I don't think we should criticise someone in that position who subsequently fixes their error. And within a couple of days in this case! That's a good thing. They screwed up and then fixed it. What am I missing here?

▲ stinkbeetle 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When you're a global organization who is pushing for the censorship of any dissent or questioning of your proclamations, it's really on you not to say one thing one day then the opposite the next day, isn't it? They could have taken some care to make sure their data and analysis was sound before making these kinds of statements.

If you posted to YouTube that it is very rare for asymptomatics to spread the disease, would you be banned? What if you posted it on the 9th in the hours between checking their latest guidance and their guidance changing? What if you posted it on the 8th but failed to remove it by the 10th?

What if you disagreed with their guidance they gave on the 8th and posted something explaining your stance? Would you still get banned if your heresy went unnoticed by YouTube's censors until the 10th at which time it now aligns with WHO's new position? Banned not for spreading misinformation, but for daring to question the secular high priests?

▲ danparsonson 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Good lord, refer to my original comment. The person I was replying to claimed the WHO contradicted themselves, I asserted that they did not. All the rest of this is your own addition.

▲ pests 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Did the WHO push for censorship or was it YouTube/Google/others?

It was a novel time and things were changing daily. Care needs to be taken yes, but it’s also weighed against clear and open communication. People were very scared. Thinking they would die. I don’t mind having up-to-date information even if it were changing daily.

▲ stinkbeetle 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> Did the WHO push for censorship or was it YouTube/Google/others?

Quite likely the WHO directly or by proxy with members who are also part of bureaucracy and governments in member states.

There is no question the WHO loves censorship and take an authoritarian approach to their "authority".

https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-world-health-organizatio...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/who-drops-cens...

If corporations start adopting policies that censor anything contradicting WHO, there would be a larger onus on a claim that they were not involved in that censorship action, in my opinion.

If it wasn't them and it was all Google's idea to censor this without any influence from governments or these organizations, which is quite laughable to think but let's entertain the idea -- the WHO still should not have responded as it did with these knee jerk reactions, and also it should have been up to Google to ensure the did not use as their "source of truth" an organization that behaved in that way.

> It was a novel time

It wasn't really that novel since there have been centuries to study pandemics and transmissible diseases of all kinds, and there have even been many others of slightly less scale happen.

> and things were changing daily.

Things always change daily. Covid was not particularly "fast moving" at the time. It's not like new data was coming in that suddenly changed things day to day. It just progressed over the course of months and years. It appeared to be wild and fast moving and ever changing mainly because of the headless-chicken response from organizations like this.

> Care needs to be taken yes, but it’s also weighed against clear and open communication. People were very scared. Thinking they would die.

People were very scared because of the fear campaign, and the imbecilic and contradictory responses from these organizations.

Not that it was nothing to be afraid of, but people should have calmly been given data and advice and that's it. Automobiles, heart attacks, and cancer kill lots of people too, and should be taken very seriously and measures taken to reduce risk but even so it would be stupid to start screaming about them and cause panic.

> I don’t mind having up-to-date information even if it were changing daily.

It's not having data that is the problem, it is jumping the gun with analysis and findings and recommendations based on that data, then having to retract it immediately and say the opposite.

	▲	Jensson 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If it wasn't them and it was all Google's idea to censor this without any influence from governments or these organizations We actually has the emails the Biden administration sent to Youtube, here is a quote they sent: `"we want to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better. This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the White House"` That is a very clear threat. "We want to make sure you ...", and then saying this threat is done with the highest authority of the USA, so better get working on what we want. There are hundreds of such emails detailed in this report if you want to read what they sent to the different tech companies to make them so scared that they banned anything related to Covid: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/weaponizati...

▲ f33d5173 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Them correcting themselves isn't a bad thing. The point is that it would be absolutely retarded to require that people never disagree with the WHO. Please try and follow the thread of the conversation and not take it down these pointless tangents.

	▲	danparsonson 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No, the point (and my original reply) is that correcting themselves is not the same as contradicting themselves. I didn't say anything about never disagreeing with them, and it's not a tangent, I'm replying to replies to my original comment.

▲ brookst 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there a difference between an expert opinion in the midst of a pandemic and an organizational recommendation?

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rogerrogerr 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure seemed like you'd get kicked off YouTube equally fast for questioning either one.

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thinkingtoilet 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh stop it. There was rampant misinformation on youtube all through out the pandemic.

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rogerrogerr 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Like that the novel coronavirus first seen in Wuhan may have come from the Wuhan Novel Coronavirus Lab?

Yeah, that was banished to the dark corners of Reddit until Jon Stewart said the obvious, and he was considered too big to censor.

	▲	Dylan16807 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No. People were talking about it all over.

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mensetmanusman 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And unfortunately much of it was spread by official institutions like the WHO.

	▲	pylotlight 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		and the governments, all of which who were bought and paid for by...... big pharma. This comment was brought to you by Pfizer

▲ 1oooqooq 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

they also changed the symptoms definitions, so ...

	▲	danparsonson 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		So as researchers learned more about COVID the WHO should've just ignored any new findings and stuck to their initial guidance? This is absurd.
	▲	8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

▲ wdr1 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Did they?

They said it was a fact that COVID is NOT airborne. (It is.)

Not they believed it wasn't airborne.

Not that data was early but indicated it wasn't airborne.

That it was fact.

In fact, they published fact checks on social media asserting that position. Here is one example on the official WHO Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/3019704278074935/?locale=...

	▲	danparsonson 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		None of that argues that they contradicted themselves. You and several others have just hijacked this thread to pile on the WHO. Argue that they were incompetent in their handling of it, sure, whatever. That's not the comment you're replying to.