To worry? Yes, it's unreasonable, because there's not a thing the WHO can do about it. "Worrying", in particular, does nothing. For that matter, pretty much anything involving a PR spokesperson from the WHO does nothing.
But that goes 10x for hyperbolic articles from the Guardian, which are the real problem here. They take the inanities from the PR person, and twist them into hysterical headlines that panic people for clicks. You'll note the use of the classic "X happens after Y" pattern, which is a standard yellow-journalism trope to link X and Y implicitly, even if they're unrelated ("puppies die after politician speaks!")
In this case, the WHO spokesman said that the 'increasing reports of bird flu in humans are "worrying"' (which is itself an anti-pattern of quoting a single word), but the rest of the article doesn't at support the headline. If anything, it goes out of its way to say that this particular case is not worrying, literally in the first paragraph:
> The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.
No, they weren't. They spread widely, and then simply petered off for reasons we don't fully understand.
To conclude that we therefore "contained" these viruses via some bureaucratic measure is a classic example of human hubris with regards to our power over nature.
That's totally false. Infection control systems were activated. SARS and MERS did not spread widely, either. Here's one example from Canada:
>All hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Simcoe County were ordered to activate their “Code Orange” emergency plans by the government. “Code Orange” meant that the involved hospitals suspended nonessential services. They were also required to limit visitors, create isolation units for potential SARS patients, and implement protective clothing for exposed staff (i.e., gowns, masks, and goggles). Four days later, provincial officials extended access restrictions to all Ontario hospitals.
Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles. Page 6 of this Alberta health document for measles control from 2018 discusses how to respond, including contact tracing.
No one said otherwise. You're leaping to the conclusion that these "control systems" caused the viruses to go away.
> SARS and MERS did not spread widely, either.
SARS: 8096 known cases across 29 different countries. [1]
MERS: 2603 known cases across 27 different countries. We're still seeing cases, btw. [2]
I guess we have different definitions of "spread widely". (Also "contained", in the case of MERS.) As I said, the viruses petered out after rapidly spreading around the world. We still don't understand why, but it's arrogance to conclude that it was something humans did that "contained" them (particularly when at least one of them wasn't stopped).
> Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles.
...and it doesn't work well for respiratory viruses, as we just learned from watching the world try to do it for years, only to fail completely.
Of all the debunked interventions we witnessed over the last 3 years, "contact tracing respiratory illnesses" is uniquely amongst the most costly and damaging blunders in human history. Yes, "public health" may engage in this kind of pseudo-scientific, bureaucratic theater, but it certainly doesn't mean that it's effective.
Bringing this to the current day, the bird flu is now endemic amongst wild birds (and possibly other animals) around the planet -- that is how it is getting into chicken farms despite all of our current efforts. The horse (or the chicken, in this case) is literally out of the barn. If bird-to-human or human-to-human transmission were common, we'd know it by now. Moreover, if that were true, there's literally zero chance that we could somehow "contain" a virus endemic in the animal population. It's going to do what it's going to do.
I lived in a place that did contact tracing for SARS-Cov-2 and it definitely worked. Other places in Canada had large outbreaks they had to quell with extensive lockdowns to prevent hospital overwhelm.
Nova Scotia did extensive contact tracing when a case first appeared and often could get rid of small outbreaks without additional measures (beyond border controls.)
The spread of SARS and MERS around the world was via airplanes. That doesn’t mean they for firmly established in any population.
In literally every part of the world, SARS-CoV2 is endemic. It didn't "work", you're just making a post hoc attribution of wiggles in the first derivative of case counts to an action that you prefer.
A far more parsimonious reason that (for example) Novia Scotia had fewer cases (for a time) is that Novia Scotia is in the middle of nowhere and has less than a million people. It's the inverse of the reason that the major cities of the world got it first.
Has person-to-person transmission been proven for H5N1? It's still quite likely they were both infected from the same animal. If they can prove spread between people, that's a big problem... Until then this isn't a risk, other than the major implications for agriculture and food supply.
As far as I've read, they aren't sure about human to human transmission. Roughly a dozen people have had H5N1, but they all plausibly could have gotten it from poultry handling.
Which means a) no need to panic, but definitely a good idea to keep an eye on things in case we do observe human<->human transmission and b) Maybe we need to revisit how we raise animals for food....
Even just probably-unwarranted "worrying" is now "fear-mongering clickbait"? I feel so genuinely sad about the feverish level of shitflinging that so many topics are subject to due merely to their proximity to social politics.
Read the article. The headline is not at all supported by the content, which itself is based on a single-word quote from a WHO spokesperson that leaves a great deal of doubt about the intent of the comment. Literally the first paragraph of the story contradicts the headline:
> The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.
By the third paragraph, you will know that human-to-human transmission hasn't even been confirmed in this case. By the fourth paragraph, you will know that the thing "worrying" the WHO is the growth of human cases, not this particular case.
Unfortunately, most people don't read past the headline, and the Guardian knows it.
After 2 cases in the same family in Cambodia a director of the WHO says “The global H5N1 situation is worrying given the wide spread of the virus in birds around the world and the increasing reports of cases in mammals including humans,”
The Guardian's headline is "WHO says avian flu cases in humans ‘worrying’ after girl’s death in Cambodia"
This sounds a) reasonable grounds for worry by someone who studies epidemics and b) an accurate headline by the Guardian.
> a) reasonable grounds for worry by someone who studies epidemics
What does this have to do with the accuracy of the headline? You're just appealing to authority -- but the same authority figure says, in the same article, that the 2 cases in Cambodia may not even be an example of human-to-human transmission:
> “So far, it is too early to know if it’s human-to-human transmission or exposure to the same environmental conditions,” Briand told a virtual press conference hosted in Geneva.
The line you're quoting also explicitly says that the "worry" is general spread, not this particular example.
They are worried that it may have been human to human transmission. Yes, they say they don't know for sure, but even the possibility is worrying to them. Hence, "worrying" in the title
I don't think it's been proved, but I tink the concern is that it's viewed as a matter of when not if.
> The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.
The issue is that each mammal/human infection gives the virus the possibility to adapt to mammals/humans and/or reassortment with other influenza viruses, like happened with H1N1/09.
It's been a slow transformation, but one that nevertheless has been happening as reddit itself devolves and people on that platform look for alternate homes.
But for what it's worth, the moderation team (dang etc) has been doing a good job of clamping down on unproductive or non-contributing comments. And I think the best we can do at this point is to just downvote or flag (as appropriate) anything that either doesn't contribute or just goes against the spirit of HN.
Anyway, this is entirely off topic. If my point is well made, you and I should both be flagged to death for breaking an HN rule about meta discussion.
Every article about some kind of research is met with low-effort "this sucks" comments. "This headline sucks." "This research sucks." "This sample size sucks." The comments are never enlightening, they should probably just be removed unless the poster is willing to elaborate using more than two sentences.
At least images can't be embedded in posts here. The overemphasis on images and videos in Reddit's redesign turned practically every community into a mess of low-hanging memes.
Hard disagree. Scientists have tunnel vision, they are so focused on their own area of expertise that they totally ignore second order effects their actions have on society. Covid pandemic was one such example: scientists advised lockdowns, which did not help much in stopping virus spread, but did ruin the economy.
Anything involving viruses has become a hot-button political issue (at least in the USA). There is a significant faction of people who want to panic at any suggestion of a new pandemic, and refuse to be mollified by any contradictory facts. There is also a significant faction who want to ridicule public health authorities, and refuse to believe that there might be any who are acting in good faith. Anyone in the middle -- like actual scientists, who tend to be skeptical of hyperbolic claims -- gets torched by both groups.
Unfortunately, also in the US, these two factions break down almost perfectly along party lines.
The fact that covid happened during the us presidential campaign is probably the second largest reason why the pandemic has been so poorly handled in the world (the first major reason being that it emerged from china and its very problematic regime)
> The fact that covid happened during the us presidential campaign is probably the second largest reason why the pandemic has been so poorly handled in the world
Handling of Covid in other countries seems unrelated. Japan, a very conservative country and close US ally, handled it well, as an example.
Even without the politics, it's one of those things that attracts people who both need to prove to themselves that they're intelligent and exact control over others by proxy. Some people really do get a kick out of the rest of society being punished by lockdowns and having to wear PPE, and they're insidious because they believe their own bullshit.
This may come off as me being a pandemic/virus/masks/vaccine denier, but that's not what I'm saying.
There was a time when those same misanthropes might have been thumping the Bible. With fewer people in the West taking religion seriously, The Science became their new host given that it the public both simultaneously respects it and understands it even less than religion.
What has actually been done to prevent the next outbreak?
I remember there was an acknowledgement that we all knew something like COVID-19 would happen eventually. There was Contagion, a 2011 film about a realistic pandemic, or Bill Gates' TED talk, 'The next outbreak? We're not ready', in 2015. Globally, we weren't prepared for what seemed like an inevitability. Perhaps the 1918 flu pandemic was just outside our familial experience. Just as the memory of The Great War fades, and perhaps the lessons of the Second World War as well, as our parents' parents become memories.
Now, we're more prepared. Although, I suspect stockpiles will fall over the next decade. What are we doing to prevent the next outbreak? We know that research of viruses needs the utmost controls and oversight. They are more deadly than nuclear weapons and we should treat them as such. We know keeping animals in close quarters, mixed species, and in poor conditions is a perfect environment for natural viral evolution. I've seen images of chicken farms in the USA and vertical hog farms in China that give me chills. How can we get a handle on this situation?
The WHO absolutely bungled the last pandemic. And now it has increased authority [1]. It's mostly a function of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation now, sadly.
56 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 97.4 ms ] threadBut that goes 10x for hyperbolic articles from the Guardian, which are the real problem here. They take the inanities from the PR person, and twist them into hysterical headlines that panic people for clicks. You'll note the use of the classic "X happens after Y" pattern, which is a standard yellow-journalism trope to link X and Y implicitly, even if they're unrelated ("puppies die after politician speaks!")
In this case, the WHO spokesman said that the 'increasing reports of bird flu in humans are "worrying"' (which is itself an anti-pattern of quoting a single word), but the rest of the article doesn't at support the headline. If anything, it goes out of its way to say that this particular case is not worrying, literally in the first paragraph:
> The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.
The WHO exists to contain such things so as to minimize the risk of wider harm.
It is not inevitable that every new disease spreads widely and becomes endemic. SARS and MERS were contained, for example.
If this new bird flu started transmitting human to human and was as lethal as it is in birds and animals there would be efforts to contain it.
No, they weren't. They spread widely, and then simply petered off for reasons we don't fully understand.
To conclude that we therefore "contained" these viruses via some bureaucratic measure is a classic example of human hubris with regards to our power over nature.
>All hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Simcoe County were ordered to activate their “Code Orange” emergency plans by the government. “Code Orange” meant that the involved hospitals suspended nonessential services. They were also required to limit visitors, create isolation units for potential SARS patients, and implement protective clothing for exposed staff (i.e., gowns, masks, and goggles). Four days later, provincial officials extended access restrictions to all Ontario hospitals.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/
That same article discusses how WHO communicated during the process. The reaction to SARS was not simply let is spread and see how it goes.
This paper discusses the response in Hong Kong, which included hospital infection control, isolation and contact tracing.
https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-1244426...
Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles. Page 6 of this Alberta health document for measles control from 2018 discusses how to respond, including contact tracing.
https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/cddcf8b0-9193-4fd7-aa49-def3...
Public health measures aren't that visible if you aren't that involved but it doesn't mean they don't exist.
No one said otherwise. You're leaping to the conclusion that these "control systems" caused the viruses to go away.
> SARS and MERS did not spread widely, either.
SARS: 8096 known cases across 29 different countries. [1]
MERS: 2603 known cases across 27 different countries. We're still seeing cases, btw. [2]
I guess we have different definitions of "spread widely". (Also "contained", in the case of MERS.) As I said, the viruses petered out after rapidly spreading around the world. We still don't understand why, but it's arrogance to conclude that it was something humans did that "contained" them (particularly when at least one of them wasn't stopped).
> Contact tracing is standard even for outbreaks of diseases as common as measles.
...and it doesn't work well for respiratory viruses, as we just learned from watching the world try to do it for years, only to fail completely.
Of all the debunked interventions we witnessed over the last 3 years, "contact tracing respiratory illnesses" is uniquely amongst the most costly and damaging blunders in human history. Yes, "public health" may engage in this kind of pseudo-scientific, bureaucratic theater, but it certainly doesn't mean that it's effective.
Bringing this to the current day, the bird flu is now endemic amongst wild birds (and possibly other animals) around the planet -- that is how it is getting into chicken farms despite all of our current efforts. The horse (or the chicken, in this case) is literally out of the barn. If bird-to-human or human-to-human transmission were common, we'd know it by now. Moreover, if that were true, there's literally zero chance that we could somehow "contain" a virus endemic in the animal population. It's going to do what it's going to do.
[1] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/summary-of-probable-...
[2] https://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/mers-cov/mers-outbrea...
Nova Scotia did extensive contact tracing when a case first appeared and often could get rid of small outbreaks without additional measures (beyond border controls.)
The spread of SARS and MERS around the world was via airplanes. That doesn’t mean they for firmly established in any population.
A far more parsimonious reason that (for example) Novia Scotia had fewer cases (for a time) is that Novia Scotia is in the middle of nowhere and has less than a million people. It's the inverse of the reason that the major cities of the world got it first.
The WHO exists to do nothing but spread panic and chaos across the globe.
They are morally and humanly corrupt people.
Which means a) no need to panic, but definitely a good idea to keep an eye on things in case we do observe human<->human transmission and b) Maybe we need to revisit how we raise animals for food....
Maybe the problem isn't how, but how many.
The headline is irresponsible and fear-mongering clickbait, even just by referencing the contents of the article below it.
> The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.
By the third paragraph, you will know that human-to-human transmission hasn't even been confirmed in this case. By the fourth paragraph, you will know that the thing "worrying" the WHO is the growth of human cases, not this particular case.
Unfortunately, most people don't read past the headline, and the Guardian knows it.
The Guardian's headline is "WHO says avian flu cases in humans ‘worrying’ after girl’s death in Cambodia"
This sounds a) reasonable grounds for worry by someone who studies epidemics and b) an accurate headline by the Guardian.
What does this have to do with the accuracy of the headline? You're just appealing to authority -- but the same authority figure says, in the same article, that the 2 cases in Cambodia may not even be an example of human-to-human transmission:
> “So far, it is too early to know if it’s human-to-human transmission or exposure to the same environmental conditions,” Briand told a virtual press conference hosted in Geneva.
The line you're quoting also explicitly says that the "worry" is general spread, not this particular example.
> The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.
The issue is that each mammal/human infection gives the virus the possibility to adapt to mammals/humans and/or reassortment with other influenza viruses, like happened with H1N1/09.
But for what it's worth, the moderation team (dang etc) has been doing a good job of clamping down on unproductive or non-contributing comments. And I think the best we can do at this point is to just downvote or flag (as appropriate) anything that either doesn't contribute or just goes against the spirit of HN.
Anyway, this is entirely off topic. If my point is well made, you and I should both be flagged to death for breaking an HN rule about meta discussion.
If Alex Jones was making the claim could I not could consider that?
Hard disagree. Scientists have tunnel vision, they are so focused on their own area of expertise that they totally ignore second order effects their actions have on society. Covid pandemic was one such example: scientists advised lockdowns, which did not help much in stopping virus spread, but did ruin the economy.
Unfortunately, also in the US, these two factions break down almost perfectly along party lines.
Handling of Covid in other countries seems unrelated. Japan, a very conservative country and close US ally, handled it well, as an example.
This may come off as me being a pandemic/virus/masks/vaccine denier, but that's not what I'm saying.
There was a time when those same misanthropes might have been thumping the Bible. With fewer people in the West taking religion seriously, The Science became their new host given that it the public both simultaneously respects it and understands it even less than religion.
I remember there was an acknowledgement that we all knew something like COVID-19 would happen eventually. There was Contagion, a 2011 film about a realistic pandemic, or Bill Gates' TED talk, 'The next outbreak? We're not ready', in 2015. Globally, we weren't prepared for what seemed like an inevitability. Perhaps the 1918 flu pandemic was just outside our familial experience. Just as the memory of The Great War fades, and perhaps the lessons of the Second World War as well, as our parents' parents become memories.
Now, we're more prepared. Although, I suspect stockpiles will fall over the next decade. What are we doing to prevent the next outbreak? We know that research of viruses needs the utmost controls and oversight. They are more deadly than nuclear weapons and we should treat them as such. We know keeping animals in close quarters, mixed species, and in poor conditions is a perfect environment for natural viral evolution. I've seen images of chicken farms in the USA and vertical hog farms in China that give me chills. How can we get a handle on this situation?
[1]:https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docume...