
WHO says Covid-19 pandemic is 'one big wave', not seasonal - stx
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/who-says-covid-19-pandemic-is-one-big-wave-not-seasonal-idUSKCN24T16U
======
wintorez
We can't possibly have enough data, and even enough time since the start of
the pandemic to come to this conclusion. To know if something is seasonal, we
must first let a couple of years pass and measure and compare the numbers with
previous years, no?

Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I believe in science, and its conclusions. All
I wanted to know is if there's enough data points to plot a long-term trend.

~~~
kn0where
It’s well into summer in the northern hemisphere and the virus is still
spreading as rapidly as ever, so that would be pretty good reason to think
it’s not seasonal like the flu, which dies down a lot in the summer.

~~~
icedchai
Maybe this is "died down"... That is scary to think. It could get worse in the
winter. We just don't know.

~~~
phreack
It actually is winter in half the world and it's as bad as everywhere else.
Makes me think weather doesn't play a factor, just people and the degree of
protection they collectively take.

~~~
iso1631
Problem is in Winter you also have normal flu season, pressure on hospitals is
higher, etc.

The reason the UK locked down was to "protect the NHS". The lockdown worked -
dramatically, spread was cut to almost zero overnight, the extra hospitals
that were built weren't needed.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Problem is in Winter you also have normal flu season, pressure on hospitals
> is higher, etc.

Right, but the point is: Australia etc. are in winter. Right now. We have that
data; there's more to the world than just the top half.

(Incidentally, COVID precautions appear to be working well on flu, too.
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-measures-have-all-
but-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-measures-have-all-but-wiped-
out-the-flu-in-the-southern-hemisphere-11595440682))

~~~
iso1631
Australian winter is hardly the same thing as a European or worse US winter.

Sydney's temperature tomorrow is a high of 17, low of 10.

Glasgow's temperature tomorrow is a high of 19, low of 10.

~~~
ceejayoz
Australia is more than just Sydney, and the Southern Hemisphere has more than
just Australia.

It's plenty chilly in southern Chile.

~~~
iso1631
As for Austrialia, Melbourne's high today is 16, Perth 21, Brisbane 21, Hobart
15, Adelaide 16.

NZ - Christchurch 12C, Wellington 15C, Aukland 16C.

South Africa, Cape Town high of 19, Joburg high of 18, similar to Glasgow in
Summer.

South America? Yes it's chilly in Southern Chilie. There's barely anybody
living there. Same in Argentina - Ushuaia has a population of 130k and a high
of 6C today. Arkangel is 3 times the size and has an average high of -9C in
winter. Fairbanks population about 100k and high of -17 in the winter.

The population south of Viedma, Neuquén and Valdivia (highs today of around
13) is well under 3 million, with towns mostly less than 100k.

Santiago's high today is 33. BA has a high of 15. That's not the same as a
northern winter.

Compare with Beijing, population 20 million, average highs of 2C in winter.
Chicago, 1C, 9 million. Moscow -4C, 12 million.

Comparing a Southern winter with a Northern winter is disingenuous - it's
milder, there's far fewer people, and far smaller cities with far lower
density.

~~~
nl
There's no link between _absolute_ temperature and temperature dependent
diseases (or at least for rhinovirus which is the most studied).

Instead, the replication of rhinovirus depends on if the air temperature in
the nasal cavity is above or below 33-35C[1]. The winter in most temperate
regions gets low enough to trigger that.

[1]
[https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/02/1411030112](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/02/1411030112)

------
caiobegotti
It's depressing to see rational voices saying they don't trust the WHO or
tending to conspiratorial thoughts. The WHO has first-hand details about the
pandemic and they update their views and adjust their recommendations
accordingly even if we have the feeling they are acting slowly or back-and-
forth (e.g. when there was a critical and global shortage of materials for
masks to give to health workers and only months later started saying wearing
masks was the ideal and people simply bought the "they changed their mind so
they must have been wrong all the time" idea). Without WHO the world would
effectively be a much worse place for a good chunk of the world population and
many contagious diseases would be around right next to some rich nations's
borders. If they say it's one big wave it's because this is what the current
data and analysis suggest. Can it be seasonal after all? Nobody freaking
knows, but this is the best line of thought we have so far so let's act
accordingly and not let the guard down please.

~~~
zests
A critical shortage of cloth?

What's depressing is how politicized the virus has become. How someone feels
about the job the WHO has done is probably tied more to their political
beliefs than to reality.

If we can't say that the WHO dropped the ball with their mask recommendations
then we really can't say anything at all.

~~~
goodside
> A critical shortage of cloth?

Not cloth, but melt-blown (and to some extent spun-bond) non-woven
polypropylene. This is the fabric used to make surgical masks, surgical gowns,
bouffant caps, and disposable bedding for hospitals. All of these things were
in shortage in March and April.

The shortage of melt-blown non-woven fabric itself is now mostly over. Still
in shortage are N95 respirators, which use melt-blown electret non-wovens —
material given an electrostatic charge so that it attracts particles in the
air. International N95-equivalent respirators are available to the public at
inflated prices, but genuine (American standard) N95 masks are still difficult
to find at any price.

The WHO guidance against mask-wearing was a desperate attempt to mitigate N95
shortages. Even when all major health authorities were telling the public not
to use masks of any kind, N95 respirators were widely purchased by people who
had no idea how to use them. (I've been in NYC throughout the pandemic. It's
extremely common to see N95's worn with facial hair, with un-pinched nose
strips, or even with the lower head-strap dangling. N95's have little value if
not properly sealed.) The WHO believed advising the public to wear any mask at
all would exacerbate N95 hoarding and ultimately cost lives by making them
unavailable to hospitals.

[Edit:]

Not sure why I'm getting downvotes for this. This isn't controversial
information. Dr. Fauci has given this same explanation for why mask guidance
changed:

> [Fauci] also acknowledged that masks were initially not recommended to the
> general public so that first responders wouldn’t feel the strain of a
> shortage of PPE.

> He explained that public health experts "were concerned the public health
> community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a
> time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the
> surgical masks, were in very short supply.”

> [...]

> “We wanted to make sure that the people, namely the health care workers, who
> were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people
> who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them
> getting infected,” Fauci concluded.

See: [https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-
being/prevention-c...](https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-
being/prevention-cures/502890-fauci-why-the-public-wasnt-told-to-wear-masks)

------
nafizh
With all the debacles from WHO including the most disastrous one of trusting
Chinese authorities and declaring there is no human to human transmission till
January, I think I can be forgiven for not taking anything WHO says seriously
anymore.

WHO needs a leadership change at the least for getting back any sort of the
authority they used to have.

~~~
knzhou
This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true
by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in
mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get
prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for
person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d
managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it
can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do
nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they
actually did.

~~~
nafizh
Tweet on January 14 [0].

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no
clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus
(2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China"

0\.
[https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152](https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152)

~~~
iso1631
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-
diseas...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-
disease/refuses-rule-human-to-human-spread-chinas-mystery-virus-outbreak/)

14 January 2020 • 5:40pm

> While clear information about the mysterious virus remains hazy, the WHO
> said on Tuesday that transmission between humans has not been ruled out.

“From the information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-
to-human transmission, potentially among families"

The WHO report findings, and on Dec 14th there was limited evidence that it
was spreading from human to human. All of that is true.

~~~
nafizh
My point is WHO failed the world by trying to be politically correct with
China and not listening to Taiwan. Here is how Taiwan dealt with it from the
outset [0] and what Taiwan says about WHO [1].

0\. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-
diseas...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-
disease/wanted-take-us-sight-seeing-stayed-hotel-says-first-foreign/)

1\. [https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-
df28cc3c6...](https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68)

------
alex_young
See page 5 of daily WHO report for a nice graph of cases since inception:
[https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/situati...](https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/situation-
reports/20200728-covid-19-sitrep-190.pdf?sfvrsn=fec17314_2)

COVID-19 is pretty clearly not subsiding in any meaningful way.

For US data and projection based on models for each state:
[https://cv19.report/](https://cv19.report/)

------
jb775
Can anyone trust anything coming from the WHO anymore?

~~~
hinkley
Pull over. License and registration please.

We have to stop this narrative that we aren't going to listen to people until
they are infallible. That's not how crisis management works. Or war, football,
basketball, card games...

Hedging your bets is the act of wasting resources constructively, so that if
your worst case scenario happens, you aren't doomed. Faulting people for
hedging their bets is going to get us all killed.

It's been happening to scientists (first climate, now everybody) for years,
and 'getting us all killed' was more figurative. Now we're doing it to
doctors, and people are in fact dying. Of Covid (655k so far). Of measles
(140k in 2018).

Do you want a dark age? Because this is how you get a dark age.

~~~
lbeltrame
I don't agree with your statement. The matter has become so polarized that
_both sides_ are actually lying about the data.

Just a few weeks ago, the Guardian quoted a study on Nature saying that
asymptomatics were more infectious than symptomatic people. Except that the
paper did not state anything like that, and even _warned_ against using the
results for policy reasons.

On the same camp, a Wired article saying that "the press must watch on
science" to avoid pushing untested vaccines on the population, yet omitting
the fact that some side effects of the Moderna vaccine were on a dose no
longer used for trials.

And on the other side, we have conspiracy theorists and "skeptics" which only
quote part of the studies which benefit their agenda, such as reporting only
the more optimistic bound for the infection fatality rate. Or those who only
quote negative bits about vaccines.

And scientists (I'm one of them) are to blame, too. A lot of those reporting
to the media gave predictions, talked in absolutes (at least speaking for my
country). Few actually said "we don't know". I'm not aware of anyone saying
"we got something wrong".

~~~
hinkley
So what's your solution?

Admitting there's bias leads to where, exactly? Slowing down and taking stock?
That's right out of the playbook of the Other Side. It's called Teaching the
Controversy, they are winning, oceans are rising and people are dying.

You cannot bring openness and flexibility to a conversation with manipulative
people. To them, it's just a weakness they can exploit. Perhaps we have
forgotten why scientists had 'safe spaces' before and we are learning very
slowly why that was.

~~~
lbeltrame
> So what's your solution?

Telling things how they are, for a start, at least for the mainstream press.
No matter if they go against one's narrative. We're not talking about politics
or differing views, we're talking about scientific findings.

> You cannot bring openness and flexibility to a conversation with
> manipulative people.

That's how science is: open discourse. If you go for absolutes, eventually
there are going to be contradictions, which will likely hamper getting
important messages across. In my country, due to this, trust in scientific
people is actually lowering, according to polls.

~~~
hinkley
> That's how science is: open discourse.

It really isn't. And hasn't been. You can get burned at the stake or put under
house arrest if you go back far enough.

I don't think it's an accident at all that science uses its own thick jargon
instead of a simple approachable vocabulary. It filters out some of the people
who will willfully misinterpret the results. Only later when things are pretty
set did someone come along and explain it in layspeak.

I fear that a lot of the policy failings of late are caused in part by our
attempts to democratize science.

~~~
lbeltrame
> I don't think it's an accident at all that science uses its own thick jargon
> instead of a simple approachable vocabulary.

At least in my field of research, such views are held by few, if any. This is,
IMO, an extremely bad faith argument. I think many in the field would love if
the right information got out - even if incomplete, or with many unknowns.

At least that would spare us by the media getting things totally wrong _and_
pushing disinformation on people (and that's a bipartisan problem).

------
av3csr
"People are still thinking about seasons. What we all need to get our heads
around is this is a new virus and...this one is behaving differently [...]
This virus likes all weather." I think the word "seasonal" is used here as a
reference to weather rather than as a recurring time period.

------
nonamenoslogan
Hmm, is it not a bit early to determine that?

------
bengkoang
They can't/won't acknowledge that Corona Virus is airborne transmission
disease until its 5 month after its worldwide pandemic spread, yet they can
predict that this is not seasonal pandemic, without sufficient data to support
it.

------
DoofusOfDeath
Many (most?) places around the world have changed the way they do things so as
to limit the spread of coronavirus.

These measures are currently seen as temporary. I wonder how long covid-19
needs to be a major threat before these "temporary" measures become permanent
cultural / legal fixtures. E.g., updates to building codes, or conversion of
executive emergency orders into permanent law.

For example, modifying building codes for retail/office space to reduce risk
of person-to-person transmission via bio-aerosol.

~~~
secondcoming
It can never become permanent. Everyone will eventually be exposed to, and
get, this virus. That rate of transmission is what needs to be controlled as
much as possible.

------
haunter
So it's seasonal then

------
s9w
The WHO should not be trusted - specifically on covid. I will hold them
accountable to their 3,4% claim to the day the people responsible will end up
in jail.

~~~
DanBC
> their 3,4% claim

The fact you didn't understand a simple statistic isn't the WHO's fault.

~~~
s9w
"Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison,
seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected"."

That is the mother of all misleading comparisons. He, Ferguson and the other
quacks must be held responsible. They are the ones who caused all this chaos.

~~~
DanBC
The fact you don't understand a simple statistic isn't WHO's fault.

> "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.

REPORTED.

From that speech

> There is now a total of 90,893 reported cases of COVID-19 globally, and 3110
> deaths.

3110 as a percentage of 90,893 is 3.42%

> By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those
> infected"

Why are you quoting this? How many people do you think die of seasonal flu
each year?

~~~
s9w
If you're done insulting people maybe you'll actually read and understand.

~~~
DanBC
So far everything you've said, in any thread, about covid-19 has been provably
incorrect.

~~~
s9w
Maybe you should get another hobby, this is obviously not healthy for you.
Also: I don't know who you are or what you refer to. Please go away.

------
president
Doesn't that put it on par with the flu, of which is also a coronavirus?

~~~
stx
I don't think flu strains are a type of coronavirus but I think some of the
common cold strains are.

------
gridlockd
We haven't even had one full season, so not calling it seasonal is premature,
isn't it?

Look at _the numbers_ :

We see that deaths are down and that illnesses are less severe (ICUs are not
overwhelmed), even though daily infections are at all-time-highs in some
regions. Coincidence, or perhaps due to seasonality?

We also see that the virus can _not_ be brought under control without
permanent lockdowns. As soon as you open up, the virus starts spreading again.
Countries that _now_ have the virus "under control" have had a significant
amount of uncontrolled spread beforehand.

I've read several headlines along the lines of "resurgence of cases after
opening up" or "second wave under way" in Europe. Then I look at the graphs
and it's just not true. Cases are stable, you just have some daily variance.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _We see that deaths are down_

This is false. Deaths _were_ down, but they have been climbing again for the
last three weeks. Mortality is a lagging indicator to infections, so what
we're seeing right now is mortality from the earliest stages of reopening.

> _illnesses are less severe_

This is also false. There may be some factors that are combating more severe
symptoms (e.g. greater vitamin D, if that turns out to be a real effect), but
the virus hasn't recently become somehow less potent.

> _ICUs are not overwhelmed_

False again. In the current hotspot states -- Florida, Arizona, and Texas --
ICU capacity in many areas is strained or overwhelmed as is the rest of the
hospital infrastructure:

"ICU beds, ventilators in use hit new records as Arizona reports 1,357 new
COVID-19 cases": [https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
health/20...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-
health/2020/07/13/arizona-coronavirus-update-july-13-stress-hospitals-remains-
high/5427493002/)

"Florida coronavirus: 52 hospitals max out ICU capacity as cases increase":
[https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-
side/investigations/florida-c...](https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-
side/investigations/florida-coronavirus-52-hospitals-max-out-icu-capacity-as-
cases-increase/)

"Texas hospitals are running out of drugs, beds, ventilators and even staff":
[https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/texas-hospitals-
coro...](https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/texas-hospitals-coronavirus/)

Note that all of these articles are over a week old. The situation hasn't
improved since then.

~~~
gizmo
I think you are mistaken on two counts. The data is certainly not so self-
evident that you can simply assert the parent is wrong.

Deaths are rising in counties that hadn't had significant exposure to covid19
before, and already the trend is heading down across the board. Deaths will be
climbing in a couple of hotspots for the next 2 weeks, but total deaths in the
entirety of the USA shouldn't exceed 280k.

I agree the virus hasn't become less potent, but hospitals have gotten much,
much better at treatment. Remdesivir in particular makes a big difference.
Spread in long term care facilities are now tracked nationwide, with terrific
results. So the CFR is down by a lot, even though the virus hasn't changed.

Nobody in the US is being denied care because the ICUs are full. Yes, some
hospitals are strained but this is not at all unusual. You'll find similar
articles about maxed out ICUs from 2018, 2016, etc. First hit on google from
jan 2018: "Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents"
([https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-
patie...](https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/)).
Moving patients to hospitals with spare capacity isn't that big of a deal.
Bear in mind that Hospitals are for profit and ICU beds are extremely
expensive. As a consequence hospitals target 85%+ ICU utilization throughout
the year, otherwise they're losing money.

Didn't the Texas Tribune just misreport the data?
[https://twitter.com/VanceGinn/status/1287940050752286721](https://twitter.com/VanceGinn/status/1287940050752286721)

~~~
perl4ever
>already the trend is heading down across the board

You mean the rate of increase of the increase in deaths is heading
down...across the board?

------
napier
This is premature at best and a potentially misleading statement by the WHO.
Perhaps things haven't improved as much during the summer as we'd like, but
seasonality is difficult to disaggregate from non-pharmaceutical
countermeasures being lifted as we moved into warmer, sunnier weather in the
northern hemisphere.

Based on everything we know about infectious disease transmission and illness
severity in general, infection rate indicators and case severity are likely to
worsen throughout fall and become particularly nasty during the depths of
winter. Seasonal reduction in sunlight exposure suppresses immunity (it's not
just an issue of vitamin-D), bacteria and mold exposure upticks dramatically
as cool, damp days predominate in much of the northern hemisphere.

Air pollution increases as old weather reduces dispersal rates and people burn
more fuel to heat their homes while driving more to avoid trudging through
rain and snow in the gloom. And if they're not driving, then they're using
public transport, and as we know, buses and trains are petri dishes. Some
other infectious diseases are likely to play well with SARS2, as is observed
with a variety of bacterial infections and common cold associated
coronaviruses.

On top of all this, populations are much more likely to huddle together
indoors, often in poorly ventilated spaces which allows bioaerosols to
concentrate, making a physical distancing impractical for many and multiplying
viral exposure load. This can be mitigated by taking steps to upgrade
ventilation, adding air cleaning and sterilization countermeasures, and at an
individual level, wearing the best available masks and sealed eye protection
while indoors with people outside of your quarantine bubble.

Let's hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

~~~
gizmo
This just means that the R0 is higher during the winter months, immunity will
still accumulate to the point where the virus will be contained to small
clusters here and there.

~~~
napier
Yes, it's an overview of the factors that will likely drive R0 to increase
during winter months. R0 is highly context dependant variable, it is not a
constant. What evidence are you drawing upon to suggest that immunity will
have accumulated by then enough to limit outbreaks to small containable
clusters?

