and countries that followed the WHO advice to the letter counting the economic and social cost of lockdowns.
The best actual outcome overall was Sweden. The place which entirely ignored al that the WHO said to do.
The value of the one international bureaucracy to tell us all what to do is?
Ah, but the advice given by the
WEF and or ChinaWHO and followed to the letter in this instance wasn’t the true advice given by the WHO. Next time will be different.Come on guys, let’s not rewrite history here. The WHO stopped recommending lockdowns after a few months when the data showed they had no effect. Countries continued to lockdown because they wanted to, not because the WHO recommended it.
Yeah, RleJ.. They changed it to “Suitable/Appropriate Containment Measures”…
Which gave free rein to continue the lockdown practice, but shifted blame for actual lockdowns ( and their effects ) to the local authorities, while giving them the excuse that they didn’t actually advise lockdowns.
Weasel words by weasel politicians.
Didn’t the WHO also try to discredit the lab-leak theory? Lions for the man from Tigre.
Roue, US re-write history?
The virus did not come from a Lab, the virus came from a lab.
Masks do not stop the virus, Masks stop the virus, Masks do not stop the virus (a good one this, because they flipped twice).
Lockdowns do not stop the virus, Lockdowns stop the virus, Lockdowns do not stop the virus (another one where the ‘science’ changed twice).
Vaccines prevent transmission, vaccines do not stop transmission.
Vaccines do not cause heart problems or blood clots, vaccines cause heart problems and blood clots.
Vaccines cannot change your DNA, vaccines change your DNA.
Etc., etc.
Grikath,
Keyword there is “containment”. They said that the economic costs of lockdowns outweighed the benefits except to contain isolated outbreaks. As COVID was endemic that seems clear to me that they were not recommending lockdowns.
The UK press originally pointed to the WHO as the experts whose advice should be followed, but when the WHO stopped recommending lockdowns that was not reported and no further mention was made of the WHO. I am no fan of the WHO but it is simply not true that the WHO recommended long term lockdowns.
Roue, when in a hole stop digging: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/10/13/who-warning-about-covid-19-coronavirus-lockdowns-is-taken-out-of-context/?sh=44fc8062158c
They highlight the word ‘primary’ here.
Adolff,
Don’t forget this bit of 1984 from the WHO on Herd Immunity:
First it includes prior infection and then suddenly it doesn’t-
https://twitter.com/RussellOkung/status/1342135793465380864?s=20&t=EeCKJlholkb3mAPLWWusyA
The best actual outcome overall was Sweden. The place which entirely ignored al that the WHO said to do.
Sweden followed the plan that western governments, and presumably the WHO, had signed off in 2016. We were following it until Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston, those will known health and science journalists, decided to hijack the governments’ daily press conference and demand we follow China’s example.
Its no surprise that the public then started demanding it.
That China was used as a role model for anything should be a matter of eternal shame.
And look how its going in China now, so much for Xi protecting the population and showing the world how its done.
This seems to be a reasonably good source for what’s happening seeing as the MSM are doing their best Nelson impressions:
https://twitter.com/jenniferzeng97
Tim,
Pakistan – where Imran Khan said that it was too poor to impose a lockdown, has had a covid-19 death rate less than one-tenth of that of Sweden and only just over one-third of that of its bigger neighbour, India.
Sweden may have done relatively well compared with UK, Germany etc but is far from the best.
Incidentally, USA under Biden had a far higher death rate than Brazil under Bolsonaro over the period both were in office.
John77
I think you should change the phrase “death rate” to “reported death rate”
The only useful measure at the statistical level is excess deaths, anyway. Due to Covid hospital admissions and deaths were clearly highly subjective events.
Death rates that aren’t age adjusted are a meaningless comparison.
I’m not trying to defend the WHO. I’m simply saying that they changed their position on lockdowns and nobody took any notice, other than to ignore them in future. That’s it.
@ Bloke in Tejas
India had far more excess deaths due to hundreds of thousands having to trek (often *walking*) back to their home villages when their jobs disappeared. Including lock-down deaths with direct covid-19 deaths makes the Pakistan-India or Pakistan-Europe comparison even more dramatic.
@ BiND
They are *not* meaningless, merely crude, when you have an order of magnitude difference. Age adjustments could only account for a modest fraction of that.
Dan Hannan reported that the Swedes just adopted the published British pandemic plan and were astonished that the British abandoned it.
So we need to hang a host of politicians and civil servants plus “public health experts”, “science advisors”, doctors, epidemiologists, journalists, and so on. Public hangings, of course, in case they don’t actually happen. Hurling lumps of excrement won’t do.
Locally someone asked the local council at a online public session when they were lifting lockdown restrictions to which the reply was they hadn’t passed any lockdown restrictions and had just issued guidance so it was up to the stores/restaurants etc if they wanted to follow them.
The fact that inspectors came around to businesses to see how they were complying with the ‘non-mandatory guidelines’ was conveniently ignored.
Misspelled ‘ruining’ in the header.
The best actual outcome overall was Sweden
Nicaragua too
https://unherd.com/2022/11/nicaraguas-inconvenient-covid-victory/
Also, both then complied with the Poison Jab propoganda
Poison Jab:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/12/26/the-government-vaccine-reports-that-inadvertently-told-the-truth-about-vaccine-failure/
Sweden’s pandemic plan was to follow the WHO advice in place at the beginning of the pandemic, their set of influenza recommendations, which were last updated (with Johns Hopkins University), in October 2019.
The WHO shortly thereafter went into a similar tailspin as the rest of the world’s wise leaders. Alongside some Chinese machinations, there was a good deal of “be seen to be doing something” about it. Having trumpeted a massively, even then obviously “out by a Ferguson” “case fataility rate” as “infection fatality rate” of 3.4%, there was no backing down. The details were left to individual governments who all just copied each other.
As far as I can tell we still have covid, although it seems to prefer infecting those who took the vaccines. Even so, once we all emerged from under the sheet covers the medical problems from covid seemed to evaporate. The problems from bureaucracy however, wherever it is located, do seem to be multiplying!