Just like many of you, I give so much credit and respect to world health bodies such as WHO or UN and local public health bodies for protecting nations and humans from CoronaVirus everywhere. During this unimaginable public health crisis, WHO has done a great job to provide help to nations that need it. For example, WHO has provided critical information about the mechanisms of spread of the virus to countries in all continents. Notwithstanding the great work that WHO has done for all of humanity, I would like to point out two big MISTAKES by WHO and local public health bodies that have probably made the CoronaVirus crisis worse.

MISTAKE NUMBER ONE:

WHO tweeted on Jan 14 (see above) implying (perhaps especially to many people who are not familiar with scientific literature) that Coronavirus cannot be transmitted human-human.We know now that person-person transmission is the main way CoronaVirus spreads. What is more sad is that the world health body (WHO) did not critically appraise the Chinese study that reported those findings. Also, WHO should have known better that China suppressed doctors, censored media and lied about the number of cases (I believe they still do) and deaths of COVID19 until mid January when things went out of their control. I hate the blame game, but models suggest that we would have 95% reduction in cases of the virus if Chinese officials acted normally and humanely to the Viral outbreak.

The most important thing is the language used in the tweet. I am not a linguist by any means, but the use of language in the tweet is not taking the safest approach. In times of crisis, people need active and strong language! Even if human-human transmission was not happening, the WHO should have WARNED people until solid data was available from multiple sources and democratic nations.  Instead, I believe WHO should have tweeted something similar or better to below:

Although a low-quality study showed no signs of human-human transmission of COVID19, other corona viruses are known to transmit from one person to another. Therefore, until validated further, people need to follow necessary physical distancing measures to avoid potential viral spread.

Mistake Number 2:

Do not wear Face masks if you do not have symptoms

Since the start of the outbreak, WHO and the followers (public health bodies in most countries except some ASIAN countries) have told their public to not wear face masks unless they are sick. Well, simply that is NOT holding true. First of all, we now know that the vast majority (about 50%) of cases of CoronaVirus are spread by people who do not show any symptoms. So how can you tell people to not wear face masks, but also tell people that those who are not sick can spread the disease to them?  

Point number 2: Telling symptomatic people to wear face masks in public in a way is stigmazatsing those people. They might not just wear face masks to avoid attention or stares from others. There is an obvious fallacy here. Personally, I used to make fun of people who used face masks in public up until Mid March. I felt people wearing masks were ill informed. It turns out, the joke was on me.

Point number 3: Countires that have asked everyone to wear masks have better outcomes than those who have not. Good examples are Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. It is proving useful.  Even if it helps a little bit, isn’t it worth to take the safest approach?

We wouldn’t have shortages of face masks if we knew their signifance from earlier on. Countries such as Taiwan who do not have strong manufacturing powers like the United States or Canada could manage the demand. We could also easily meet demand if we stepped in earlier.

To summarize my thoughts, do your own research, have an open and questioning mind to information, wear face masks and warn people around you about the seriousness of this pandemic. “We are all in this Together”.

Neumann,

MScPT, BSc Biomedical Sciences