<story><title>Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>titzer</author><text>Governments who &amp;quot;didn&amp;#x27;t want to create a panic&amp;quot; just flat-out lied. They broke the public trust and did incalculable, permanent damage to societies&amp;#x27; ability to react to crises in the future.&lt;p&gt;It was self-serving, short-sighted, and frankly, the worst possible outcome. They clearly &lt;i&gt;did not&lt;/i&gt; avoid a panic, &lt;i&gt;did not&lt;/i&gt; avoid massive consequences, but, in the long run, deliberately injected distrust, hatred, and fear, deepening political divisions and driving us to the brink.&lt;p&gt;And yet political leaders &lt;i&gt;will face no consequences&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dgellow</author><text>Which governments specifically? Also, you say that they failed to avoid panic but where have you seen some?&lt;p&gt;From what I’ve seen some governments said a few incorrect or misleading things at a time where we had a lot of uncertainty and contradictory information. And then corrected once information became better. Overall western governments (I’m mostly familiar with Western Europe and the US) have been quite good at communicating in the middle of a global pandemics, even when the US had Trump as president, someone who contributed actively to misinformation regarding the virus.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>titzer</author><text>Governments who &amp;quot;didn&amp;#x27;t want to create a panic&amp;quot; just flat-out lied. They broke the public trust and did incalculable, permanent damage to societies&amp;#x27; ability to react to crises in the future.&lt;p&gt;It was self-serving, short-sighted, and frankly, the worst possible outcome. They clearly &lt;i&gt;did not&lt;/i&gt; avoid a panic, &lt;i&gt;did not&lt;/i&gt; avoid massive consequences, but, in the long run, deliberately injected distrust, hatred, and fear, deepening political divisions and driving us to the brink.&lt;p&gt;And yet political leaders &lt;i&gt;will face no consequences&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chimprich</author><text>&amp;gt; Governments who &amp;quot;didn&amp;#x27;t want to create a panic&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Is that supposed to be a quote? It doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be a quote from the article. Not creating a panic seems to be a sensible thing to do in most circumstances. You want people to react with appropriate concern to risks, but not behave irrationally.</text></comment>