it really was said and said today.
I'll reiterate that "
it was said" is factually correct, as is the statement itself. But this does not change the fact that transforming this one statement (stripped out of a speech) into scare articles presents picture of the disease
that is in contradiction to WHO's own publications. And nobody should support presenting a picture of the disease that is wrong, using the WHO director as a "source" to contradict WHO's publications, when he did no such thing.
Here are two true statements, based on WHO's data:
- It is factually correct to say, "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died"
- It is highly misleading to say only, "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died" with no further context about the fact that that number is heavily biased up by the much higher mortality rate in Wuhan, particularly in its early days, and does not represent the reality of the disease as it has been spreading in the rest of the world / at present.
And the director general wasn't doing that. He wasn't giving a speech about "3,4% of people who catch COVID-19 will die"; that was not at all the focus of the speech. It was a moderately long speech about why WHO is recommending the approach that it is, whose main points get summed up partway through as:
"To summarize, COVID-19 spreads less efficiently than flu, transmission does not appear to be driven by people who are not sick, it causes more severe illness than flu, there are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, and it can be contained – which is why we must do everything we can to contain it. That’s why WHO recommends a comprehensive approach."
The 3,4% statement was mentioned at the point where he was pointing out that it is more severe than the flu, as counter to the people who say that it's just another flu. Which again, is a true statement, and
in the context of his speech, a point well made (that it's more dangerous than a typical seasonal flu).
Taken out of context, however, it only serves to mislead. If a random person in your city gets sick, they
don't have a 3,4% chance of dying. And I don't like to see people misled. Nor should anyone else here.
So it's perfectly reasonable to request that people add context when quoting articles that mislead.
** - Heck, if there's anything newsworthy to take out of context out of the speech, I'd have thought it would have been this:
"And fourth, we don’t even talk about containment for seasonal flu – it’s just not possible. But it is possible for COVID-19. We don’t do contact tracing for seasonal flu – but countries should do it for COVID-19, because it will prevent infections and save lives. Containment is possible."
(CDC seems not to agree with that viewpoint, but...)
ED: Just realized that this post was in the main thread and not the coronavirus thread... sigh...
