WHO Still Misses the Mark on COVID

The World Health Organization (WHO) 

Still Misses the Mark on COVID

by Shea O'Neil, 4-26-24

Read on to see how the WHO once again misses an opportunity to clarify what we need to do to truly protect ourselves from COVID-19. 

So you may have heard the news that the WHO finally said #COVIDisAirborne --well, they tried at least, however they could only cough out, "IRPs travel through the air")-- it's like pulling teeth with these guys! IRPs is a new word they coined for Infectious Respiratory Particles, that includes what many scientists before referred to as aerosols, or those small particles that come out when an infectious person exhales, that can travel beyond 6 feet, travel through shared air and shared air systems, and linger in indoor environments for hours after the infectious person has left. 

The image above is how many of the media covered the WHO's April 2024 Report on Proposed Terminology for Pathogens that Transmit Through the Air . As you can see in the screenshot above of the media avoided saying the word "COVID", which is a common trend that falls into the fallacy that COVID is over and no longer a problem. Although the WHO says COVID-19 is an IRP, and it does "travel through the air" they do not speak about the current urgent need to do something about it for COVID-19 specifically.  

This clarity is needed, especially because the WHO-- an organization that those of us educated on the need to still use COVID protections have been trying to get to clearly say "COVIDisAirborne" for years-- has a history of spreading confusion on how COVID spreads. Initially, back in 2020, they stated with a tone of certainty that COVID was NOT airborne, and that it spread only in droplets, which perpetuated a belief that 6 feet distance was enough to protect oneself. We now have a scientific consensus that this is NOT true, and that COVID is airborne, can spread like smoke through an area, much farther than 6 feet. Although the closer you stand to an infectious person, the more dense the infectious particles will be, you can still get an infectious dose by being way farther away, and the person doesn't even need to be present in the room anymore for you to get infected since it lingers in areas with normal ventilation for hours. It takes enhanced ventilation and filtration to clear out these IRPs. This would have been a great opportunity for the WHO to point to ASHRAE's Standard 241 on Control for Infectious Aerosols. (I include an air filtration section on my website on how we used this document and other ASHRAE documents to get enhanced filtration in our home). But the WHO did not use this opportunity, or even stress the urgency needed for it.

If they were going to use the term IRP's they needed to stress the reason for this conversation at all-- the special IRP, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19 infection), that continues to be a HUGE PROBLEM because it is widespread across the world and causes COVID-19 and long COVID; because it is now evolving very quickly and evading immune protection from vaccines and prior infection faster than we can make new vaccines and treatments; because every reinfection poses greater risks to our healths include severe chronic diseases and disabilities. THIS is why it is important to understand that it spreads in the air. Because we DO need to take actions NOW for THIS PARTICULAR IRP to stop the spread of COVID and long COVID and evolving COVID variants.  

They needed to specify HOW to stop the transmission of the highly contagious COVID-19, by implementing strategies NOW to cleaning the air as well as to wear the RIGHT KIND OF MASKS: the kind that protect from IRPs, which is N95, their equivalents, or better, often called "respirators" or "respirator masks" (as opposed to "surgical masks" or "medical masks" that are for droplet protection.) 

But the WHO did not use this opportunity to clarify the need for these actions.

We have information coming out every day that talks about how COVID-19 is more than the initial acute infection just like AIDS as a disease is more than just the first few weeks after infection. We know enough now about the long-term effects, and how the issue isn't immediate death from pneumonia in most cases now a days (although those cases still do exist) but how now most of the problems COVID is causing in people now are from the virus lingering in people's bodies, and/or from chain reactions of inflammatory responses that cause long-term problems like blood vessel inflammation, heart attacks, strokes, brain damage, cognitive disorders, lung disease, digestive issues, etc etc etc. 

We now know COVID-19 can be found in people's blood months after infection in a QUARTER OF CASES. And yet, this information is not known by the majority of the public, or if it is known, is not given its due attention.

Figure Above from : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shouldstorm/202404/covid-19-found-in-peoples-blood-months-after-infection

If this was supposed to be the WHO's big report to clarify this all and set the record straight, if this is where they come out of the proverbial closet with COVID so that maybe the world can now understand that we need to be wearing protections like the kind they use for wildfire smoke-- N95 masks (instead of inappropriate surgical masks that most medical places are wearing that are made just for droplets), if this was supposed to be their bug come-to-Jesus-moment- then they failed.

This report will not be enough to get the public to understand the urgency needed in putting this documents' findings to use. That is: that COVID-19 is widespread world-wide and causing a great mass-disabling event that we need to stop.

Somehow the WHO admitting to two huge former errors on their past (that flu was spread droplet, that COVID was not airborne) and attempting to correct them, has only led to MORE disinformation coming out into the world due to their ineptitude in message-delivery. By using a vague previously unheard of new umbrella term like IRP's, without firmly addressing the special case of COVID-19 and how it is different than the flu or other IRP's that we have today because it is widespread, omnipresent (not seasonal), highly contagious, and has worse health outcomes in both its acute infection and long-term effects, they did a disservice. 

If there ever WAS a goal of translating the information that diseases can spread "through the air" into practical use (ie getting it through to healthcare businesses like hospitals that they need to get their staff to wear N95s at all times, and provide and mandate that patients wear these in most cases as well)-- they completely ruined it by using wording that conflicts with their own words in the same document (ie saying "short-range airborne transmission" in this figure 3.5 below, when they clearly stated COVID-19 and other IRP's as having short and long range transmission which you can see in the figure 3.1). 

It is sad because they had so much potential in the Report when they admitted to long range transmission. 

And they even spoke of the mitigations needed to stop the spread of airborne (or that spread through the air) viruses!

But it was almost as if CDC and big business's lawyers were there, making sure they took away any meaning from this document's words. 

Their biggest error was saying mitigations depend not on how it is spread but on vague disease risks including alluding to immunity in population-- leaving an opening again for the other huge disinformation worm "prior immunity protection", which is often used to make people feel safe when they are not. 

We know for COVID that immunity from prior infection and/or vaccination is fleeting due to the virus' quick evolution into immune-evasive variants, and its immune system damaging properties, yet propaganda is constantly being put out that we have better immunity now. In reality, we are catching this virus just as much as before, whether we are testing and reporting it or not, and the rates of long-term conditions resulting is far above what anyone would consider a justifiable risk).

Figure Above screenshot from COVID-19 Variant Update (idsociety.org)

Figure Above from Long COVID - Household Pulse Survey - COVID-19 (cdc.gov)

I don't know what it is going to take... maybe the people themselves actually waking up from the propaganda and the lawyer-ing and the minimizing BS, and actually link their chronic illnesses, and strokes, and heart attacks, and brain disfunction, and loss of income and quality of life, and harm to their kids, and harm to their parents, to the fact that COVID IS AIRBORNE, highly contagious, a step ahead of immunity, that reinfections only increase risks of long COVID, and that long COVID has already hit panic-inducing levels in people all over the world, and that all the science is showing that this is no joke, and is not going anywhere! 

This isn't me inciting panic, this is me being real. And there is not need for panic... But there is need for N95 masks. If they can provide vaccines to the world, they can give the world N95 masks. But this message isn't going to come from the top down, as we have seen the past 4 years. The people need to start demanding it. And you don't even need to say a thing. Y

ou just need to start wearing a respirator mask, like an N95, kf94, and kn95, start now and wear it proud when you go around others from other households... Demand others do as well. Because it is necessary. Because COVID is airborne. 

 

Learn more at our Maskers Comic Websiteobal-technical-consultation-report-on-proposed-terminology-for-pathogens-that-transmit-through-the-air