Pablo Sigal
06/09/2020 - 15:47
- Clarín.com
- Society
The World Health Organization does not stop screwing up , but never as much as this time when one day they went out to say one thing and the next day the opposite. It is true that in the coronavirus pandemic there are many more doubts than certainties, but even what happened today had not yet been reached.
Where is WHO's credibility at a time when its credibility is needed more than ever ? Yesterday, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the international organism's unit for zoonoses and emerging diseases, had said that asymptomatic patients were very unlikely to infect.
The news was shouted like a goal in different spheres, but especially in civil society, which lives in fear of being in contact with people who are not supposedly infected but who may have the virus without manifesting any of the symptoms that describe it. However, the referee canceled the play.
We were almost about to start hugging those who had a cough or fever when Dr. Van Kerkhove herself reported the opposite , clarifying that her sayings had been based only on two or three studies and that in reality everything had been a misunderstanding .
Little misunderstanding . A misunderstanding in which the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people may be at stake. "I was answering a question, I was not declaring a WHO policy or something like that," the expert self-corrected herself when the news had already spread throughout the world through portals and TV channels. It just wasn't true .
We had been told that we had to be careful with the infodemic -the false news about coronaviruses that usually circulate on social networks-, but in this case the infodemic is caused by the WHO itself. And it is not the first time . It also happened a few days ago with the affair of hydroxychloroquine : an article in The Lancet magazine that defenestrated this drug was enough argument for the body to stop its Solidarity trial , of which Argentina was participating in ten hospitals in the country.
However, this article was repudiated by a good part of the scientific planet, which criticized its lack of rigor. Automatically, the WHO warned that in 24 hours it would give its verdict on how it would be necessary to continue moving with hydroxychloroquine. It was 48 hours, and everything returned to zero : free way for the drug that, according to an eccentric French expert, is saving lives and it would be a crime not to use it. Back to the world trial, including Argentina.
There are more antecedents: the chinstrap was an element ignored by the WHO until exhaustion, even when in some countries there were good experiences and reduction of infections from a simple face mask. The argument that these accessories would begin to be scarce for health personnel was stronger and there was no case: "no chinstrap", was the slogan.
There were even several Argentine experts close to the President of the Nation who joined the WHO position to ensure that the chinstrap did not help mitigate the contagions. Always the ghost of doctors and nurses running out of masks remained as a backdrop. Until suddenly something changed .
From that moment to this, just two days ago, we have the WHO recommending three types of chinstrap fabric . Apparently the effect of using them is not as neutral in fighting the pandemic as it used to be. And a question remains floating: what would have happened in countries like Italy or Spain if they had been clear from the outset that it was necessary to use a chinstrap? Today in Buenos Aires it is difficult to find someone who does not have it.
Nor is it a matter of entering the Donald Trump that withdraws financial support, something that the WHO on the other hand was not aware of. The conflict between the United States and China has nothing to do with health, nor with the pandemic. Or at least you shouldn't have it.
What is clear, however, is that the World Health Organization should stop this ball, which like rugby does not know how it itches, and ask what it is doing . What will be the next pass and to whom. Giving arguments for criticism to enemies of public health is the worst possible scenario in view of a pandemic that still does not reveal its expiration date.
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