# What would you do differently for the next pandemic?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-differently-for-the-next-pandemic/1016073>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 25, 2025, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-differently-for-the-next-pandemic/1016073 "2025-03-25T06:13:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 41

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**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-differently-for-the-next-pandemic/1016073/41 "2025-03-28T19:06:28Z")

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> [@Reply](#):
>
> Really? I thought pretty early on, the science was converging on airborne transmission, mostly in enclosed spaces, and that fomites weren’t a big deal.

This is what the WHO was posting:  
[![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/kHDVqMC.jpeg "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/kHDVqMC)

Very nearly the opposite of the truth, confidently made.

Quoting an earlier post I made on the subject:

> [@Hand hygiene helps prevent COVID spread - not](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hand-hygiene-helps-prevent-covid-spread-not/1003788/23):
>
> The WHO screwed up quite badly. It took them _two years_ to admit COVID was airborne–well past the time where the evidence was incontrovertible. A few months can be blamed on early uncertainty. Not years. This tweet aged quite badly:
> 
> The reason is a 60-year-old dogma they held that there were basically just two categories of non-contact transmission: droplets larger than 5 microns that fall out of the air rapidly, and small particles that can hang around for hours. But not only is reality not that binary, the 5-micron figure is just flat-out wrong, conflating two different figures from an ancient paper (the droplet threshold was supposed to be 100 microns).
> 
> In spite of all the obvious evidence, both empirical and theoretical, it took the WHO immense pressure to cave. And even at that, it was only in April of _this year_ that the WHO actually redefined airborne transmission to be evidence-based. They could have done this decades earlier had they been more receptive to earlier reports that the dogma had been violated.

It’s true that communication was also bad. That’s not a scientific failure like with the WHO but communication is a key part of their job.

And public policy was also way behind, banning outdoor gatherings even when it was clear they weren’t a large threat, and so on.

Thanks for the birthday wishes.

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