Back to Normal

According to the BBC, "The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that Covid-19 no longer represents a 'global health emergency'."

To which most of the rest of the world would answer "We could have told you that."

Not that the World Health Organization is beholden to public opinion when making decisions. But it's unknown how these decisions are made, and that is what I think drove (and still drives, apparently) a lot of conspiratorial thinking concerning the WHO and the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. No-one has asked me (and with good reason), but I would advise that organizations like this have published criteria for making these sorts of determinations. It could easily lead to a really complicated formula for figuring things out, but this is why mankind invented computers.

Would it fix anything? Maybe not. The arguments and conspiracy theories might simply shift to the data, with skeptics of interventions declaring that the data was faked. But for other people, there would be some opportunity to look at the information, and predict what's going to happen next. Here in Washington State, back when the state government put a "shelter in place" order into effect and ordered many "non-essential" businesses to close, I was making the same point; measures like that should not be seen as something that an administrator, or even the governor, arbitrarily decreed into existence. Data was being tracked, and made public, and so tying decisions to that data would have allowed people to predict what was coming, and therefore be prepared.

Social trust is a more fragile thing than I think it's been given credit for. A better ability of the general public to understand how the institutions that drive world events work my be helpful in building and maintaining that trust.