Let's take a good look at those proposed WHO recommendations. Recommendations, not requirements, the WHO has no actual power to enforce any of this. I'll also note the Chinese have completely ignored these recommendations.
"That transmission is controlled." How controlled? Completely controlled?
"That health systems capacities are in place to detect, test, isolate, and treat every case and trace every contact." This is ridiculous. You will never get 100% on any of this. Never. Not even close. The only parts of this that are doable are treat every case and test. Large-scale testing is taking place already. Yet detection is always going to lag when you have a disease with a high percentage of people who are asymptomatic. We isolate as well, but isolation is only completely effective on diagnosed cases. We're already isolating ourselves on the chance that we
might be infected. As for treatment, I don't know of any cases were denied treatment, do you? I don't even know anyone that was denied heroic measures like a ventilator. We're certainly not having to triage, or to warehouse people and wait for them to die like the Chinese obviously did to large numbers of cases. They triaged who got better than routine care, guaranteed.
The concept of tracing every contact when you asymptomatic, long-term infectious people is laughable. Not to mention tracing contacts flat-out fails a bunch of the time. Look at the earliest outbreaks of Ebola. They never did figure out how some of the victims were exposed.
"That outbreak risks are minimized in special settings like health facilities and nursing homes." Like we're doing? Nursing homes, of course, are specifically vulnerable to any kind of infectious disease. especially pulmonary diseases. But the best thing you can do for nursing homes is testing and isolation from outside contacts. We're doing that already. Hospitals continually have new sources of infection brought in every day. They're called patients. PPE for staff is being used. Assuming staff has and uses it, and disinfecting is taking place, that's as good as it's going to get.
"That preventive measures are in place in workplaces, schools, and other places where it's essential for people to go." This is so completely imprecise as to be virtually meaningless.
"That importation risks can be managed." Lol,
how managed? I think when air travel opens back up we;re going to have testing for both active infection and antibody tests at both the destination and originating airports. And it won't be 100% or even close. False positives, false negatives, flat-out test failures, all of that will happen. We can keep air travel closed to countries that report current cases, but that relies on those countries to be honest with us. By that criteria we should go ahead and let the Chinese fly here again, since they're reporting that they've done a wonderful job.
"That communities are fully educated, engaged, and empowered to adjust to The New Normal." Again, so vague as to be meaningless.