BELIEVE it or not, the World Health Organization released a report only last October that said there is no evidence that the sort of social distancing and job closures currently mandated by governments and approved by the WHO itself are effective in containing serious infectious disease. The findings of the report and a similar report by the European Council of Disease Control drew from evidence collected over 10 years.
From Telepolis:
[Click on translate]
Last October, the WHO found scientifically robust evidence for the effectiveness of just two of the measures currently being implemented or discussed: hand hygiene and wearing masks (in institutions of the health system). However, she described the quality of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of all other measures such as social distancing, contact tracing, travel restrictions and house arrest as low or very low. [bold added]
A few months later, the WHO then recommended precisely those measures for which it had not recently been able to find reliable evidence of their effectiveness.
The contradiction between these two events cannot now be resolved simply by pointing out that the WHO document of 2019 refers to pandemic influenza, while the COVID-19 crisis was triggered by another and possibly much more dangerous virus. Firstly, on page 3 of the said document, the WHO expressly refers to a new virus for which there is still no basic immunity in the human population. On the other hand, the current WHO recommendations would appear even more questionable: If the coronavirus is the more dangerous pathogen, why should one rely on a list of measures whose effectiveness cannot even be proven against flu?
In other words, the WHO has since conducted one vast social experiment for which there was no prior scientific justification. Even the famous “flattening of the curve” was not based on science.