The World Health Organization this week showed once again why the motto on its official seal should be, Aperto Ore, Pede Inserta, or in English: Open Mouth, Insert Foot.

On Monday, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO's emerging disease and zoonosis unit, said that transmission of COVID-19 from asymptomatic, infected patients to other persons was "very rare." There was immediate and widespread pushback. For example, on Tuesday the Harvard Global Health Institute issued a statement, which said in part that "all of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19."

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As South Africa begins to ease Covid-19 stay-at-home orders, it must reckon with the negative impacts the measures have already caused.

The inconsistencies and lack of scientific basis for many of the emergency rules are harming citizens, devastating business and threatening opportunities for international investment. All this, without providing commensurate protection against the spread of Covid-19. Yet there's no sign that the the government is prepared to reverse course any time soon.

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The partisan political sniping over Covid-19 is completely predictable and counter-productive. There's plenty of fault to go around, but the blame-gaming should be ignored or discounted for what it is: self-aggrandizing grandstanding.

It is, however, worthwhile to examine a tension that has been brewing in the public health world for decades. That dichotomy is: should we focus on communicable diseases, as has long been the mission of public health institutions, or do we have enough bandwidth and resources to venture out into the much more controversial area of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)?

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There seems to be an inclination among policy-makers that adherence to evidence-based policy-making is a luxury we can only afford when not in a crisis.

After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control bungled last year's "EVALI" outbreak, one might have thought federal officials would have exhibited some humility. Or at least limited their statements to those supported by science.

But when it comes to tobacco and vaping policy, that's just not the case.

According to a March 27th article in Bloomberg News, titled, "Vaping Could Compound Health Risks Tied to Virus, FDA Says,"

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President Trump announced at the White House coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the World Health Organization, because it had caused "so much death" by "severely mismanaging and covering up" the coronavirus' spread, putting "political correctness over lifesaving measures."

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