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It doesn't matter who could theoretically afford them at centrally-planned prices. Where I live the shelves at hardware and drug stores had been empty of masks

It doesn't matter who could theoretically afford them at centrally-planned prices. Where I live the shelves at hardware and drug stores had been empty of masks since mid-February. While Americans were being told not to buy them, organized groups were buy them out of American supply channels and shipping them to mainland China. It would have been better if Americans had bought them and kept them around. They could have been used here by individuals, donated to care providers, or even (horrors) sold for a profit.

tombert 6y ago
> The big mistake with COVID-19 was telling individuals to boycott masks and that it was wrong to buy or wear them. > While Americans were being told not to buy them They didn't tell people to "boycott" masks, they said that they weren't effective at stopping COVID and that people in hospitals needed them more than the average citizen. The initial research for masks indicated that they weren't helpful, due to Coronaviruses showing up on the outside of the masks after asking an infected person to cough. It wasn't until a few weeks later when they noticed that the petri dishes that the patients had coughed into had substantially more virus reproduction without masks than with the masks. The people doing the research weren't lying, it was a very logical sequence of events. Sometimes initial research implies an incorrect conclusion, that's why it's called "initial research" and not "conclusive research", which is why they "changed their minds" afterward. This is well documented and is not controversial [0]. The way you frame it, and the use of the word "boycott" is incredibly disrespectful to the people studying this. [0] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342
- marshray 6y ago
  I have absolutely no problem with being considered 'disrespectful' of anyone who told Americans not to wear masks during a respiratory pandemic. (Go ahead downvoters, do your thing.) One cannot claim that both A) masks are "not effective at stopping COVID" and B) "people in hospitals needed them more than the average citizen". It's a laughably obvious contradiction. This is a lie (sorry, yeah, it is) pushed by people who wanted to bully individuals out of their own PPE in a misguided attempt to make up for the failure to plan by the larger organizations (government, healthcare orgs) that were responsible for doing so. The reality is that masks are effective in stopping the transmission of coronaviruses and every country in Asia knew this from experience with SARS-1. EDIT: If this isn't urging a boycott, what is? https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1233725785283932160 https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > One cannot claim that both A) masks are "not effective at stopping COVID" and B) "people in hospitals needed them more than the average citizen". It's a laughably obvious contradiction. Of course you can, and it's not a contradiction. It's true for surgical masks, whose purpose is to prevent the wearer from spreading the infection around; you can apply social distancing in lieu of these masks, which is not possible for medical staff. It's also true for respirators, which require specialized training to be worn correctly, which is something the medical staff has, and regular citizens don't. And again, most people can use social distancing as a substitute. The problem with masks was always that there just wasn't, and isn't, enough of them available to equip everyone. So governments had to prioritize, and healthcare workers need PPE more than most people not in healthcare. That doesn't justify downplaying the actual effectiveness; if it were up to me, I'd just say that yes, they're effective if properly used, and refocus the propaganda efforts on guilt-tripping society into donating all the hoarded PPEs to hospitals and clinics.
    - wutbrodo 6y ago
      > It's true for surgical masks, whose purpose is to prevent the wearer from spreading the infection around; you can apply social distancing in lieu of these masks, which is not possible for medical staff. This isn't an argument that they're ineffective for stopping transmission. It's an argument that there are alternatives. And many people aren't/weren't able to fully social distance either, which is why masks were (and are) still useful. Recommending against N95 use while encouraging the use of cloth barriers was an easy, obvious step to take that our structurally incompetent public health agencies failed to do (among many, many other failings). > It's also true for respirators, which require specialized training to be worn correctly, which is something the medical staff has, and regular citizens don't. A California study showed that 65%[0] of healthcare workers apply respirators incorrectly; the population baseline is 72%. Your argument proves too much, unless you think that respirators are useless for doctors and all the complaints about PPE shortages were pointless whining. The point here is that the evidence we had in February and early March was more than enough to make a sane decision on masks, reducing spread and individual risk while not exacerbating hospital shortages (in and of itself a symptom of institutional incompetence). It's beyond me why people are bending over backwards to avoid admitting the institutional stupidity the early days of the pandemic were wracked with. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10656351/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10656351/
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  > The initial research for masks indicated that they weren't helpful, due to Coronaviruses showing up on the outside of the masks after asking an infected person to cough. It wasn't until a few weeks later when they noticed that the petri dishes that the patients had coughed into had substantially more virus reproduction without masks than with the masks. The people doing the research weren't lying, it was a very logical sequence of events. Sometimes initial research implies an incorrect conclusion, that's why it's called "initial research" and not "conclusive research", which is why they "changed their minds" afterward. This is well documented and is not controversial [0] From your link: > This experiment did not include N95 masks and does not reflect the actual transmission of infection from patients with COVID-19 wearing different types of masks. We do not know whether masks shorten the travel distance of droplets during coughing. Further study is needed to recommend whether face masks decrease transmission of virus from asymptomatic individuals or those with suspected COVID-19 who are not coughing. Masks aren't some cutting-edge, space-age drug that may cause cancer. They're a piece of material placed across the nose and mouth, and have been in use for literally thousands of years. We have strong priors on their value in preventing the spread of respiratory diseases in general, and in the absence of proof of their ineffectiveness at doing so for Sars-CoV2, recommending their use was obviously the prudent course of action. None of the available information, including the study you link, made it a good idea to recommend strongly and repeatedly against wearing masks, up to and including the Surgeon General exhorting "Seriously, people - STOP BUYING MASKS". The midwit religious adherence to scientism on parts of the left has been one of the biggest cultural failures of the pandemic, a mirror image to parts of the right's knee-jerk distrust of experts. The scientific method is the greatest knowledge-generation engine that's ever existed, but it doesn't mean forfeiting our inability to reason about anything until there's a micro-targeted peer-reviewed trial. Reasoning under uncertainty is difficult, but our public health authorities have proven themselves to be incapable of fairly basic critical thinking. The idea that this is a "logical sequence of events" is beyond laughable.

tombert 6y ago

> The big mistake with COVID-19 was telling individuals to boycott masks and that it was wrong to buy or wear them. > While Americans were being told not to buy them They didn't tell people to "boycott" masks, they said that they weren't effective at stopping COVID and that people in hospitals needed them more than the average citizen. The initial research for masks indicated that they weren't helpful, due to Coronaviruses showing up on the outside of the masks after asking an infected person to cough. It wasn't until a few weeks later when they noticed that the petri dishes that the patients had coughed into had substantially more virus reproduction without masks than with the masks. The people doing the research weren't lying, it was a very logical sequence of events. Sometimes initial research implies an incorrect conclusion, that's why it's called "initial research" and not "conclusive research", which is why they "changed their minds" afterward. This is well documented and is not controversial [0]. The way you frame it, and the use of the word "boycott" is incredibly disrespectful to the people studying this. [0] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342

marshray 6y ago
I have absolutely no problem with being considered 'disrespectful' of anyone who told Americans not to wear masks during a respiratory pandemic. (Go ahead downvoters, do your thing.) One cannot claim that both A) masks are "not effective at stopping COVID" and B) "people in hospitals needed them more than the average citizen". It's a laughably obvious contradiction. This is a lie (sorry, yeah, it is) pushed by people who wanted to bully individuals out of their own PPE in a misguided attempt to make up for the failure to plan by the larger organizations (government, healthcare orgs) that were responsible for doing so. The reality is that masks are effective in stopping the transmission of coronaviruses and every country in Asia knew this from experience with SARS-1. EDIT: If this isn't urging a boycott, what is? https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1233725785283932160 https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > One cannot claim that both A) masks are "not effective at stopping COVID" and B) "people in hospitals needed them more than the average citizen". It's a laughably obvious contradiction. Of course you can, and it's not a contradiction. It's true for surgical masks, whose purpose is to prevent the wearer from spreading the infection around; you can apply social distancing in lieu of these masks, which is not possible for medical staff. It's also true for respirators, which require specialized training to be worn correctly, which is something the medical staff has, and regular citizens don't. And again, most people can use social distancing as a substitute. The problem with masks was always that there just wasn't, and isn't, enough of them available to equip everyone. So governments had to prioritize, and healthcare workers need PPE more than most people not in healthcare. That doesn't justify downplaying the actual effectiveness; if it were up to me, I'd just say that yes, they're effective if properly used, and refocus the propaganda efforts on guilt-tripping society into donating all the hoarded PPEs to hospitals and clinics.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    > It's true for surgical masks, whose purpose is to prevent the wearer from spreading the infection around; you can apply social distancing in lieu of these masks, which is not possible for medical staff. This isn't an argument that they're ineffective for stopping transmission. It's an argument that there are alternatives. And many people aren't/weren't able to fully social distance either, which is why masks were (and are) still useful. Recommending against N95 use while encouraging the use of cloth barriers was an easy, obvious step to take that our structurally incompetent public health agencies failed to do (among many, many other failings). > It's also true for respirators, which require specialized training to be worn correctly, which is something the medical staff has, and regular citizens don't. A California study showed that 65%[0] of healthcare workers apply respirators incorrectly; the population baseline is 72%. Your argument proves too much, unless you think that respirators are useless for doctors and all the complaints about PPE shortages were pointless whining. The point here is that the evidence we had in February and early March was more than enough to make a sane decision on masks, reducing spread and individual risk while not exacerbating hospital shortages (in and of itself a symptom of institutional incompetence). It's beyond me why people are bending over backwards to avoid admitting the institutional stupidity the early days of the pandemic were wracked with. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10656351/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10656351/
wutbrodo 6y ago
> The initial research for masks indicated that they weren't helpful, due to Coronaviruses showing up on the outside of the masks after asking an infected person to cough. It wasn't until a few weeks later when they noticed that the petri dishes that the patients had coughed into had substantially more virus reproduction without masks than with the masks. The people doing the research weren't lying, it was a very logical sequence of events. Sometimes initial research implies an incorrect conclusion, that's why it's called "initial research" and not "conclusive research", which is why they "changed their minds" afterward. This is well documented and is not controversial [0] From your link: > This experiment did not include N95 masks and does not reflect the actual transmission of infection from patients with COVID-19 wearing different types of masks. We do not know whether masks shorten the travel distance of droplets during coughing. Further study is needed to recommend whether face masks decrease transmission of virus from asymptomatic individuals or those with suspected COVID-19 who are not coughing. Masks aren't some cutting-edge, space-age drug that may cause cancer. They're a piece of material placed across the nose and mouth, and have been in use for literally thousands of years. We have strong priors on their value in preventing the spread of respiratory diseases in general, and in the absence of proof of their ineffectiveness at doing so for Sars-CoV2, recommending their use was obviously the prudent course of action. None of the available information, including the study you link, made it a good idea to recommend strongly and repeatedly against wearing masks, up to and including the Surgeon General exhorting "Seriously, people - STOP BUYING MASKS". The midwit religious adherence to scientism on parts of the left has been one of the biggest cultural failures of the pandemic, a mirror image to parts of the right's knee-jerk distrust of experts. The scientific method is the greatest knowledge-generation engine that's ever existed, but it doesn't mean forfeiting our inability to reason about anything until there's a micro-targeted peer-reviewed trial. Reasoning under uncertainty is difficult, but our public health authorities have proven themselves to be incapable of fairly basic critical thinking. The idea that this is a "logical sequence of events" is beyond laughable.