4 ms·

FWIW, I don’t think the majority of the officials intended to lie about this. It wasn’t anything that started this year or anything - they’ve had the same messa

FWIW, I don’t think the majority of the officials intended to lie about this. It wasn’t anything that started this year or anything - they’ve had the same message about masks since as far back as the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-t... > But the CDC has recommended against mask use. I hypothesized that the CDC was intentionally lying to us, trying to trick us into not buying masks so there would be enough for health care workers. > But that can’t be true, because the CDC and other experts came up with their no-masks policy years ago, long before there was any supply shortage. For example, during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, their website offered the following table: > [table in link] > And during the 2015 MERS epidemic, NPR said South Koreans were wrong to wear masks: > “[ . . . ] Masks can be helpful for protecting health workers from a variety of infectious diseases, including MERS… But either type of mask is less likely to do much good for the average person on the street…Wearing a mask might make people feel better. After all, MERS has killed about a third of the people known to be infected. But there are no good studies looking at how well these masks prevent MERS transmission out in the community, says Geeta Sood, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University. “On the street or the subway, for MERS specifically, they’re probably not effective,” she says. One problem is that the masks are loose fitting, and a lot of tiny airborne particles can get in around the sides of the masks.” > So if studies generally suggest masks are effective, and the CDC wasn’t deliberately lying to us, why are they recommending against mask use?

entee 6y ago
I think you’re right. I don’t understand the general tendency of assuming malice when a combination of uncertainty about the virus, poor supply chains, and not-very-good underlying data would do just as well. It’s also unclear what “masks” meant in the initial phases. An N95 respirator? A surgical mask? A homemade cloth mask? Each of these has different uses and effects. I seriously doubt most people knew the difference in early March, I only had a vague notion. The surgeon general likely is thinking of respirators, because all MDs in hospitals get fitted for it. They know how hard it is to put it on and take it off safely, and know how critical it is for it to be a good tight fit. None of those things are going to be true for most people in early March 2020. If that’s your frame of reference, then it makes total sense that you’d recommend people not buy masks. Everyone going out and buying N95s when they’re not particularly useful to most people unless in a close confined space is a bad thing. It doesn’t actually save many lives, but does make it harder for people who need it (docs/nurses in close confined spaces, particularly with patients on respirators that aerosolize the virus). People wearing surgical or cloth masks may help some, probably mostly in enclosed spaces and mostly for exhalation rather than preventing you from inhaling a virus from someone else. Even then, it’s my understanding that the data isn’t awesome here. Many of the papers I’ve seen are under fairly odd scenarios (for example an airplane, lots of the same air, recycled all over, for hours, where the paper showed positive mask benefit). We don’t have much for bandanas, or masks that were washed 3 weeks ago, or masks that are tighter, masks that are looser. I’d wager it helps, a little, especially indoors. In other words, this shit is complicated, why assume lying when instead we could just say, “it’s complicated, they didn’t get it 100% right.”
- smsm42 6y ago
  I'd be much more OK with this explanation about how complicated it is and how hard it is to get it right if on any disagreement with the same experts one wouldn't get yelled at as "science denier" and accused in willing to murder millions of people by his stupidity. I mean I get it, there's a complex question whether masks help (depends on which mask, in which circumstance, how long is the contact, how skilled you are in wearing masks, etc.) But isn't that why we are paying the CDC guys - to have clear guidelines about such stuff? OK, let's say CDC guys screwed up and got caught with their pants down (oh man did they...) and now we have no clear guidelines about it. Then come down from the ivory tower and tell us what you have and let us decide without politicians yelling at us and jerking it around - one day you are an idiot murderer because you're wearing mask, next day you're an idiot murderer because you don't. It just breeds contempt for the whole setup.
  - entee 6y ago
    I completely agree that the rhetoric around “Science!” has gotten increasingly more toxic. I say this as a trained scientist, we really do at bad job of communicating. This is made worse by a media and a general public that isn’t used to thinking in scientific terms. By that I mean we spend so much time as scientists living with and making decisions about which course of action to take in the context of uncertain data. Other fields obviously do too, but for a bench scientist, every day is is a constant tradeoff on which data you buy, what experiments will you run to confirm/exclude it, and what’s the downside of that decision. The best rarely speak in full certainty, they talk about probabilities. Contrast to public messaging or journalism which is, “do this, not that.” This has led to people holding “science” as an identity, a talisman of righteousness. That’s not how science works, but people want to feel better by judging people so here we are. I personally would have preferred a short, coherent statement on what we know for sure and what we don’t, how confident we are about the same, and to treat people as adults.
- blub 6y ago
  This isn't complicated at all, it's only been made to look so by governments and organizations caught with their pants down. Not wearing a mask offers zero protection from an illness which is mainly transmitted through droplets and aerosols. Wearing a mask offers some protection, ranging from little to very good depending on the type of mask. In the mean time we know that surgical masks offer pretty good protection in particular, but there were studies about SARS, MERS and influenza going back years showing that both FFP2/N95+ and surgical masks do help. We even have studies comparing incorrect, partly incorrect vs correct usage. The conclusion is inescapable: even if people on average wear masks incorrectly and even if the masks they wear aren't even close to 95% effective, they reduce the rate of transmission. Why on Earth would you not want to reduce the rate of transmission even if by a few percent?
raverbashing 6y ago
The recommendation against masks was probably a knee-jerk reaction. Or maybe a bureaucratic "we know better than you" reaction At the same time the amount of people that think that have the mask below the nose or just at the chin or mishandling it because it feels "uncomfortable" to them is astounding. I'm not sure but I believe an intubation is more uncomfortable (and yes these are predominantly people at risk ages)
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  This is so very, very annoying. I saw my parents-in-law yesterday, and both of them were wearing masks incorrectly. It's just so pointless to go to the bother of getting a mask and then wear it in such a way that you get no benefits from it.
apatters 6y ago
There was definitely no malice or intent to mislead by health authorities in this regard and the claim that there was has always struck me as a bizarre result of selective reporting. You can go back a few months and the WHO went on record plenty of times regarding a couple of points - Health workers really need good PPE and there is a shortage - When infected people wear a mask, it reduces transmission - The benefits of a non-infected person wearing a mask are not super well understood/studied and this topic doesn't really come up much because our main audience is healthcare professionals So they said at one point, focus on getting the masks to health care workers, and then as mask supply increased they said the infected should wear them too, and now that cloth/paper masks are easy to obtain they say everyone should wear them. It was always a question of supply and availability, there was no conspiracy. If you looked beyond the headlines and looked at the context it was pretty clear.

entee 6y ago

I think you’re right. I don’t understand the general tendency of assuming malice when a combination of uncertainty about the virus, poor supply chains, and not-very-good underlying data would do just as well. It’s also unclear what “masks” meant in the initial phases. An N95 respirator? A surgical mask? A homemade cloth mask? Each of these has different uses and effects. I seriously doubt most people knew the difference in early March, I only had a vague notion. The surgeon general likely is thinking of respirators, because all MDs in hospitals get fitted for it. They know how hard it is to put it on and take it off safely, and know how critical it is for it to be a good tight fit. None of those things are going to be true for most people in early March 2020. If that’s your frame of reference, then it makes total sense that you’d recommend people not buy masks. Everyone going out and buying N95s when they’re not particularly useful to most people unless in a close confined space is a bad thing. It doesn’t actually save many lives, but does make it harder for people who need it (docs/nurses in close confined spaces, particularly with patients on respirators that aerosolize the virus). People wearing surgical or cloth masks may help some, probably mostly in enclosed spaces and mostly for exhalation rather than preventing you from inhaling a virus from someone else. Even then, it’s my understanding that the data isn’t awesome here. Many of the papers I’ve seen are under fairly odd scenarios (for example an airplane, lots of the same air, recycled all over, for hours, where the paper showed positive mask benefit). We don’t have much for bandanas, or masks that were washed 3 weeks ago, or masks that are tighter, masks that are looser. I’d wager it helps, a little, especially indoors. In other words, this shit is complicated, why assume lying when instead we could just say, “it’s complicated, they didn’t get it 100% right.”

smsm42 6y ago
I'd be much more OK with this explanation about how complicated it is and how hard it is to get it right if on any disagreement with the same experts one wouldn't get yelled at as "science denier" and accused in willing to murder millions of people by his stupidity. I mean I get it, there's a complex question whether masks help (depends on which mask, in which circumstance, how long is the contact, how skilled you are in wearing masks, etc.) But isn't that why we are paying the CDC guys - to have clear guidelines about such stuff? OK, let's say CDC guys screwed up and got caught with their pants down (oh man did they...) and now we have no clear guidelines about it. Then come down from the ivory tower and tell us what you have and let us decide without politicians yelling at us and jerking it around - one day you are an idiot murderer because you're wearing mask, next day you're an idiot murderer because you don't. It just breeds contempt for the whole setup.
- entee 6y ago
  I completely agree that the rhetoric around “Science!” has gotten increasingly more toxic. I say this as a trained scientist, we really do at bad job of communicating. This is made worse by a media and a general public that isn’t used to thinking in scientific terms. By that I mean we spend so much time as scientists living with and making decisions about which course of action to take in the context of uncertain data. Other fields obviously do too, but for a bench scientist, every day is is a constant tradeoff on which data you buy, what experiments will you run to confirm/exclude it, and what’s the downside of that decision. The best rarely speak in full certainty, they talk about probabilities. Contrast to public messaging or journalism which is, “do this, not that.” This has led to people holding “science” as an identity, a talisman of righteousness. That’s not how science works, but people want to feel better by judging people so here we are. I personally would have preferred a short, coherent statement on what we know for sure and what we don’t, how confident we are about the same, and to treat people as adults.
blub 6y ago
This isn't complicated at all, it's only been made to look so by governments and organizations caught with their pants down. Not wearing a mask offers zero protection from an illness which is mainly transmitted through droplets and aerosols. Wearing a mask offers some protection, ranging from little to very good depending on the type of mask. In the mean time we know that surgical masks offer pretty good protection in particular, but there were studies about SARS, MERS and influenza going back years showing that both FFP2/N95+ and surgical masks do help. We even have studies comparing incorrect, partly incorrect vs correct usage. The conclusion is inescapable: even if people on average wear masks incorrectly and even if the masks they wear aren't even close to 95% effective, they reduce the rate of transmission. Why on Earth would you not want to reduce the rate of transmission even if by a few percent?

raverbashing 6y ago

The recommendation against masks was probably a knee-jerk reaction. Or maybe a bureaucratic "we know better than you" reaction At the same time the amount of people that think that have the mask below the nose or just at the chin or mishandling it because it feels "uncomfortable" to them is astounding. I'm not sure but I believe an intubation is more uncomfortable (and yes these are predominantly people at risk ages)

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
This is so very, very annoying. I saw my parents-in-law yesterday, and both of them were wearing masks incorrectly. It's just so pointless to go to the bother of getting a mask and then wear it in such a way that you get no benefits from it.

apatters 6y ago

There was definitely no malice or intent to mislead by health authorities in this regard and the claim that there was has always struck me as a bizarre result of selective reporting. You can go back a few months and the WHO went on record plenty of times regarding a couple of points - Health workers really need good PPE and there is a shortage - When infected people wear a mask, it reduces transmission - The benefits of a non-infected person wearing a mask are not super well understood/studied and this topic doesn't really come up much because our main audience is healthcare professionals So they said at one point, focus on getting the masks to health care workers, and then as mask supply increased they said the infected should wear them too, and now that cloth/paper masks are easy to obtain they say everyone should wear them. It was always a question of supply and availability, there was no conspiracy. If you looked beyond the headlines and looked at the context it was pretty clear.