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Yeah this is the part of the issue that my social media feed seems to attach to. They post comments from politicians and public figures (and medial professional

Yeah this is the part of the issue that my social media feed seems to attach to. They post comments from politicians and public figures (and medial professionals) saying early on that we shouldn't wear masks. I'm sad that the original messages didn't come across as the nuanced issue that it is. Hospitals need the N95 stuff because they are exposed at high rates for a long time. Hospitals also educate their staff on proper protocol when wearing a mask so that people don't negate the effectiveness by wearing it wrong or touching their face after removing it. The public isn't educated on proper mask wearing procedure. We don't know how to test that a mask fits properly. We don't have the same training to avoid cross contamination and poor mask hygiene. We don't understand the marginal benefits of masks and how it creates a false sense of security causing us to take more risks and spread the disease more quickly. So at first, it makes perfect sense to funnel the best masks to the highest risk people and encourage "stay at home" (instead of "go outside with a mask") because it limits disease spread the most and protects the community. I'm sad that it has turned in to "but they said masks did nothing" as an excuse to not wear them. It was never that they did nothing, it's that masks ALONE is not enough. Masks and proper behavior are necessary together.

DanBC 6y ago
> I'm sad that it has turned in to "but they said masks did nothing" as an excuse to not wear them. It was never that they did nothing, it's that masks ALONE is not enough. Masks and proper behavior are necessary together. If you have the correct behaviour (hand washing, distancing) the mask provides you no benefit. The only point to wearing a mask is if you are unable to maintain that distance, or you're stuck in a room with symptomatic people. But if you're doing that you're also provided with eye protection and gloves and a gown and copious water for handwashing, and you've probably been trained to don and doff the PPE correctly, and maybe you even have a person acting as a PPE spotter helping you put it on or take it off correctly.
- mennis16 6y ago
  No one is telling people to wear masks in their own house or sparse outdoor spaces, and in most cases there are no rules about outdoor spaces at all. Where the anti-maskers are causing a problem is refusing to wear masks indoors. Airflow can be very different in different buildings and the "6 feet apart" distancing rule is fairly arbitrary. It is implausible to actually properly distance in most indoor spaces. Hence masks are indeed important, even for those following the other "rules". That aside, there is high overlap these days between people that say masks don't work and people that are completely negligent about distancing. It is a little ironic, as there were concerns that belief in masks would make people distance less due to sense of security.
mennis16 6y ago
I don't recall the exact CDC statement but I do recall quite a few of my (well educated, liberal, in some cases educated in public health) friends posting on Facebook that masks actually do more harm than good because "people touch their face more" or something. I remember thinking a lot of the messaging seemed wrong, but I also wasn't confident enough about it to start getting into social media fights about whether people should wear masks. So there definitely was some narrative going around back in March that masks had an actively negative effect for an individual, not just that masks do nothing. That said, anyone who is an anti-masker at this point is being ridiculous.

DanBC 6y ago

> I'm sad that it has turned in to "but they said masks did nothing" as an excuse to not wear them. It was never that they did nothing, it's that masks ALONE is not enough. Masks and proper behavior are necessary together. If you have the correct behaviour (hand washing, distancing) the mask provides you no benefit. The only point to wearing a mask is if you are unable to maintain that distance, or you're stuck in a room with symptomatic people. But if you're doing that you're also provided with eye protection and gloves and a gown and copious water for handwashing, and you've probably been trained to don and doff the PPE correctly, and maybe you even have a person acting as a PPE spotter helping you put it on or take it off correctly.

mennis16 6y ago
No one is telling people to wear masks in their own house or sparse outdoor spaces, and in most cases there are no rules about outdoor spaces at all. Where the anti-maskers are causing a problem is refusing to wear masks indoors. Airflow can be very different in different buildings and the "6 feet apart" distancing rule is fairly arbitrary. It is implausible to actually properly distance in most indoor spaces. Hence masks are indeed important, even for those following the other "rules". That aside, there is high overlap these days between people that say masks don't work and people that are completely negligent about distancing. It is a little ironic, as there were concerns that belief in masks would make people distance less due to sense of security.

mennis16 6y ago

I don't recall the exact CDC statement but I do recall quite a few of my (well educated, liberal, in some cases educated in public health) friends posting on Facebook that masks actually do more harm than good because "people touch their face more" or something. I remember thinking a lot of the messaging seemed wrong, but I also wasn't confident enough about it to start getting into social media fights about whether people should wear masks. So there definitely was some narrative going around back in March that masks had an actively negative effect for an individual, not just that masks do nothing. That said, anyone who is an anti-masker at this point is being ridiculous.