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"Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they

by jariel 6y ago

"Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they said" Public Communications and Science are different things. If masks are very scarce, and we need to ration, then we want to prioritize certain groups. Once they are plentiful, the marginal benefit of masks becomes beneficial to the extent it doesn't interfere with front-line usage, in which case, we definitely want people o wear masks. And so we use different words, mediums, forms of messaging to get people to change their behaviour, some of it more effective than others. The medical community has to triage all the time, literally at your hospital right now, they are using their knowledge to ration the resources they have available at any given moment. If you complain of 'chest pain' then you go to the front of the line. The Razor Award should be a thing now, because news about some kinds of science spreads quickly.

ekianjo 6y ago
> If masks are very scarce, and we need to ration, then we want to prioritize certain groups. Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public? "masks work, but we need to allocate them to health workers because we don't have enough of them". Anyone can understand that.
- jariel 6y ago
  "Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public?" ? They quite clearly told us that they were prioritizing medical workers. Read the WHO's guidelines yourself. Here's the WHO guidance as of April [1] June [2], which is pretty early. You can see the guidance evolve during that time and it was still early. Here is the CBC's public notice on March 25, a couple weeks before the epidemic hit hard in Canada [3] "The advice on whether or not to wear masks to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has shifted since the start of the pandemic. Public health officials now say that wearing masks can prevent some potentially infectious respiratory droplets from spreading to others, but most still recommend that N95 masks, above, be reserved for health care settings." Frankly, the only thing I remember about masks early on was 'get them to the front line workers' to the point where in my family we were going to donate our own N95s to the hospital, but they were already used. [1] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.3-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-... [2] https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---5-june-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-... [3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186

by jariel 6y ago

ekianjo 6y ago

> If masks are very scarce, and we need to ration, then we want to prioritize certain groups. Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public? "masks work, but we need to allocate them to health workers because we don't have enough of them". Anyone can understand that.

jariel 6y ago
"Then why didn't they say so instead of lying to the public?" ? They quite clearly told us that they were prioritizing medical workers. Read the WHO's guidelines yourself. Here's the WHO guidance as of April [1] June [2], which is pretty early. You can see the guidance evolve during that time and it was still early. Here is the CBC's public notice on March 25, a couple weeks before the epidemic hit hard in Canada [3] "The advice on whether or not to wear masks to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has shifted since the start of the pandemic. Public health officials now say that wearing masks can prevent some potentially infectious respiratory droplets from spreading to others, but most still recommend that N95 masks, above, be reserved for health care settings." Frankly, the only thing I remember about masks early on was 'get them to the front line workers' to the point where in my family we were going to donate our own N95s to the hospital, but they were already used. [1] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.3-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331693/WHO-... [2] https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---5-june-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-... [3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/masks-coronavirus-1.5507186