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I think one of the most disappointing things about this pandemic is being able discuss difficult topics without being shunned by the masses/mobrule. Anything yo

I think one of the most disappointing things about this pandemic is being able discuss difficult topics without being shunned by the masses/mobrule. Anything you say that is slightly controversial will get slammed on Twitter/Media. We need better mechanisms to express disagreements than the status quo without being belittled, insulted, shunned, disrespected and ousted. If you're a respected scientist, you can get your career slashed in half. Everyone is human, forgiveness, and being able to discuss politely is only may be on HN. I went on Twitter expressing that the US surgeon general and a bunch of CDC folks shouldn't be lying to the public about the following: Masks were initially in intense shortage. What did the leaders do? They lied to the public about how ineffective masks are to make sure there is enough stock for healthcare workers. I tried to expose this and everyone shunned me down by saying that this is a harmful thing to say. Since when is transparency harmful? You could be truthful and say "While masks are effective, please dont horde them as they are needed by the hospitals". Even if we didn't know the exact effectiveness of masks, they're not harmful to wear. They can only help. Leaders should have told the public about how to make them at home, which did happen, thanks to a bunch of Youtubers. Here is the deleted tweet (google cache) from the US Surgeon General: > "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm" There were so many things like this. Ventilators, testing ratio, death rate, etc. Coronavirus pandemic was horribly handled by the entire world, particularly us as Americans. Shame really that this is the best we could do. Edit: Added the official wording of the US Surgeon General Tweet on Feb 29, 2020.

Nursie 6y ago
AFAICT at the beginning of the pandemic, we were very much in "not proven" territory with masks. There was a lively debate ablut whether they provided much protection (and there still is, we mostly wear them to protect others from us, not for ourselves, again AFAICT). Is it possible they were just wrong?
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Masks can ONLY help. They're not going to make it more likely to catch COVID even if there was no proven effectiveness. Basic logic and years of masks development (used in hospitals for over 100 years) should tell us that they do something. They're not useless.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Depends on the material - fleece actually can increase transmission. And potentially poor mask handling and discipline could have made transmission worse. We more or less know this isn't the case now, but didn't then. So yes, it actually could make things worse.
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      This was never expressed by the authorities, they should explain. It is a pretty iffy claim and with such a claim, you gotta have some data that invalidates decades of mask usage in hospitals.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        Hospitals don't use fleece. Saying that the material has an enormous impact on effectiveness doesn't invalidate anything. I mean, that's why N95 masks are so complicated and different from surgical masks, because material matters so much.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - greggman3 6y ago
    If they were ineffective but people thought they were effective they'd act like they were effective and go do things that would get them infected, falsely believing the mask would protect them. They appear to have turned out to be effective (FYI: I've warn masks every time I've been outside since 2020/3/16 so I'm certainly on the side of masks) Will you downvote this because it shows a logical flaw, not a judgement, but it you probably disagree with it?
hnprivilege 6y ago
The fact that you're able to share this opinion on HN without being downvoted, super-downoted (i.e. flagged), and super-duper-downvoted (i.e. moderated), shows that you're in the privileged minority here. That raises serious questions about whether your opinion about being "bullied", etc., is even relevant, because you objectively aren't. This only serves to itself belittle, shun, and disrespect those who are not allowed to share their opinion in these undiverse spaces.
s5300 6y ago
Huh? This is capitalism. If masks are in short supply and hospitals needs them - we obviously buy them all up and sell to those in need for an exuberant markup What do you think the US is, buddy
- roenxi 6y ago
  The sensible approach when masks are in short supply is to direct more money to the mask manufacturers. It is overwhelmingly likely that they will use the money to produce more masks. How are the mask manufacturers going to get more money if they can't charge an exorbitant markup? They need to buy new plant/ materials and hire new people. Is the plan that the mask manufacturers have to go deeply in to debt to create enough masks? That is the best I can think of without sharp price rises, and it is a terrible plan for encouraging people to produce more masks.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    What's your threshold for "exorbitant"? If you add an extra dollar to the price, that's enough to get a lot of expansion of manufacturing. Beyond that, I would say that long-term purchasing contracts, or government funding to pay for new machinery, are both much better options to boost capacity than huge price hikes.
    - roenxi 6y ago
      > What's your threshold for "exorbitant"? I don't have one, or actually care about specific numbers. There is some magic price where I'll start learning how to make masks but I doubt we're going to see that reached in my lifetime. > If you add an extra dollar to the price, that's enough to get a lot of expansion of manufacturing. In 18-24 months, sure. We're 12 months in so far though. If they need the money now it is a different story. The higher the price, the more immediate and desperate actions become justified to increase supply. That is one of the core parts of market economics. Let the price rise to some silly amount and people will move heaven and earth to increase supply. To get extraordinary things done an extraordinary amount of money will be needed. That can come from extraordinary prices. Or it can not happen and shortages can persist longer than required.
anonytrary 6y ago
Yeah what's also a bit frustrating is that people like Joe Rogan are openly discussing the controversial stuff people don't wanna hear and are getting SLAMMED on Reddit for deviating even just slightly from what the government has chosen to do along with the medical leaders. Most of the smart people I know think that widespread lockdowns are an extremely heavy-handed solution that will lead to more harm than good. History is proving this day by day... It seems a nuanced approach to re-openings is simply too difficult to get right and therefore untenable, which is extremely sad.
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  The problem is not JR, it's the people who listen to him and take his every word as some sort of ultimate truth. I don't blame him. Human nature is to wield power. The more power the person has, in whatever form it is, the more inventive ways he will come up with to use it for his goals, be they selfish or otherwise. JR would shut his mouth if his audience chided him to being conspiratorial. The society has lost the ability to think critically. And the focus on individuality has exacerbated the problem. I don't mind individuality in matters such as personal growth, morality, religion, etc, but there are some aspects of social life where collective expert decisions must hold higher weight than individual opinions, such as in public health, defense, etc.
  - travisoneill1 6y ago
    > the people who listen to him and take his every word as some sort of ultimate truth. They don't really exist. At least not in any significant number. This is just a straw man to attack Joe Rogan.
- greggman3 6y ago
  history is proving no such thing. you have no idea what the alternate history would have been
  - anonytrary 6y ago
    See this is my point. "You have no idea what would have happened" is an opt-out of a conversation. You can't deny the negative effects of lockdown. The point is that other solutions should be tried because the current one clearly has disastrous consequences. For example, an alternate solution could be tried in a small microcosm as a sort of A/B test, but no one is really entertaining that possibility, and anyone who does is hit with contentless comments such as yours. Thinking is hard, but it's time for everyone to start.
outime 6y ago
> You could be truthful and say "While masks are effective, please dont horde them as they are needed by the hospitals". I’m not a politician nor I defend most of them in general but do you expect that people would not hoard them when everyone was (back then) panicking at a new extreme deadly virus? So the easiest solution (not necessarily the best) was to do politics which is to deceive. If a country says that the masks are very effective yet only selected people will get them, even if it makes sense factually speaking, riots will ensue because that’s how masses work (in most big countries anyway). If you deceive, you gain time and everyone will eventually get their own masks, which is how it played out. Hopefully I don’t get shunned by this. I’m just trying to illustrate that plain transparency at extreme situations may just not be an easy option as you put it. Edit: wording
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I can see this being a point but there was no place to debate this sort of a thing. I would never downvote you.
- twblalock 6y ago
  People were going to hoard masks no matter what. Lying to them doesn't help, but it definitely reduces trust.
  - outime 6y ago
    We can’t know for sure but I bet many people didn’t hoard or didn’t even bother to buy any in the beginning because of this announcement. At big scale (e.g. USA) this means millions of saved masks. And I agree with your last point of course.
    - twblalock 6y ago
      > At big scale (e.g. USA) this means millions of saved masks. At what cost? How many people have died because mask wearing was discouraged during the early part of the pandemic? We will probably never know, but I would not be surprised if that advice caused a lot of deaths by allowing the virus to spread more easily.
kumarvvr 6y ago
> We need better mechanisms to express disagrements than the status quo without being belittled, insulted, shunned, disrespected and ousted We do have such mechanisms. In the olden days, opinions were expressed through slow moving mediums such as news papers and press conferences. Those who wanted to criticize them had channels such as letters to newspaper editors, radio calls, etc, to express disagreement or point out flaws. This was good and bad. Good because you had to invest a finite amount of time and resources to express counter opinion. Bad because it has the effect of amplifying the voices of fanatics. However, with today's friction free methods to express opinion and social media echo chambers that amplify everything, there is just too much noise. I just hate Twitter and Facebook. Their ultimate contribution to society is sum negative.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  You're absolutely spot on. We need to come up with better etiquettes for debates of difficult situations on the internet than this Twitter/FB nonsense and in a more formal forum. There should be rules of engagement with freedom to express disagreements backed by logic, reasoning and data.
- okaram 6y ago
  That's cool ... just ignore twitter/FB. Do you realize yc is kinda social media too? And we're expressing opinions without people being too belittled/shunned ...
  - AntiImperialis4 6y ago
    >And we're expressing opinions without people being too belittled/shunned ... No. Unpopular opinions get flagged and shadow-banned instantly here.
    - dang 6y ago
      You're getting banned because you've been serially creating accounts to break the site guidelines with. Would you please stop doing that? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
brandonmenc 6y ago
Agree. No one remembers that conservatives were also trying desperately to locate masks for purchase back in March. The public is smarter than the technocrats give them credit for, and will bristle at attempts to influence their behavior through lying - or even just fibbing, as in this case. Good luck gaining back their trust after a round or two of that. In that respect, they may resemble petulant children - but can you blame them?
cbsmith 6y ago
> They lied to the public about how ineffective masks are to make sure there is enough stock for healthcare workers. Except they didn't. What they said that the odds of you getting infected were not substantially changed by you wearing a mask in general, but they were substantially changed for people in high risk situations, like healthcare workers. That became less and less true as more and more people became infected, so the basal chances of you getting exposed, and therefore the impact of wearing a mask, changed.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  > "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm" ^ US Surgeon General official tweet which was then deleted. Source, Google cached version, google "US Surgeon General tweet masks".
  - okaram 6y ago
    I'm not sure where you're trying to link, but your bitly takes me to a cdc page, not to that tweet, which basically makes me discard your argument
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      These are not my words, including the bitly link. This is verbatim tweet from the US Surgeon General. I added quote marks to clarify this. The original tweet has been deleted. The bitly link was part of the original tweet.
  - cbsmith 6y ago
    See, this is the joy of PR BS. Context gets changed to mislead people, and the wrong people get blamed.
    - cbsmith 6y ago
mannykannot 6y ago
Hoarding masks would have been the sort of response that the author is railing against (a hoarded mask isn't doing anything to get R down), except that, being a free-market response, it would not have served the author's purpose as a parable extolling the wisdom of markets. Asking people not to hoard masks would have been no more effective than it was for toilet paper - I would guess less effective, in fact.
wwweston 6y ago
There's any number of terrible things about the US response that could/should have been better. But the US Surgeon General did not lie to the public with that tweet. His communication wasn't adequate for someone holding his office, because it takes effort to parse, and crucial communications like his need to be better, but he didn't lie. Look carefully at what he said: "if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!" This is a statement of confidence in the masks he's talking about, N95/adjacent PPE. Saying they provide any substantial margin of personal protective safety for healthcare providers is saying they work. Now some people read "STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective" and stopped thinking right there. Some of the fault lies in anyone who did that. Some of the fault lies with the SG for poor communication. But the fact is, the SG's statement did not stop there. It continues into a statement skeptical not of the effectiveness of PPE masks as a personally protective measure, but as a measure that can protect the general public. There might by any number of reasons for that. He might believe the general public can't wear them effectively and conscientiously (I didn't believe that in March, but after watching people wear cloth masks, I absolutely do). He might believe there just weren't enough to protect the public (absolutely true then). He might believe they might engender a false sense of confidence preventing more effective measures (credible). Some of those reasons were actually stated and yet not perceived, which speaks to the trouble of "just telling the truth." There may have been others. Additionally, I'm astonished that many people continue to read his statement and fail to distinguish between PPE masks and cloth masks primarily about preventing source transmission (ie, wearer infecting others, with some fractional protection from being infected by others). In fact, I'm astonished at how many people still don't understand what cloth masks can do and talk about themselves or those wearing them in terms of protecting themselves. It's unfortunate that he didn't communicate better. Failing on that front might even be reason enough to have someone else doing that job. But honestly 10 months out I don't know that it's all on him.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Nursie 6y ago

AFAICT at the beginning of the pandemic, we were very much in "not proven" territory with masks. There was a lively debate ablut whether they provided much protection (and there still is, we mostly wear them to protect others from us, not for ourselves, again AFAICT). Is it possible they were just wrong?

systemvoltage 6y ago
Masks can ONLY help. They're not going to make it more likely to catch COVID even if there was no proven effectiveness. Basic logic and years of masks development (used in hospitals for over 100 years) should tell us that they do something. They're not useless.
- Nursie 6y ago
  Depends on the material - fleece actually can increase transmission. And potentially poor mask handling and discipline could have made transmission worse. We more or less know this isn't the case now, but didn't then. So yes, it actually could make things worse.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    This was never expressed by the authorities, they should explain. It is a pretty iffy claim and with such a claim, you gotta have some data that invalidates decades of mask usage in hospitals.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Hospitals don't use fleece. Saying that the material has an enormous impact on effectiveness doesn't invalidate anything. I mean, that's why N95 masks are so complicated and different from surgical masks, because material matters so much.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- greggman3 6y ago
  If they were ineffective but people thought they were effective they'd act like they were effective and go do things that would get them infected, falsely believing the mask would protect them. They appear to have turned out to be effective (FYI: I've warn masks every time I've been outside since 2020/3/16 so I'm certainly on the side of masks) Will you downvote this because it shows a logical flaw, not a judgement, but it you probably disagree with it?

hnprivilege 6y ago

The fact that you're able to share this opinion on HN without being downvoted, super-downoted (i.e. flagged), and super-duper-downvoted (i.e. moderated), shows that you're in the privileged minority here. That raises serious questions about whether your opinion about being "bullied", etc., is even relevant, because you objectively aren't. This only serves to itself belittle, shun, and disrespect those who are not allowed to share their opinion in these undiverse spaces.

s5300 6y ago

Huh? This is capitalism. If masks are in short supply and hospitals needs them - we obviously buy them all up and sell to those in need for an exuberant markup What do you think the US is, buddy

roenxi 6y ago
The sensible approach when masks are in short supply is to direct more money to the mask manufacturers. It is overwhelmingly likely that they will use the money to produce more masks. How are the mask manufacturers going to get more money if they can't charge an exorbitant markup? They need to buy new plant/ materials and hire new people. Is the plan that the mask manufacturers have to go deeply in to debt to create enough masks? That is the best I can think of without sharp price rises, and it is a terrible plan for encouraging people to produce more masks.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  What's your threshold for "exorbitant"? If you add an extra dollar to the price, that's enough to get a lot of expansion of manufacturing. Beyond that, I would say that long-term purchasing contracts, or government funding to pay for new machinery, are both much better options to boost capacity than huge price hikes.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    > What's your threshold for "exorbitant"? I don't have one, or actually care about specific numbers. There is some magic price where I'll start learning how to make masks but I doubt we're going to see that reached in my lifetime. > If you add an extra dollar to the price, that's enough to get a lot of expansion of manufacturing. In 18-24 months, sure. We're 12 months in so far though. If they need the money now it is a different story. The higher the price, the more immediate and desperate actions become justified to increase supply. That is one of the core parts of market economics. Let the price rise to some silly amount and people will move heaven and earth to increase supply. To get extraordinary things done an extraordinary amount of money will be needed. That can come from extraordinary prices. Or it can not happen and shortages can persist longer than required.

anonytrary 6y ago

Yeah what's also a bit frustrating is that people like Joe Rogan are openly discussing the controversial stuff people don't wanna hear and are getting SLAMMED on Reddit for deviating even just slightly from what the government has chosen to do along with the medical leaders. Most of the smart people I know think that widespread lockdowns are an extremely heavy-handed solution that will lead to more harm than good. History is proving this day by day... It seems a nuanced approach to re-openings is simply too difficult to get right and therefore untenable, which is extremely sad.

kumarvvr 6y ago
The problem is not JR, it's the people who listen to him and take his every word as some sort of ultimate truth. I don't blame him. Human nature is to wield power. The more power the person has, in whatever form it is, the more inventive ways he will come up with to use it for his goals, be they selfish or otherwise. JR would shut his mouth if his audience chided him to being conspiratorial. The society has lost the ability to think critically. And the focus on individuality has exacerbated the problem. I don't mind individuality in matters such as personal growth, morality, religion, etc, but there are some aspects of social life where collective expert decisions must hold higher weight than individual opinions, such as in public health, defense, etc.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  > the people who listen to him and take his every word as some sort of ultimate truth. They don't really exist. At least not in any significant number. This is just a straw man to attack Joe Rogan.
greggman3 6y ago
history is proving no such thing. you have no idea what the alternate history would have been
- anonytrary 6y ago
  See this is my point. "You have no idea what would have happened" is an opt-out of a conversation. You can't deny the negative effects of lockdown. The point is that other solutions should be tried because the current one clearly has disastrous consequences. For example, an alternate solution could be tried in a small microcosm as a sort of A/B test, but no one is really entertaining that possibility, and anyone who does is hit with contentless comments such as yours. Thinking is hard, but it's time for everyone to start.

outime 6y ago

> You could be truthful and say "While masks are effective, please dont horde them as they are needed by the hospitals". I’m not a politician nor I defend most of them in general but do you expect that people would not hoard them when everyone was (back then) panicking at a new extreme deadly virus? So the easiest solution (not necessarily the best) was to do politics which is to deceive. If a country says that the masks are very effective yet only selected people will get them, even if it makes sense factually speaking, riots will ensue because that’s how masses work (in most big countries anyway). If you deceive, you gain time and everyone will eventually get their own masks, which is how it played out. Hopefully I don’t get shunned by this. I’m just trying to illustrate that plain transparency at extreme situations may just not be an easy option as you put it. Edit: wording

systemvoltage 6y ago
I can see this being a point but there was no place to debate this sort of a thing. I would never downvote you.
twblalock 6y ago
People were going to hoard masks no matter what. Lying to them doesn't help, but it definitely reduces trust.
- outime 6y ago
  We can’t know for sure but I bet many people didn’t hoard or didn’t even bother to buy any in the beginning because of this announcement. At big scale (e.g. USA) this means millions of saved masks. And I agree with your last point of course.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    > At big scale (e.g. USA) this means millions of saved masks. At what cost? How many people have died because mask wearing was discouraged during the early part of the pandemic? We will probably never know, but I would not be surprised if that advice caused a lot of deaths by allowing the virus to spread more easily.

kumarvvr 6y ago

> We need better mechanisms to express disagrements than the status quo without being belittled, insulted, shunned, disrespected and ousted We do have such mechanisms. In the olden days, opinions were expressed through slow moving mediums such as news papers and press conferences. Those who wanted to criticize them had channels such as letters to newspaper editors, radio calls, etc, to express disagreement or point out flaws. This was good and bad. Good because you had to invest a finite amount of time and resources to express counter opinion. Bad because it has the effect of amplifying the voices of fanatics. However, with today's friction free methods to express opinion and social media echo chambers that amplify everything, there is just too much noise. I just hate Twitter and Facebook. Their ultimate contribution to society is sum negative.

systemvoltage 6y ago
You're absolutely spot on. We need to come up with better etiquettes for debates of difficult situations on the internet than this Twitter/FB nonsense and in a more formal forum. There should be rules of engagement with freedom to express disagreements backed by logic, reasoning and data.
okaram 6y ago
That's cool ... just ignore twitter/FB. Do you realize yc is kinda social media too? And we're expressing opinions without people being too belittled/shunned ...
- AntiImperialis4 6y ago
  >And we're expressing opinions without people being too belittled/shunned ... No. Unpopular opinions get flagged and shadow-banned instantly here.
  - dang 6y ago
    You're getting banned because you've been serially creating accounts to break the site guidelines with. Would you please stop doing that? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

brandonmenc 6y ago

Agree. No one remembers that conservatives were also trying desperately to locate masks for purchase back in March. The public is smarter than the technocrats give them credit for, and will bristle at attempts to influence their behavior through lying - or even just fibbing, as in this case. Good luck gaining back their trust after a round or two of that. In that respect, they may resemble petulant children - but can you blame them?

cbsmith 6y ago

> They lied to the public about how ineffective masks are to make sure there is enough stock for healthcare workers. Except they didn't. What they said that the odds of you getting infected were not substantially changed by you wearing a mask in general, but they were substantially changed for people in high risk situations, like healthcare workers. That became less and less true as more and more people became infected, so the basal chances of you getting exposed, and therefore the impact of wearing a mask, changed.

systemvoltage 6y ago
> "Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm" ^ US Surgeon General official tweet which was then deleted. Source, Google cached version, google "US Surgeon General tweet masks".
- okaram 6y ago
  I'm not sure where you're trying to link, but your bitly takes me to a cdc page, not to that tweet, which basically makes me discard your argument
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    These are not my words, including the bitly link. This is verbatim tweet from the US Surgeon General. I added quote marks to clarify this. The original tweet has been deleted. The bitly link was part of the original tweet.
- cbsmith 6y ago
  See, this is the joy of PR BS. Context gets changed to mislead people, and the wrong people get blamed.
  - cbsmith 6y ago

mannykannot 6y ago

Hoarding masks would have been the sort of response that the author is railing against (a hoarded mask isn't doing anything to get R down), except that, being a free-market response, it would not have served the author's purpose as a parable extolling the wisdom of markets. Asking people not to hoard masks would have been no more effective than it was for toilet paper - I would guess less effective, in fact.

wwweston 6y ago

There's any number of terrible things about the US response that could/should have been better. But the US Surgeon General did not lie to the public with that tweet. His communication wasn't adequate for someone holding his office, because it takes effort to parse, and crucial communications like his need to be better, but he didn't lie. Look carefully at what he said: "if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!" This is a statement of confidence in the masks he's talking about, N95/adjacent PPE. Saying they provide any substantial margin of personal protective safety for healthcare providers is saying they work. Now some people read "STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective" and stopped thinking right there. Some of the fault lies in anyone who did that. Some of the fault lies with the SG for poor communication. But the fact is, the SG's statement did not stop there. It continues into a statement skeptical not of the effectiveness of PPE masks as a personally protective measure, but as a measure that can protect the general public. There might by any number of reasons for that. He might believe the general public can't wear them effectively and conscientiously (I didn't believe that in March, but after watching people wear cloth masks, I absolutely do). He might believe there just weren't enough to protect the public (absolutely true then). He might believe they might engender a false sense of confidence preventing more effective measures (credible). Some of those reasons were actually stated and yet not perceived, which speaks to the trouble of "just telling the truth." There may have been others. Additionally, I'm astonished that many people continue to read his statement and fail to distinguish between PPE masks and cloth masks primarily about preventing source transmission (ie, wearer infecting others, with some fractional protection from being infected by others). In fact, I'm astonished at how many people still don't understand what cloth masks can do and talk about themselves or those wearing them in terms of protecting themselves. It's unfortunate that he didn't communicate better. Failing on that front might even be reason enough to have someone else doing that job. But honestly 10 months out I don't know that it's all on him.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]