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That's my memory too - at least in terms of public messaging, there was a lot of "wash your hands for 20 seconds" and "it takes two weeks for the virus to die o
by geofft 6y ago
That's my memory too - at least in terms of public messaging, there was a lot of "wash your hands for 20 seconds" and "it takes two weeks for the virus to die on surfaces" and so forth, which is largely irrelevant given what we know now about transmission. We also had a significant shortage of hand sanitizer and soap, and e.g. New York's slave laborers were put to work making hand sanitizer, but there was no "hand sanitizer doesn't work" PSA, even though hospitals needed it badly too.
The fact that they said untruthful information about masks was awful, and it certainly deserves a proper postmortem-in-the-court-of-public-opinion, but I don't think it was deliberate lying.
- wallacoloo 6y ago> I don't think it was deliberate lying. At the onset, hospitals needed PPE, which includes masks. I remember there being messaging encouraging ordinary citizens not to stockpile N95 masks because hospitals needed the supply instead. If anybody in this same camp was telling the public that N95 masks aren’t effective then that’s an obvious contradiction, a lie. Anyway, lies and inconsistent messaging both degrade trust, which is a big problem at this moment.
- Gibbon1 6y ago> That's my memory too - at least in terms of public messaging, there was a lot of "wash your hands for 20 seconds" and "it takes two weeks for the virus to die on surfaces" and so forth, which is largely irrelevant given what we know now about transmission. It's not so much now but that actual infectious disease specialists aren't being completely drowned out by people who should have known to keep their mouth shut. Seriously John Cochrane has an excuse, he's from the grifter school of economics and a dummy. Doctors, biologists, etc without specific training in infectious disease should have known better.