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1. Was just a flat out lie by various public health officials that they justified for the greater good. It was probably the biggest and easiest-to-prevent mista

1. Was just a flat out lie by various public health officials that they justified for the greater good. It was probably the biggest and easiest-to-prevent mistake of the pandemic, and it certainly cost many lives. 2. It still makes sense to wash hands, use gloves, and wipe down anything coming into your house that was recently touched by strangers. There's no good reason to allow a known vector, even if it's lower risk than airborne.

mywittyname 6y ago
It should have been illegal for health officials to knowingly lie to the public.
- minikites 6y ago
  Why only health officials?
  - geoduck14 6y ago
    The bar is higher for professionals speaking in their field of expertise
    - NtochkaNzvanova 6y ago
      Well, now we know that they are neither professionals, nor experts. Most of what comes from the public health establishment is more like "science theater" that is engineered to obey whatever political dictates need to be handed down with the air of authority. Recall the proclamations from last summer that massive street protests were either magically not going to spread COVID, or that it was somehow acceptable because "racism is a public health issue".
davidw 6y ago
It's especially frustrating, as places like the Czech Republic initially did pretty well by telling people to cover their faces with any old thing - cut up t-shirts, whatever. Maybe people in the US are too selfish and would have gone for the 'fancy' masks and ended up depriving doctors of them, but it seems like not even trying was pretty bad. Looks like subsequently things went off the rails there. Wonder what happened.
adewinter 6y ago
What part of 1. Was a lie? It's a fact many hospitals were extremely lacking in PPE, especially when it came to N95 masks, at the start of the pandemic. There was a shortage/crisis to the point where there were many local compaigns to manufacture basic PPE like cloth masks and face shields for hospitals. How could you forget about that so quickly?
- CubsFan1060 6y ago
  Except they didn't say "They work, but don't buy them because the hospitals need them". Here's what they said: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-video-masks/fact-checkoutdated-video-of-fauci-saying-theres-no-reason-to-be-walking-around-with-a-mask-idUSKBN26T2TR https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-... At least to me, that was pretty dismissive about them. That set the tone for a very large set of people. Edit: This was US based. I do not know what other countries were saying.
adonovan 6y ago
Was #1 a flat-out lie? I though the CDC said that "masks work" was a statement with insufficient peer-reviewed evidence for them to make it their official advice at the time, especially as they were cognizant that a run on masks could deny HCWs access to the tools of their trade. In other words, they were irresponsibly careful.
- clarkevans 6y ago
  Tweet from Surgeon General, Feb 19th: "Seriously people - STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus..."; in a March 2nd interview he went further: "You can increase your risk of getting it by wearing a mask if you are not a healthcare provider." (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/surgeon-general-against-masks/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/surgeon-general-against-ma...) Fauci in March: "Right now in the United States people should not be walking around with masks" (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fauci-masks-no-longer-needed/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fauci-masks-no-longer-need...). Both continued with detail about saving masks for health professionals and added more context. However, both Adams and Fauci made statements in the early pandemic clearly stated that one shouldn't be wearing masks. https://apnews.com/article/26f0cb8ed836a76f0e019357cbea7f58 https://apnews.com/article/26f0cb8ed836a76f0e019357cbea7f58
- serf 6y ago
  > insufficient peer-reviewed evidence for them to make it their official advice at the time masks for viral protection isn't a new topic, and plenty of research is available[0] -- unless you're talking about only viral research pertaining to covid-19, which is fairly over-specific to legislate against/towards. in other words: it was understood in the general scientific and medical public that masks help to reduce or prevent spread of airborne virus, to claim that the government should have waited for specific research to a singular strain is both excusing a willfully in-active government and portraying that government as scientifically credible for doing the so. These actions, given the evidence that already existed that masks provide a net benefit against viral pathogens, were scientifically unsound. If I had the complete picture that was available to the U.S. government then maybe I could justify the actions by knowing that a call to use masks would cause a profound shortage of PPE for those that needed it -- and I think that's exactly what happened: the government saw that a call to use masks would cause a lack of goods, so instead of looking entirely ignorant to the problem it was decided to latch onto the logic that covid-19 was somehow totally unlike any virus and that novel research would need to be undertaken in order to justify the need for masks. It's my opinion that masks were already well-enough researched, and that the surrogate viruses that were used in this research prior to covid-19 were a 'good-enough' approximate to understand that masks would be a net social benefit, if available. It's my opinion that other co-factors that the government was privvy to influenced their decision to push against mask use temporarily in the beginning. [0]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mask+efficacy+virus&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&as_ylo=1960&as_yhi=2018 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mask+efficacy+virus&hl=...
chapium 6y ago
The CDC and the WHO were staunchly conservative about masks early in the pandemic. Much of the studies we had at the time lacked rigor to show that masks were effective for coronavirus and various parameters. As more and more data came out, they shifted their position.

mywittyname 6y ago

It should have been illegal for health officials to knowingly lie to the public.

minikites 6y ago
Why only health officials?
- geoduck14 6y ago
  The bar is higher for professionals speaking in their field of expertise
  - NtochkaNzvanova 6y ago
    Well, now we know that they are neither professionals, nor experts. Most of what comes from the public health establishment is more like "science theater" that is engineered to obey whatever political dictates need to be handed down with the air of authority. Recall the proclamations from last summer that massive street protests were either magically not going to spread COVID, or that it was somehow acceptable because "racism is a public health issue".

davidw 6y ago

It's especially frustrating, as places like the Czech Republic initially did pretty well by telling people to cover their faces with any old thing - cut up t-shirts, whatever. Maybe people in the US are too selfish and would have gone for the 'fancy' masks and ended up depriving doctors of them, but it seems like not even trying was pretty bad. Looks like subsequently things went off the rails there. Wonder what happened.

adewinter 6y ago

What part of 1. Was a lie? It's a fact many hospitals were extremely lacking in PPE, especially when it came to N95 masks, at the start of the pandemic. There was a shortage/crisis to the point where there were many local compaigns to manufacture basic PPE like cloth masks and face shields for hospitals. How could you forget about that so quickly?

CubsFan1060 6y ago
Except they didn't say "They work, but don't buy them because the hospitals need them". Here's what they said: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-video-masks/fact-checkoutdated-video-of-fauci-saying-theres-no-reason-to-be-walking-around-with-a-mask-idUSKBN26T2TR https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-... At least to me, that was pretty dismissive about them. That set the tone for a very large set of people. Edit: This was US based. I do not know what other countries were saying.

adonovan 6y ago

Was #1 a flat-out lie? I though the CDC said that "masks work" was a statement with insufficient peer-reviewed evidence for them to make it their official advice at the time, especially as they were cognizant that a run on masks could deny HCWs access to the tools of their trade. In other words, they were irresponsibly careful.

clarkevans 6y ago
Tweet from Surgeon General, Feb 19th: "Seriously people - STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus..."; in a March 2nd interview he went further: "You can increase your risk of getting it by wearing a mask if you are not a healthcare provider." (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/surgeon-general-against-masks/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/surgeon-general-against-ma...) Fauci in March: "Right now in the United States people should not be walking around with masks" (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fauci-masks-no-longer-needed/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fauci-masks-no-longer-need...). Both continued with detail about saving masks for health professionals and added more context. However, both Adams and Fauci made statements in the early pandemic clearly stated that one shouldn't be wearing masks. https://apnews.com/article/26f0cb8ed836a76f0e019357cbea7f58 https://apnews.com/article/26f0cb8ed836a76f0e019357cbea7f58
serf 6y ago
> insufficient peer-reviewed evidence for them to make it their official advice at the time masks for viral protection isn't a new topic, and plenty of research is available[0] -- unless you're talking about only viral research pertaining to covid-19, which is fairly over-specific to legislate against/towards. in other words: it was understood in the general scientific and medical public that masks help to reduce or prevent spread of airborne virus, to claim that the government should have waited for specific research to a singular strain is both excusing a willfully in-active government and portraying that government as scientifically credible for doing the so. These actions, given the evidence that already existed that masks provide a net benefit against viral pathogens, were scientifically unsound. If I had the complete picture that was available to the U.S. government then maybe I could justify the actions by knowing that a call to use masks would cause a profound shortage of PPE for those that needed it -- and I think that's exactly what happened: the government saw that a call to use masks would cause a lack of goods, so instead of looking entirely ignorant to the problem it was decided to latch onto the logic that covid-19 was somehow totally unlike any virus and that novel research would need to be undertaken in order to justify the need for masks. It's my opinion that masks were already well-enough researched, and that the surrogate viruses that were used in this research prior to covid-19 were a 'good-enough' approximate to understand that masks would be a net social benefit, if available. It's my opinion that other co-factors that the government was privvy to influenced their decision to push against mask use temporarily in the beginning. [0]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mask+efficacy+virus&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&as_ylo=1960&as_yhi=2018 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mask+efficacy+virus&hl=...

chapium 6y ago

The CDC and the WHO were staunchly conservative about masks early in the pandemic. Much of the studies we had at the time lacked rigor to show that masks were effective for coronavirus and various parameters. As more and more data came out, they shifted their position.