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The official communication here was that it was unclear whether masks increased or decreased spread. The fear was two fold. That people would be sloppier with

The official communication here was that it was unclear whether masks increased or decreased spread. The fear was two fold. That people would be sloppier with social distancing when wearing masks. That handling masks wrongly would increase the mask wearers risk of getting infected. So it was not perceived as a zero-cost intervention here at least.

the8472 6y ago
Are those actual, real concerns or just post-rationalizations and coverups for depleted stockpiles which would lead to panic buying? There are many years of prior practice to mask-wearing in many asian countries. And is there any evidence that masks made the Spanish Flu worse in 1913? Also this seems like worrying about second-order negative effects to the extent that one neglects the first-order positive effect.
- azeirah 6y ago
  I remember the discourse at the time of the discussions in the Netherlands including discussions about that wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk. Not after, but during the discussions.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    > wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk Within 24 hours that question could have been answered. It would have gone something like this: * Hour 1:. Health minister directs ministry to urgently answer this question, since it will impact policy. * Hour 2: health ministry contacts 5 university professors to conduct study. * Hour 3: university professor decides to invite 50 students in (paying them $50 each) to do a study. Email 1000 people, first 50 to reply get invited in. * Hour 4, professor and assistants go to shop to buy cameras and sticky blue ink. * Hour 5, study begins. Participants have ink spread over faces and cameras sit recording around the room. Participants are allowed to do whatever they like (study, call friends, watch TV, etc). Half are instructed to wear masks except when eating and drinking. * Hour 7, study ends. Turns out the ink dried out and didn't work, but footage from cameras is reviewed. * Hour 9. Exact counts of face touches for each group are produced. * Hour 10. Preliminary results forwarded to the health ministry and other universities. * Hour 11. Other university professors review data and method and say "our best guess is the initial theory of 12 hours ago is likely wrong". * Hour 12: Health ministry gives advice to wear masks. Afterwards each person in this chain is paid generously for dropping all work to handle this urgent matter.
    - radu_floricica 6y ago
      I fear this is still using hindsight to overcorrect in the opposite direction. The critical factor is fomite vs droplet transmission, and we didn't have that in day 1. In the alternative world where covid spreads by touch 1000x more than by air, masks would likely do more harm than good. Not trying to defend the authorities, I still think they were waaay too far from the optimum course. A few weeks in we already had a fair guess that it's more air than touch. But still, it wasn't as trivial to be solved in one afternoon.
      - londons_explore 6y ago
        The point I was making is no [western] government can get any research to inform an urgent policy decision in 24 hours. My government would be issuing a request for proposals 6 months later, and the actual study results would cost tens of millions of dollars and only be delivered 3 years later.
    - andi999 6y ago
      Naaahh. * Week 1-2 write research proposal. * week 3-10 wait for research program to open for submission * week 11 submit * week 12-20 wait for outcome * week 21: actually a surprise, it is fundes * week 22: since this is involving human test subjects: submit to ethic commitee of university * week 23- 30 wait for reply, approved * week 30-38: term break (so no students around to ask) * week 39-80 conduct the study (you need to have billable hours!) * week 81: result is inconclusive further investigations in a new study needed
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Fauci suggested exactly that. This turned up a week ago over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26622460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26622460
  - the-dude 6y ago
    And even after the masks became mandatory in shops and the like, the government never issued instructions on proper mask use. They could have bombared us through TV, billboards, online. But nope.
  - edejong 6y ago
    I remember it differently here in the Netherlands. While the Dutch CDC was actively downplaying the severity and risk of the virus in Februari, plane-loads of masks and other protective equipment were shipped to China. Many Asians were actively hoarding masks in retail to have them sent to family members as well. When the RIVM heard of these actions in February, they downplayed the effectivity of masks. Only in March and April, when the crisis hit us (unprepared), reasons had to be given why our supplies of masks were depleted. This is when the media started spinning the story that mask wearing causes increased touching of the face. There is no scientific basis for that claim.
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      So is RIVM a scientific institution or is it not? Are they to be believed or not? Or do you get to pick and choose when to believe them?
      - edejong 6y ago
        The RIVM is a scientific institute. In addition to that, they provide an advisory service to the Dutch government and to the Dutch population. You should never believe anyone outright (including oneself). So yes, you get to choose when to believe them. The RIVM has traditionally had a very good reputation to its level of scientific research. Nevertheless, this does not entail a good consulting role on policy making, especially under duress. In conversations I have had with governance experts, the relatively weak political position of the RIVM has come up many times. During normal times, this political position is irrelevant, since the RIVM is merely a reflection of scientific insights. During times of crisis and power struggles, the leadership position crumbles. That, in and of itself, is the sole reason the RIVM has struggled the last year. Power was not balanced. You can see this numerous times: - RIVM was forced to make a position on the role of COVID-19 on children. Absence of evidence became evidence of absence. - RIVM was forced to make a position on face masks. Same thing happened. There simply was not enough strong evidence (according to their own strict rules of peer-reviewed, double-blind research). Similar miscommunications have happened on the topic of aerosols and schools as an important contributing vector. Please realise how important this is. This is a large scale and continuing failure of governance.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  On a virology podcast I started listening to after Covid started the hosts were, early on, mocking a woman for wearing a medical mask on a plane. I really think it was mostly cognitive dissonance at the heart of it. If masks worked we would use them, we don't use them, therefore masks don't work. They rationalized reasons why wearing a mask was actually dangerous but you could just hear them making up their justifications in real time and they didn't make much sense. Also, a huge amount of our day to day behavior is driven by habits and norms which we later rationalize when questioned. Even with good arguments you need early adopters out there being visible to shift norms. Visible success or high status adopters can be important too.
  - brayhite 6y ago
    > On a virology podcast > mocking a woman for wearing a medical mask on a plane. I feel like these hosts have some combination of poor credentials, ginormous egos, or that toxic desire to play up a take to their audience. attention. I hope they acknowledged how foolish they were.
    - Symmetry 6y ago
      No more than typical people people as far as I can tell and they're all very well credentialed.
    - splithalf 6y ago
      If by “these hosts” you mean the field of epidemiology then we agree. Pretty sure the podcast in question is hosted by experts with great credentials, in their field.
      - jfengel 6y ago
        I'd be curious to know who they are, because their credentials should be in doubt. Regardless of the effect of masks on COVID, there are some individuals who should wear them for a variety of indications. If they wear the right kind of mask and wear it properly, it can help them. They did it before the pandemic and will continue to do so after the pandemic is over. So simply observing that somebody was wearing a mask and making assumptions that there was no legitimate reason is simply bad public health. That's not just being wrong about COVID-19 and it's not just a lack of empathy for person who was herself unsure of the details and just doing her best. That's just wrong on the epidemiology.
- javagram 6y ago
  > Are those actual, real concerns or just post-rationalizations and coverups for depleted stockpiles which would lead to panic buying? It was a real concern, you could find American scientists quoted in news articles years before Covid criticizing the East Asian public for wearing masks in the face of a MERS resurgence in South Korea, for instance. The fear of people getting infected by handling the mask was also perfectly fitting in with all the other fears about surface and fomite transmission and the obsession about washing hands and sanitizing, which as we have learned more about the disease seems to be almost entirely wasted effort. Pretty sure what actually turned American and European opinion around on masks was noticing that South Korea, China, and Japan were all doing a lot better against Covid and were using masks widely not just in the hospital. Also, at least in the USA a lot of government communications are subject to FOIA and no one came up with any sort of smoking gun email indicating the government knew widespread masking would help in late February/early-to-mid-March and was suppressing the truth. Whereas we got plenty of other emails about the disorganized response (search for “Red Dawn” and “coronavirus” on google).
  - splithalf 6y ago
    A cynic might point out our large mask shipments to other nations as proof we knew they work. That cynic might also tell you the focus on fomites and hand washing served a purpose. It detracted from the semi-suppressed news that airborne transmission was possible, and made the virus more or less unavoidable if one is in doors. Washing hands was a coping mechanism or something like it. We (those who were reading preprints from China) knew about the airborne transmission right away but “experts” went tv to “debate” the fact of airborne transmission in the name of fighting disinformation. Most disinformation came directly from the WHO and that continues with the recent “inspections” in China.
Jedd 6y ago
'here' ?
- CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
  Since the topic here was D-vitamins I didn’t want yet another detail to digress over. My point was mainly that what might seem like “zero-cost” at first glance can be a bit more complicated. (But “here” in this case would be Sweden)
  - Jedd 6y ago
    Thanks. FWIW Sweden is famous, I presume worldwide, but certainly here in Australia, for its novel response to COVID-19. I'm sure there's a wealth of confounding social and political factors everywhere - though some nation states more than others - when looking at correlations with Vit-D and health outcomes.
    - CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
      Don’t know about novel, but certainly very.. Swedish I understand we are quite extreme in our ways https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/photos/EV000190.JPG https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/photos/EV000190.JPG
thatcat 6y ago
This was not the first SARS outbreak, it's well known that masks are an effective intervention strategy.
ErikVandeWater 6y ago
Exactly. > zero-cost intervention When people hear the word "free," their bullshit detector gets activated. But if you call it a "zero-cost intervention" you can let your claim go unquestioned. Not to say this was done pervasively, or intentionally.

the8472 6y ago

Are those actual, real concerns or just post-rationalizations and coverups for depleted stockpiles which would lead to panic buying? There are many years of prior practice to mask-wearing in many asian countries. And is there any evidence that masks made the Spanish Flu worse in 1913? Also this seems like worrying about second-order negative effects to the extent that one neglects the first-order positive effect.

azeirah 6y ago
I remember the discourse at the time of the discussions in the Netherlands including discussions about that wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk. Not after, but during the discussions.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  > wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk Within 24 hours that question could have been answered. It would have gone something like this: * Hour 1:. Health minister directs ministry to urgently answer this question, since it will impact policy. * Hour 2: health ministry contacts 5 university professors to conduct study. * Hour 3: university professor decides to invite 50 students in (paying them $50 each) to do a study. Email 1000 people, first 50 to reply get invited in. * Hour 4, professor and assistants go to shop to buy cameras and sticky blue ink. * Hour 5, study begins. Participants have ink spread over faces and cameras sit recording around the room. Participants are allowed to do whatever they like (study, call friends, watch TV, etc). Half are instructed to wear masks except when eating and drinking. * Hour 7, study ends. Turns out the ink dried out and didn't work, but footage from cameras is reviewed. * Hour 9. Exact counts of face touches for each group are produced. * Hour 10. Preliminary results forwarded to the health ministry and other universities. * Hour 11. Other university professors review data and method and say "our best guess is the initial theory of 12 hours ago is likely wrong". * Hour 12: Health ministry gives advice to wear masks. Afterwards each person in this chain is paid generously for dropping all work to handle this urgent matter.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    I fear this is still using hindsight to overcorrect in the opposite direction. The critical factor is fomite vs droplet transmission, and we didn't have that in day 1. In the alternative world where covid spreads by touch 1000x more than by air, masks would likely do more harm than good. Not trying to defend the authorities, I still think they were waaay too far from the optimum course. A few weeks in we already had a fair guess that it's more air than touch. But still, it wasn't as trivial to be solved in one afternoon.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      The point I was making is no [western] government can get any research to inform an urgent policy decision in 24 hours. My government would be issuing a request for proposals 6 months later, and the actual study results would cost tens of millions of dollars and only be delivered 3 years later.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Naaahh. * Week 1-2 write research proposal. * week 3-10 wait for research program to open for submission * week 11 submit * week 12-20 wait for outcome * week 21: actually a surprise, it is fundes * week 22: since this is involving human test subjects: submit to ethic commitee of university * week 23- 30 wait for reply, approved * week 30-38: term break (so no students around to ask) * week 39-80 conduct the study (you need to have billable hours!) * week 81: result is inconclusive further investigations in a new study needed
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Fauci suggested exactly that. This turned up a week ago over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26622460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26622460
- the-dude 6y ago
  And even after the masks became mandatory in shops and the like, the government never issued instructions on proper mask use. They could have bombared us through TV, billboards, online. But nope.
- edejong 6y ago
  I remember it differently here in the Netherlands. While the Dutch CDC was actively downplaying the severity and risk of the virus in Februari, plane-loads of masks and other protective equipment were shipped to China. Many Asians were actively hoarding masks in retail to have them sent to family members as well. When the RIVM heard of these actions in February, they downplayed the effectivity of masks. Only in March and April, when the crisis hit us (unprepared), reasons had to be given why our supplies of masks were depleted. This is when the media started spinning the story that mask wearing causes increased touching of the face. There is no scientific basis for that claim.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    So is RIVM a scientific institution or is it not? Are they to be believed or not? Or do you get to pick and choose when to believe them?
    - edejong 6y ago
      The RIVM is a scientific institute. In addition to that, they provide an advisory service to the Dutch government and to the Dutch population. You should never believe anyone outright (including oneself). So yes, you get to choose when to believe them. The RIVM has traditionally had a very good reputation to its level of scientific research. Nevertheless, this does not entail a good consulting role on policy making, especially under duress. In conversations I have had with governance experts, the relatively weak political position of the RIVM has come up many times. During normal times, this political position is irrelevant, since the RIVM is merely a reflection of scientific insights. During times of crisis and power struggles, the leadership position crumbles. That, in and of itself, is the sole reason the RIVM has struggled the last year. Power was not balanced. You can see this numerous times: - RIVM was forced to make a position on the role of COVID-19 on children. Absence of evidence became evidence of absence. - RIVM was forced to make a position on face masks. Same thing happened. There simply was not enough strong evidence (according to their own strict rules of peer-reviewed, double-blind research). Similar miscommunications have happened on the topic of aerosols and schools as an important contributing vector. Please realise how important this is. This is a large scale and continuing failure of governance.
Symmetry 6y ago
On a virology podcast I started listening to after Covid started the hosts were, early on, mocking a woman for wearing a medical mask on a plane. I really think it was mostly cognitive dissonance at the heart of it. If masks worked we would use them, we don't use them, therefore masks don't work. They rationalized reasons why wearing a mask was actually dangerous but you could just hear them making up their justifications in real time and they didn't make much sense. Also, a huge amount of our day to day behavior is driven by habits and norms which we later rationalize when questioned. Even with good arguments you need early adopters out there being visible to shift norms. Visible success or high status adopters can be important too.
- brayhite 6y ago
  > On a virology podcast > mocking a woman for wearing a medical mask on a plane. I feel like these hosts have some combination of poor credentials, ginormous egos, or that toxic desire to play up a take to their audience. attention. I hope they acknowledged how foolish they were.
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    No more than typical people people as far as I can tell and they're all very well credentialed.
  - splithalf 6y ago
    If by “these hosts” you mean the field of epidemiology then we agree. Pretty sure the podcast in question is hosted by experts with great credentials, in their field.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      I'd be curious to know who they are, because their credentials should be in doubt. Regardless of the effect of masks on COVID, there are some individuals who should wear them for a variety of indications. If they wear the right kind of mask and wear it properly, it can help them. They did it before the pandemic and will continue to do so after the pandemic is over. So simply observing that somebody was wearing a mask and making assumptions that there was no legitimate reason is simply bad public health. That's not just being wrong about COVID-19 and it's not just a lack of empathy for person who was herself unsure of the details and just doing her best. That's just wrong on the epidemiology.
javagram 6y ago
> Are those actual, real concerns or just post-rationalizations and coverups for depleted stockpiles which would lead to panic buying? It was a real concern, you could find American scientists quoted in news articles years before Covid criticizing the East Asian public for wearing masks in the face of a MERS resurgence in South Korea, for instance. The fear of people getting infected by handling the mask was also perfectly fitting in with all the other fears about surface and fomite transmission and the obsession about washing hands and sanitizing, which as we have learned more about the disease seems to be almost entirely wasted effort. Pretty sure what actually turned American and European opinion around on masks was noticing that South Korea, China, and Japan were all doing a lot better against Covid and were using masks widely not just in the hospital. Also, at least in the USA a lot of government communications are subject to FOIA and no one came up with any sort of smoking gun email indicating the government knew widespread masking would help in late February/early-to-mid-March and was suppressing the truth. Whereas we got plenty of other emails about the disorganized response (search for “Red Dawn” and “coronavirus” on google).
- splithalf 6y ago
  A cynic might point out our large mask shipments to other nations as proof we knew they work. That cynic might also tell you the focus on fomites and hand washing served a purpose. It detracted from the semi-suppressed news that airborne transmission was possible, and made the virus more or less unavoidable if one is in doors. Washing hands was a coping mechanism or something like it. We (those who were reading preprints from China) knew about the airborne transmission right away but “experts” went tv to “debate” the fact of airborne transmission in the name of fighting disinformation. Most disinformation came directly from the WHO and that continues with the recent “inspections” in China.

Jedd 6y ago

'here' ?

CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
Since the topic here was D-vitamins I didn’t want yet another detail to digress over. My point was mainly that what might seem like “zero-cost” at first glance can be a bit more complicated. (But “here” in this case would be Sweden)
- Jedd 6y ago
  Thanks. FWIW Sweden is famous, I presume worldwide, but certainly here in Australia, for its novel response to COVID-19. I'm sure there's a wealth of confounding social and political factors everywhere - though some nation states more than others - when looking at correlations with Vit-D and health outcomes.
  - CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
    Don’t know about novel, but certainly very.. Swedish I understand we are quite extreme in our ways https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/photos/EV000190.JPG https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/photos/EV000190.JPG

thatcat 6y ago

This was not the first SARS outbreak, it's well known that masks are an effective intervention strategy.

ErikVandeWater 6y ago

Exactly. > zero-cost intervention When people hear the word "free," their bullshit detector gets activated. But if you call it a "zero-cost intervention" you can let your claim go unquestioned. Not to say this was done pervasively, or intentionally.