> The US Surgeon General, CDC, WHO, etc. got on national television and said masks don't work when what they appear to have really believed is that masks DO wor

> The US Surgeon General, CDC, WHO, etc. got on national television and said masks don't work when what they appear to have really believed is that masks DO work, but they wanted to reserve them for healthcare workers. The cost of this dishonesty is that when they flipped the script people were less likely to comply/believe them. And any recommendations they give going forward has to go through the "Are they sacrificing me for the greater good" filter. I think this was just a problem of messaging. The science really wasn't there to support the hypothesis that masks could help limit transmission in the community. Even the evidence for their effectiveness in a clinical setting was extremely limited. There was reason to believe, however, that if they were effective, they'd be more effective in a clinical setting because they'd be used in combination with other PPE, hand washing would be more frequent, and staff were trained on how to wear masks correctly. Clinicians also happened to be putting their necks on the line by knowingly coming into close contact with infected individuals, while the rest of us were hunkered down at home. Here is an extract from a review of the published literature shortly after the CDC gave its guidance for the community to wear masks: > There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low‐moderate certainty of the evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of randomised trials did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks during seasonal influenza. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection. Hand hygiene is likely to modestly reduce the burden of respiratory illness. Harms associated with physical interventions were under‐investigated. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5/full https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD... > What's being asked about is gain of function research. I'm glad that we can (seemly) agree that Covid-19 created using genetic engineering. Are you aware of any evidence to suggest that its evolution was guided by deliberate human action?