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> masks aren't effective, plus we need them for healthcare workers to care for pandemic patients I noted this at the time as well, but I read it (perhaps betwe

by ff317 5y ago

> masks aren't effective, plus we need them for healthcare workers to care for pandemic patients I noted this at the time as well, but I read it (perhaps between the lines a bit) as more like: masks probably help, but if you all go panic-buy masks like you do TP, there will be none left for healthcare workers, who need them more than you do.

wutbrodo 5y ago
That's possible, but the route we went with got us the worst of both worlds. There were gov'ts that simply told the entire country to use scarves or sew string to cloth and put it over their mouth. Lying about the efficacy of all masks to preserve a specific kind is just about the stupidest approach to the problem I can imagine. Note that even if your theory is correct, it also means that public health authorities have been continually lying to us after their mask flip-flop, with the Surgeon General claiming in April that it's because they didn't know asymptomatic transmission was possible. This is, of course, horseshit, as there were Chinese reports of asymptomatic transmission as early as January. The only theory which fits all the evidence is the one I laid out: asymptomatic transmission did not have a solid, high-quality study behind it yet, and medical culture has serious problems doing anything but rounding priors and weak evidence down to "zero evidence" instead of doing the difficult work of choosing the best option under uncertainty. It's ludicrous to claim that telling people to put scarves over their face would deplete , and that this cost-benefit suddenly flipped the moment the level of evidence for mask efficacy rose from "no-brainer if you're capable of modeling uncertainty" to "has a specific high-quality study supporting it in narrow conditions".
- ummonk 5y ago
  "The only theory which fits all the evidence is the one I laid out: asymptomatic transmission did not have a solid, high-quality study behind it yet, and medical culture has serious problems doing anything but rounding priors and weak evidence down to "zero evidence" instead of doing the difficult work of choosing the best option under uncertainty." Yup. See also how long it took before the medical community came around to accepting that it's an airborne virus, despite very early evidence from China and South Korea to that effect.

by ff317 5y ago

wutbrodo 5y ago

That's possible, but the route we went with got us the worst of both worlds. There were gov'ts that simply told the entire country to use scarves or sew string to cloth and put it over their mouth. Lying about the efficacy of all masks to preserve a specific kind is just about the stupidest approach to the problem I can imagine. Note that even if your theory is correct, it also means that public health authorities have been continually lying to us after their mask flip-flop, with the Surgeon General claiming in April that it's because they didn't know asymptomatic transmission was possible. This is, of course, horseshit, as there were Chinese reports of asymptomatic transmission as early as January. The only theory which fits all the evidence is the one I laid out: asymptomatic transmission did not have a solid, high-quality study behind it yet, and medical culture has serious problems doing anything but rounding priors and weak evidence down to "zero evidence" instead of doing the difficult work of choosing the best option under uncertainty. It's ludicrous to claim that telling people to put scarves over their face would deplete , and that this cost-benefit suddenly flipped the moment the level of evidence for mask efficacy rose from "no-brainer if you're capable of modeling uncertainty" to "has a specific high-quality study supporting it in narrow conditions".

ummonk 5y ago
"The only theory which fits all the evidence is the one I laid out: asymptomatic transmission did not have a solid, high-quality study behind it yet, and medical culture has serious problems doing anything but rounding priors and weak evidence down to "zero evidence" instead of doing the difficult work of choosing the best option under uncertainty." Yup. See also how long it took before the medical community came around to accepting that it's an airborne virus, despite very early evidence from China and South Korea to that effect.