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Also WHO told people not to wear masks and that it could actually make it more likely to get covid (CDC echoed this as well). “But it was justified lying to pro

by rzz3 5y ago

Also WHO told people not to wear masks and that it could actually make it more likely to get covid (CDC echoed this as well). “But it was justified lying to protect the mask supply!”—some people already had masks, and didn’t wear them because of this. I had someone literally get mad at me and block me because I said wearing a mask was obviously a good idea, and an N95 is more likely to protect you than a cloth mask.

whimsicalism 5y ago
This was very early in the pandemic, I doubt that many people had masks early, and the problem of people hoarding was very real and medical professionals were having a lot of difficulty acquiring PPE. I think it was a difficult situation, I don't think they handled it the best they could have, but the response (in the context of massive amounts of hoarding) was understandable. I know that this will not be a popular take here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mxcrossb 5y ago
  Half a year into the pandemic the president of the United States was filling stadiums was maskless supporters. The WHO seems completely willing to fall on their sword over COVID, and indeed they failed in many ways. But in the long run, we’re seeing a disaster of anti intellectualism around the world, and the next pandemic may be just as bad as this one.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > the next pandemic may be just as bad as this one. or worse. Keep the aerosol vector, but make it even more effective. Increase the effectiveness of surface transmission. Throw in greater resistant to surfactants (soap) and hand sanitizers. boom!
    - mxcrossb 5y ago
      I always try to use HIV as my point of reference for COVID-19. We got off lucky by that measure. So maybe my pessimism is unfounded, but I really wish we had learned more lessons from HIV.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        From what I understand, HIV is fairly difficult to transmit, requiring an exchange of infected body fluids. This makes it deeply traumatic because the people you're most likely to infect will be people extremely close to you. To some extent this is true of almost any transmissable disease, but HIV added the twist that infection is very, very unlikely to happen between two individuals that are not physically intimate with each other. In this sense, HIV doesn't seem like a particularly good model for anything like a coronavirus pandemic. Aerosol transmission just totally changes almost every aspect of the resulting pandemic. What lessons do you wish we had learned from HIV?
        mulvya 5y ago
        > From what I understand, HIV is fairly difficult to transmit, requiring an exchange of infected body fluids. Fauci didn't think so in 1983. "But if ''nonsexual, non-blood-borne transmission is possible, the scope of the syndrome may be enormous,'' writes Dr. Fauci of the National Institutes of Health in an editorial to be published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association." https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/06/us/family-contact-studied-in-transmitting-aids.html https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/06/us/family-contact-studied...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        throwaway210222 5y ago
        The "if" changes the meaning of his statement significantly.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    I mean, I don't think that anti-intellectual trend can be divorced from the general messaging problems here. If you roll back to mid-March 2020, things like * Masks don't help, there's no point in wearing them * Lots of people are gonna get infected, all we can do is tamp down this current spike * We'll go back to our normal lives in a month or two were all well within what was reported to be the expert consensus at the time.
  - refurb 5y ago
    And politicians were claims BLM protests across the entire country weren’t a big threat. Suffice to say both sides love to “follow the science” when it supports their political views.
- _delirium 5y ago
  > medical professionals were having a lot of difficulty acquiring PPE Weirdly, medical professionals were also being told not to wear masks. Multiple nurses were either fired or quit over the issue, because hospital policy didn't allow general mask-wearing out of a fear of scaring people: https://www.wbrc.com/2020/03/23/nurse-claims-he-was-fired-wearing-face-mask-treat-okla-hospital-patient/ https://www.wbrc.com/2020/03/23/nurse-claims-he-was-fired-we... https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85760 https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85760 https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/nurse-fired-wearing-mask-coronavirus-11894504 https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/nurse-fired-wearing-mask...
  - titzer 5y ago
    > out of a fear of scaring people: Which is the greatest irony of all. Nothing is more terrifying than finding out you are being lied to, it's actually way worse, and leadership has no clue what it is doing.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Yes, and that is absolutely stupid and a failure. I am curious if that is due to the WHO messaging or just because with thousands of hospitals, the probability of having a stupid manager approaches 1.
- Bancakes 5y ago
  You can always limit the amount of masks per person.
spankyspangler 5y ago
And politicians were encouraging people to go out in the streets and gather en masse to celebrate / protest / whatever, denouncing border controls as racism, etc. Putting positive patients into nursing homes ill equipped to cope with it. It was a huge clusterf...
- unishark 5y ago
  Another one: refusing to close schools because they served as daycare for higher-priority constituencies.
  - warble 5y ago
    Oddly this turned out to be the right advice.
samatman 5y ago
Ironically, WHO and CDC have done bad messaging on both sides of this. I get slammed every time I bring this up now, because the issue is politicized and, let's be honest, pretty traumatic as well. But I think it's important so I'll keep trying. Everyone should have been masking up as soon as possible in the pandemic. Case counts were low, we didn't know much about the route of transmission, and we also thought it was even more dangerous than it turned out to be. Precautions were indicated, but health authorities were decrying mask use as late as the end of March. But it turns out that the primary vector is aerosols, not droplets or fomites. Any mask will mitigate droplet contamination, and the resulting fomites: this is why influenza has practically disappeared, masking is very effective against influenza, where those are the primary vector. But no mask will do much to filter aerosols on exhalation. That's simply not how they work, positive pressure puts most of the gasses out through the sides of the mask. Even a P100 filter with cartridges won't do it, that's why they have a vent, otherwise the face seal would be broken every time one exhales. To be generous, I'll say that a cloth mask catches 30% of aerosols. It doesn't, but say it does: that's not nearly good enough. Which case counts after universal masking mandates illustrate quite clearly: they rise, and fall, and the masks don't have anything to do with it. A good mask will filter some aerosols when inhaling: but a cloth mask won't. So once aerosols were identified as the culprit, WHO and CDC should have emphasized air filtration, which is quite effective, limiting the number of people indoors on the basis of how many air exchanges a HEPA or ULPA filter was capable of doing. Messaging should have emphasized that cloth and surgical masks are completely useless, and that at-risk people should stay home, and if they can't, should get a proper mask (KN94, (K)N95, P100) and learn how to use it. COVID doesn't survive on surfaces very long, so reuse is more-or-less ok, and there were plenty of proper masks by June, which is when these facts were available. If WHO and CDC had listened to them. I vape, so I can illustrate this to myself quite easily: I can hit the vape through a cloth mask, but not a KN94. And with any mask, I can take a hit, put it on, and exhale a visible cloud of, yep, aerosols, around the side of the mask. I still wear a KN94 indoors, it's the best I can do. But I'm walking around in indoor spaces with no HEPA filters, surrounded by people who are unprotected, just wearing a talisman. This was preventable.
- octodog 5y ago
  Do you have any sources for cloth or surgical masks not working? The study in this article [0] is still in pre-print but it claims that a change to mandatory mask wearing was a critical factor in crushing the virus in Melbourne's second wave. I've seen some comments on HN that masks aren't effective but from what I've read and observed in Melbourne/Australia they have been very effective. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/face-masks-number-one-in-pushing-down-victorian-covid19-cases/100065656 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/face-masks-number-one...
avereveard 5y ago
WHO straight up told not to close borders with china as initial recommendation as well. so fuck em. until they come out and detail how did they got it so wrong, why, and what actions they are taking not to fuck up again, they have _zero_ credibility.

by rzz3 5y ago

whimsicalism 5y ago

This was very early in the pandemic, I doubt that many people had masks early, and the problem of people hoarding was very real and medical professionals were having a lot of difficulty acquiring PPE. I think it was a difficult situation, I don't think they handled it the best they could have, but the response (in the context of massive amounts of hoarding) was understandable. I know that this will not be a popular take here.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mxcrossb 5y ago
Half a year into the pandemic the president of the United States was filling stadiums was maskless supporters. The WHO seems completely willing to fall on their sword over COVID, and indeed they failed in many ways. But in the long run, we’re seeing a disaster of anti intellectualism around the world, and the next pandemic may be just as bad as this one.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > the next pandemic may be just as bad as this one. or worse. Keep the aerosol vector, but make it even more effective. Increase the effectiveness of surface transmission. Throw in greater resistant to surfactants (soap) and hand sanitizers. boom!
  - mxcrossb 5y ago
    I always try to use HIV as my point of reference for COVID-19. We got off lucky by that measure. So maybe my pessimism is unfounded, but I really wish we had learned more lessons from HIV.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      From what I understand, HIV is fairly difficult to transmit, requiring an exchange of infected body fluids. This makes it deeply traumatic because the people you're most likely to infect will be people extremely close to you. To some extent this is true of almost any transmissable disease, but HIV added the twist that infection is very, very unlikely to happen between two individuals that are not physically intimate with each other. In this sense, HIV doesn't seem like a particularly good model for anything like a coronavirus pandemic. Aerosol transmission just totally changes almost every aspect of the resulting pandemic. What lessons do you wish we had learned from HIV?
      - mulvya 5y ago
        > From what I understand, HIV is fairly difficult to transmit, requiring an exchange of infected body fluids. Fauci didn't think so in 1983. "But if ''nonsexual, non-blood-borne transmission is possible, the scope of the syndrome may be enormous,'' writes Dr. Fauci of the National Institutes of Health in an editorial to be published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association." https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/06/us/family-contact-studied-in-transmitting-aids.html https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/06/us/family-contact-studied...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        throwaway210222 5y ago
        The "if" changes the meaning of his statement significantly.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I mean, I don't think that anti-intellectual trend can be divorced from the general messaging problems here. If you roll back to mid-March 2020, things like * Masks don't help, there's no point in wearing them * Lots of people are gonna get infected, all we can do is tamp down this current spike * We'll go back to our normal lives in a month or two were all well within what was reported to be the expert consensus at the time.
- refurb 5y ago
  And politicians were claims BLM protests across the entire country weren’t a big threat. Suffice to say both sides love to “follow the science” when it supports their political views.
_delirium 5y ago
> medical professionals were having a lot of difficulty acquiring PPE Weirdly, medical professionals were also being told not to wear masks. Multiple nurses were either fired or quit over the issue, because hospital policy didn't allow general mask-wearing out of a fear of scaring people: https://www.wbrc.com/2020/03/23/nurse-claims-he-was-fired-wearing-face-mask-treat-okla-hospital-patient/ https://www.wbrc.com/2020/03/23/nurse-claims-he-was-fired-we... https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85760 https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85760 https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/nurse-fired-wearing-mask-coronavirus-11894504 https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/nurse-fired-wearing-mask...
- titzer 5y ago
  > out of a fear of scaring people: Which is the greatest irony of all. Nothing is more terrifying than finding out you are being lied to, it's actually way worse, and leadership has no clue what it is doing.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Yes, and that is absolutely stupid and a failure. I am curious if that is due to the WHO messaging or just because with thousands of hospitals, the probability of having a stupid manager approaches 1.
Bancakes 5y ago
You can always limit the amount of masks per person.

spankyspangler 5y ago

And politicians were encouraging people to go out in the streets and gather en masse to celebrate / protest / whatever, denouncing border controls as racism, etc. Putting positive patients into nursing homes ill equipped to cope with it. It was a huge clusterf...

unishark 5y ago
Another one: refusing to close schools because they served as daycare for higher-priority constituencies.
- warble 5y ago
  Oddly this turned out to be the right advice.

samatman 5y ago

Ironically, WHO and CDC have done bad messaging on both sides of this. I get slammed every time I bring this up now, because the issue is politicized and, let's be honest, pretty traumatic as well. But I think it's important so I'll keep trying. Everyone should have been masking up as soon as possible in the pandemic. Case counts were low, we didn't know much about the route of transmission, and we also thought it was even more dangerous than it turned out to be. Precautions were indicated, but health authorities were decrying mask use as late as the end of March. But it turns out that the primary vector is aerosols, not droplets or fomites. Any mask will mitigate droplet contamination, and the resulting fomites: this is why influenza has practically disappeared, masking is very effective against influenza, where those are the primary vector. But no mask will do much to filter aerosols on exhalation. That's simply not how they work, positive pressure puts most of the gasses out through the sides of the mask. Even a P100 filter with cartridges won't do it, that's why they have a vent, otherwise the face seal would be broken every time one exhales. To be generous, I'll say that a cloth mask catches 30% of aerosols. It doesn't, but say it does: that's not nearly good enough. Which case counts after universal masking mandates illustrate quite clearly: they rise, and fall, and the masks don't have anything to do with it. A good mask will filter some aerosols when inhaling: but a cloth mask won't. So once aerosols were identified as the culprit, WHO and CDC should have emphasized air filtration, which is quite effective, limiting the number of people indoors on the basis of how many air exchanges a HEPA or ULPA filter was capable of doing. Messaging should have emphasized that cloth and surgical masks are completely useless, and that at-risk people should stay home, and if they can't, should get a proper mask (KN94, (K)N95, P100) and learn how to use it. COVID doesn't survive on surfaces very long, so reuse is more-or-less ok, and there were plenty of proper masks by June, which is when these facts were available. If WHO and CDC had listened to them. I vape, so I can illustrate this to myself quite easily: I can hit the vape through a cloth mask, but not a KN94. And with any mask, I can take a hit, put it on, and exhale a visible cloud of, yep, aerosols, around the side of the mask. I still wear a KN94 indoors, it's the best I can do. But I'm walking around in indoor spaces with no HEPA filters, surrounded by people who are unprotected, just wearing a talisman. This was preventable.

octodog 5y ago
Do you have any sources for cloth or surgical masks not working? The study in this article [0] is still in pre-print but it claims that a change to mandatory mask wearing was a critical factor in crushing the virus in Melbourne's second wave. I've seen some comments on HN that masks aren't effective but from what I've read and observed in Melbourne/Australia they have been very effective. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/face-masks-number-one-in-pushing-down-victorian-covid19-cases/100065656 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/face-masks-number-one...

avereveard 5y ago

WHO straight up told not to close borders with china as initial recommendation as well. so fuck em. until they come out and detail how did they got it so wrong, why, and what actions they are taking not to fuck up again, they have _zero_ credibility.