11 ms·

I think the CDC's original statements on masks (they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degr

I think the CDC's original statements on masks (they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc) contributed a lot to the distrust and politicization of mask wearing. When you expect an institution to always be impartial and tell the truth, those sorts of white lies can quickly erode trust.

harry8 6y ago
Please also note it is unnecessary to do any additional analysis to describe the example cited as a "lie." We know it was a deliberate lie because the then head of the CDC has said so [1] - unless he was lying about claiming he was lying there's not much doubt in that case. The CDC lie when it suits them isn't something that's really debatable. Does it matter that they lied? This is the proposition that can be debated sensibly and rationally - but will likely be overwhelmed with emotion. In my own observation there seems to be rather a lot of people who have almost no faith in their fellow humans and believe the only way "people" believe a thing and will act is because they have been told to believe it by someone. Misinformation takes all the blame in this paradigm. The populations is dominated by people who have outsourced their critical thinking. It may be true, I don't know. But it seems to me to be really quite worrying if a population has to be told lies to get them to do the right thing or lies have to be censored because people will not be able to assess competing evidence and reject bullshit. Does it have to be this way? Was it always? Is it fixable? Is it really a thing at all? I have no answers there. It's my observation that even in the service of "good", the debt to the truth always comes due and the interest rate is super steep. Many will disagree. [1] Lack of PPE for medical professionals in the front line of pandemic response is the justification. This may well be a very good justification.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  I know this gets repeated a lot, but that doesn't make it more true. Show me the quote where he said "we lied about masks", and "we changed our message about masks" doesn't count. The reality is that the knowledge about Covid changed significantly in march/April last year. In particular the understanding about unsymptomatic spread lead to a significant change of thinking. That makes sense, if the virus only spreads from sick people, the advice for everyone to wear a mask is not good health policy especially if there is a shortage. You want to prioritise people who get in contact with sick people and prevent sick people to go out. However, if unsymptomatic people spread the virus, you want everyone to wear masks, because you can't prevent spreaders to go out. But the masks are different, you want cloth masks more than n95, because it is about protecting others. The below article is one which elaborates on the whole discussion https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-anthony-fauci-lie-masks-march-marco-rubio-said/4068162001/ https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-...
  - avereveard 6y ago
    If they didn't suspect that an "atypical pneumonia" as it was called since the beginning had an aereosol component a case can be made that they were unfit for their job If mask initial recommendation actually was a white lie a case can be made that they are unfit for communicating their results to the masses as they think their peers to be petulant children unfit for handling truths, and they should be stripped of that function The other cases just convert into variations of them politicising a pandemic to unknown ends As for the WHO, these organisations shouldn't have an easy way out of their responsibilities
    - cycomanic 6y ago
      Have you read what I wrote? Because you sure are not responding to it.
    - usrusr 6y ago
      The “not aerosol“ hypothesis was based on the assumption that the spread rate would have been much higher than observed with an aerosol capable virus. Turns out this one just happened to be quite bad at spreading amongst humans, despite being capable of residing in the air for quite a while. It's rather unsurprising then that we now see many mutations that fix some low hanging fruit "bugs", bringing the spread closer to what people would have expected. Arguably hope may have been a factor in weighing that hypothesis, but that's truly nothing anyone should be blamed for.
      - avereveard 6y ago
        pneumonia and influenza whose main transmission vector is contact:
        usrusr 6y ago
        Droplet is the "popular" middle ground. Contact is completely overshadowed by both types of air travel unless air travel is either completely out of the picture (non-respiratory viruses like various herpes) or if the virus particles excel at durability outside the body (e.g. the rhinovirus family, whereas being bad at this is an outcome of the defining property of corona viruses, they are short-"lived" almost by definition). And droplet basically translates to: "yes, masks would help, but simply keeping a few feet of distance will be just as good". Unfortunately, distance does to aerosol transmission what soda cans do to a wildfire.
- podgaj 6y ago
  As a Daoist, this is the important point. "Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder. Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones. He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal." - Dao De Jing, Chapter 3, The Chinese Text Project I feel we are at the end result of "keeping those who have knowledge from acting on it". Misinformation is spread by people with the knowledge of how to control people and they tell people they are smart and they need to act. I do not agree with Fauci's decision, but there was no other choice. Look at what happened with the gas panic this week, it is the same thing was written about here: https://songofthedao.substack.com/p/panic-at-the-gas-station https://songofthedao.substack.com/p/panic-at-the-gas-station
jader201 6y ago
Exactly this. I normally would agree with folks saying that the CDC has little reason to be dishonest, but with COVID in particular, we see enough historical reversal to cause at least some uncertainty around their guidance. Plus, it also makes sense, if their and the government’s interests are for the greater good. E.g. being cautious about promoting early use of masks when supplies were scarce/preserving them for the front line medical workers. Theoretically it would also make sense for current guidance to incentivize vaccines when the remaining unvaccinated population is hesitant. To be clear, I’m not saying I have certainly that this is what’s happening. But the theories aren’t unreasonable, and CDC’s past reversal on guidance doesn’t help the confidence others have in their guidance. So the uncertainty isn’t completely unreasonable.
sitkack 6y ago
I had COVID in NYC in Feb, the only way to get a test was to claim you just flew from Wuhan. Which even if you did, I have no idea how they were setup to respond. Everyone else in the hotel was sick, there was a tensor of coughing, all I could do was sit in my hotel room and watch politicians go back and forth about how we should all patronize stores in Chinatown and not be horrible racists. All I can say is the is that the CDC performed extremely poorly in their response to this, over and over again. Mishandling tests, allowing the FDA to actively block testing. Even the pausing of the J&J vaccine was an extreme CYA blunder. NASA had Challenger, NIST had Dual_EC_DRBG and the CDC had COVID. Not the same in scope, but the systemic dysfunction was similar in its structure.
x3iv130f 6y ago
I don't blame the professionals for getting things wrong on this. My personal feeling is that it was hard to know if masks worked for the general populace before Covid-19. There are so many confounding variables that it very difficult to study masks from a public health side. The best approximation was studies of health professionals in hospitals or clinics which doesn't exactly translate for a multitude of reasons.
- mlyle 6y ago
  To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small. It's totally worth it to bend an exponential function. But the individual benefit from mask wearing in any given interaction is negligible.
  - sharken 6y ago
    Which leads to huge arguments which really benefits nobody as we just establish that we disagree. Common sense seems to say that masks make s difference, but if that is the strongest argument, then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense.
    - lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
      Because if you get it wrong, lots of people die, so you err on the side of caution.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      Mere common sense? I wouldn't characterize it that way. The wearing of masks to combat airborne disease spread is a decidedly not a new thing. That was never a novel concept, at least since the early part of the 20th century. Coronaviruses in general aren't a novel concept either; we have a pretty good idea how they're spread. So, when confronted with a new coronavirus, it's a little bit stronger than "common sense" to surmise that masks will be effective to some extent. The burden of proof would be on anybody suggesting that this virus is somehow so different than other airborne disease that the wearing of masks had no benefit. then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense. If masks are not effective, the downside to wearing masks was that we waste a relatively modest amount of time and money on masks and perhaps damage our credibility in the future when we recommend their use. If masks are effective to some degree, the downside to not wearing masks was that millions of additional people would suffer and die worldwide, and we would incur a financial and human cost orders of magnitude greater than the modest cost of masks.
flukus 6y ago
> they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc Everyone seems to also forget that a lot of this took place when they wrongly thought surface transmission was the main vector. The bigger problem was the delay in recognizing aerosol transmission, Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early but the CDC and WHO dragged their feet. We also saw everything play out and get politicized in real time in a way that's never happened before. There are lags between data and science, further lags between science and science communication and then even more from science communication to government policy. On one end of this lag you've got scientist warning of aerosol transmission, on the other side you've got Fauci still operating under the surface transmission advice leading to some very mixed messaging. Reducing this lag will be important in future.
- bonzini 6y ago
  > Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 since there are suspect cases in Europe already at the beginning of December, of people that had never been in Wuhan.
  - flukus 6y ago
    > China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. Because it was even newer and more unknown at that point. Wuhan was in lockdown on the 23rd of January, so they had a pretty good idea by then. Meanwhile the rest of the world twiddled their thumbs and lost the opportunity to contain it. > They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads.
    - cycomanic 6y ago
      > How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads. Actually, this is not so clear. The evidence of community cases in November/December in e.g. France were not picked up at the time either. There is a phase were a new disease can fly completely under the radar, because we are still in a very slow growth and only see a few isolated cases, which often don't even get seen by the same health professionals. This is particularly true in the case of covid were there is evidence that spreading is disproportionately from "superspreaders" (unless some of that information changed now?). So unless there was a superspreader, you only have few isolated cases.
dguaraglia 6y ago
Meh, I understand your point, but as someone who follows the conspiratorial world passively, I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. In reality, the usual suspects were pushing conspiracy theories about the CDC even before they determined masks were useful. A famous conspiracy peddler famously claimed the CDC was downplaying how bad the virus was and 'it was over for humanity, it'll only be lone survivors' when we only had a handful of cases in the US. In other words: the CDC could've nailed every single guideline and we'd still have half of the population making up conspiracy theories about it. It's just too politically convenient.
- skocznymroczny 6y ago
  > I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. So is the post-facto realization of "we knew masks work, we just didn't want the people to grab all the supply".
  - dguaraglia 5y ago
    As I explained in another post, originally the consensus was that only N95 masks were somewhat effective. There were no studies on the effectiveness of other masks. Recommending people use masks could've given people a false sense of security in people and probably acted against more effective measures such as social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms matching those of Covid-19 ('well, I know I have a cough, but I'll just wear a mask and it'll be fine'). Recommending people use the only masks we knew to somewhat work - N95s - would've created a huge problem for hospitals that already were having issues procuring PPE to protect the professionals who were dealing with Covid-19 patients. Basically, there was no reason for the CDC to recommend masks. Again, there's no need for some nefarious explanation.
  - dguaraglia 5y ago
    That's an oversimplification. The first thing to consider is that there's two types of masks: * N95 masks * Everything else We knew N95 masks worked because that's what professionals use in hospitals. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of PPE so telling people to buy them would put them in direct competition with professionals treating very sick patients. In April 2020 we were looking at a really bleak scenario so there was a very strong incentive to keep professionals alive even if it came at the expense of some citizens (think: doomsday scenario). We also had no idea whether 'everything else' helped at all. Recommending non-N95 use might have given people a false sense of security that might have played against more effective measures such as extreme social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms. As knowledge improved, guidance changed. Nothing crazy to see here.
evandijk70 6y ago
The Dutch CDC (RIVM) made the same statements. As a result, people don't really believe in masks here either, but it not a big political issue. I am not sure why the mask became such a symbol for the corona measures in the US, but not here.
- PostThisTooFast 6y ago
  It's pretty simple: A lot of Americans are dogshit-stupid. They voted for Trump. They're deliberately and belligerently ignorant children, just like the former (and disgraced) "president."
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Your population no doubt trusts government a lot more. Also republicans here more or less turned trump into a Messianic figure and quit listening to science. It’s getting scary over here to be honest
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    It’s just that most people don’t really care about wearing a mask in a supermarket and those that do don’t really get bothered with it when they refuse. But it does polarize society between people who love pointing their fingers at others who don’t adhere to their favorite mitigation strategy (‘they’re killing grandma’, ‘If only they had done X’). And of course masks are a pretty visible virtue signal. People are a lot more critical about the other rules, the curfews, the ban on outdoor dining and bars and the closure of sports facilities. And the ‘you can’t have more than one person over’ rule is generally ignored. By the way the official Dutch position still is that surface transmission is significant and one of the three ‘main rules’ is to wash your hands a lot.
- varjag 6y ago
  All national authorities did this, because the advice originated at WHO.
- podgaj 6y ago
  Because "Freedom". Seriously. I have explained this many times to my European friends. It is difficult to appreciate how people here will always want to push their own personal freedom of choice out as far as they can no matter how much someone else suffers.
anoncake 6y ago
Lying to the public should be a jailable crime. That would greatly increase trust in public institutions.

harry8 6y ago

Please also note it is unnecessary to do any additional analysis to describe the example cited as a "lie." We know it was a deliberate lie because the then head of the CDC has said so [1] - unless he was lying about claiming he was lying there's not much doubt in that case. The CDC lie when it suits them isn't something that's really debatable. Does it matter that they lied? This is the proposition that can be debated sensibly and rationally - but will likely be overwhelmed with emotion. In my own observation there seems to be rather a lot of people who have almost no faith in their fellow humans and believe the only way "people" believe a thing and will act is because they have been told to believe it by someone. Misinformation takes all the blame in this paradigm. The populations is dominated by people who have outsourced their critical thinking. It may be true, I don't know. But it seems to me to be really quite worrying if a population has to be told lies to get them to do the right thing or lies have to be censored because people will not be able to assess competing evidence and reject bullshit. Does it have to be this way? Was it always? Is it fixable? Is it really a thing at all? I have no answers there. It's my observation that even in the service of "good", the debt to the truth always comes due and the interest rate is super steep. Many will disagree. [1] Lack of PPE for medical professionals in the front line of pandemic response is the justification. This may well be a very good justification.

cycomanic 6y ago
I know this gets repeated a lot, but that doesn't make it more true. Show me the quote where he said "we lied about masks", and "we changed our message about masks" doesn't count. The reality is that the knowledge about Covid changed significantly in march/April last year. In particular the understanding about unsymptomatic spread lead to a significant change of thinking. That makes sense, if the virus only spreads from sick people, the advice for everyone to wear a mask is not good health policy especially if there is a shortage. You want to prioritise people who get in contact with sick people and prevent sick people to go out. However, if unsymptomatic people spread the virus, you want everyone to wear masks, because you can't prevent spreaders to go out. But the masks are different, you want cloth masks more than n95, because it is about protecting others. The below article is one which elaborates on the whole discussion https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-anthony-fauci-lie-masks-march-marco-rubio-said/4068162001/ https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-...
- avereveard 6y ago
  If they didn't suspect that an "atypical pneumonia" as it was called since the beginning had an aereosol component a case can be made that they were unfit for their job If mask initial recommendation actually was a white lie a case can be made that they are unfit for communicating their results to the masses as they think their peers to be petulant children unfit for handling truths, and they should be stripped of that function The other cases just convert into variations of them politicising a pandemic to unknown ends As for the WHO, these organisations shouldn't have an easy way out of their responsibilities
  - cycomanic 6y ago
    Have you read what I wrote? Because you sure are not responding to it.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    The “not aerosol“ hypothesis was based on the assumption that the spread rate would have been much higher than observed with an aerosol capable virus. Turns out this one just happened to be quite bad at spreading amongst humans, despite being capable of residing in the air for quite a while. It's rather unsurprising then that we now see many mutations that fix some low hanging fruit "bugs", bringing the spread closer to what people would have expected. Arguably hope may have been a factor in weighing that hypothesis, but that's truly nothing anyone should be blamed for.
    - avereveard 6y ago
      pneumonia and influenza whose main transmission vector is contact:
      - usrusr 6y ago
        Droplet is the "popular" middle ground. Contact is completely overshadowed by both types of air travel unless air travel is either completely out of the picture (non-respiratory viruses like various herpes) or if the virus particles excel at durability outside the body (e.g. the rhinovirus family, whereas being bad at this is an outcome of the defining property of corona viruses, they are short-"lived" almost by definition). And droplet basically translates to: "yes, masks would help, but simply keeping a few feet of distance will be just as good". Unfortunately, distance does to aerosol transmission what soda cans do to a wildfire.
podgaj 6y ago
As a Daoist, this is the important point. "Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder. Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones. He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal." - Dao De Jing, Chapter 3, The Chinese Text Project I feel we are at the end result of "keeping those who have knowledge from acting on it". Misinformation is spread by people with the knowledge of how to control people and they tell people they are smart and they need to act. I do not agree with Fauci's decision, but there was no other choice. Look at what happened with the gas panic this week, it is the same thing was written about here: https://songofthedao.substack.com/p/panic-at-the-gas-station https://songofthedao.substack.com/p/panic-at-the-gas-station

jader201 6y ago

Exactly this. I normally would agree with folks saying that the CDC has little reason to be dishonest, but with COVID in particular, we see enough historical reversal to cause at least some uncertainty around their guidance. Plus, it also makes sense, if their and the government’s interests are for the greater good. E.g. being cautious about promoting early use of masks when supplies were scarce/preserving them for the front line medical workers. Theoretically it would also make sense for current guidance to incentivize vaccines when the remaining unvaccinated population is hesitant. To be clear, I’m not saying I have certainly that this is what’s happening. But the theories aren’t unreasonable, and CDC’s past reversal on guidance doesn’t help the confidence others have in their guidance. So the uncertainty isn’t completely unreasonable.

sitkack 6y ago

I had COVID in NYC in Feb, the only way to get a test was to claim you just flew from Wuhan. Which even if you did, I have no idea how they were setup to respond. Everyone else in the hotel was sick, there was a tensor of coughing, all I could do was sit in my hotel room and watch politicians go back and forth about how we should all patronize stores in Chinatown and not be horrible racists. All I can say is the is that the CDC performed extremely poorly in their response to this, over and over again. Mishandling tests, allowing the FDA to actively block testing. Even the pausing of the J&J vaccine was an extreme CYA blunder. NASA had Challenger, NIST had Dual_EC_DRBG and the CDC had COVID. Not the same in scope, but the systemic dysfunction was similar in its structure.

x3iv130f 6y ago

I don't blame the professionals for getting things wrong on this. My personal feeling is that it was hard to know if masks worked for the general populace before Covid-19. There are so many confounding variables that it very difficult to study masks from a public health side. The best approximation was studies of health professionals in hospitals or clinics which doesn't exactly translate for a multitude of reasons.

mlyle 6y ago
To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small. It's totally worth it to bend an exponential function. But the individual benefit from mask wearing in any given interaction is negligible.
- sharken 6y ago
  Which leads to huge arguments which really benefits nobody as we just establish that we disagree. Common sense seems to say that masks make s difference, but if that is the strongest argument, then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense.
  - lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
    Because if you get it wrong, lots of people die, so you err on the side of caution.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Mere common sense? I wouldn't characterize it that way. The wearing of masks to combat airborne disease spread is a decidedly not a new thing. That was never a novel concept, at least since the early part of the 20th century. Coronaviruses in general aren't a novel concept either; we have a pretty good idea how they're spread. So, when confronted with a new coronavirus, it's a little bit stronger than "common sense" to surmise that masks will be effective to some extent. The burden of proof would be on anybody suggesting that this virus is somehow so different than other airborne disease that the wearing of masks had no benefit. then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense. If masks are not effective, the downside to wearing masks was that we waste a relatively modest amount of time and money on masks and perhaps damage our credibility in the future when we recommend their use. If masks are effective to some degree, the downside to not wearing masks was that millions of additional people would suffer and die worldwide, and we would incur a financial and human cost orders of magnitude greater than the modest cost of masks.

flukus 6y ago

> they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc Everyone seems to also forget that a lot of this took place when they wrongly thought surface transmission was the main vector. The bigger problem was the delay in recognizing aerosol transmission, Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early but the CDC and WHO dragged their feet. We also saw everything play out and get politicized in real time in a way that's never happened before. There are lags between data and science, further lags between science and science communication and then even more from science communication to government policy. On one end of this lag you've got scientist warning of aerosol transmission, on the other side you've got Fauci still operating under the surface transmission advice leading to some very mixed messaging. Reducing this lag will be important in future.

bonzini 6y ago
> Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 since there are suspect cases in Europe already at the beginning of December, of people that had never been in Wuhan.
- flukus 6y ago
  > China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. Because it was even newer and more unknown at that point. Wuhan was in lockdown on the 23rd of January, so they had a pretty good idea by then. Meanwhile the rest of the world twiddled their thumbs and lost the opportunity to contain it. > They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads.
  - cycomanic 6y ago
    > How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads. Actually, this is not so clear. The evidence of community cases in November/December in e.g. France were not picked up at the time either. There is a phase were a new disease can fly completely under the radar, because we are still in a very slow growth and only see a few isolated cases, which often don't even get seen by the same health professionals. This is particularly true in the case of covid were there is evidence that spreading is disproportionately from "superspreaders" (unless some of that information changed now?). So unless there was a superspreader, you only have few isolated cases.

dguaraglia 6y ago

Meh, I understand your point, but as someone who follows the conspiratorial world passively, I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. In reality, the usual suspects were pushing conspiracy theories about the CDC even before they determined masks were useful. A famous conspiracy peddler famously claimed the CDC was downplaying how bad the virus was and 'it was over for humanity, it'll only be lone survivors' when we only had a handful of cases in the US. In other words: the CDC could've nailed every single guideline and we'd still have half of the population making up conspiracy theories about it. It's just too politically convenient.

skocznymroczny 6y ago
> I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. So is the post-facto realization of "we knew masks work, we just didn't want the people to grab all the supply".
- dguaraglia 5y ago
  As I explained in another post, originally the consensus was that only N95 masks were somewhat effective. There were no studies on the effectiveness of other masks. Recommending people use masks could've given people a false sense of security in people and probably acted against more effective measures such as social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms matching those of Covid-19 ('well, I know I have a cough, but I'll just wear a mask and it'll be fine'). Recommending people use the only masks we knew to somewhat work - N95s - would've created a huge problem for hospitals that already were having issues procuring PPE to protect the professionals who were dealing with Covid-19 patients. Basically, there was no reason for the CDC to recommend masks. Again, there's no need for some nefarious explanation.
- dguaraglia 5y ago
  That's an oversimplification. The first thing to consider is that there's two types of masks: * N95 masks * Everything else We knew N95 masks worked because that's what professionals use in hospitals. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of PPE so telling people to buy them would put them in direct competition with professionals treating very sick patients. In April 2020 we were looking at a really bleak scenario so there was a very strong incentive to keep professionals alive even if it came at the expense of some citizens (think: doomsday scenario). We also had no idea whether 'everything else' helped at all. Recommending non-N95 use might have given people a false sense of security that might have played against more effective measures such as extreme social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms. As knowledge improved, guidance changed. Nothing crazy to see here.

evandijk70 6y ago

The Dutch CDC (RIVM) made the same statements. As a result, people don't really believe in masks here either, but it not a big political issue. I am not sure why the mask became such a symbol for the corona measures in the US, but not here.

PostThisTooFast 6y ago
It's pretty simple: A lot of Americans are dogshit-stupid. They voted for Trump. They're deliberately and belligerently ignorant children, just like the former (and disgraced) "president."
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Your population no doubt trusts government a lot more. Also republicans here more or less turned trump into a Messianic figure and quit listening to science. It’s getting scary over here to be honest
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  It’s just that most people don’t really care about wearing a mask in a supermarket and those that do don’t really get bothered with it when they refuse. But it does polarize society between people who love pointing their fingers at others who don’t adhere to their favorite mitigation strategy (‘they’re killing grandma’, ‘If only they had done X’). And of course masks are a pretty visible virtue signal. People are a lot more critical about the other rules, the curfews, the ban on outdoor dining and bars and the closure of sports facilities. And the ‘you can’t have more than one person over’ rule is generally ignored. By the way the official Dutch position still is that surface transmission is significant and one of the three ‘main rules’ is to wash your hands a lot.
varjag 6y ago
All national authorities did this, because the advice originated at WHO.
podgaj 6y ago
Because "Freedom". Seriously. I have explained this many times to my European friends. It is difficult to appreciate how people here will always want to push their own personal freedom of choice out as far as they can no matter how much someone else suffers.

anoncake 6y ago

Lying to the public should be a jailable crime. That would greatly increase trust in public institutions.