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Part of the problem is that the American media spread misinformation about the effectiveness of masks for political gain. For example, I remember the New York T

by makomk 5y ago

Part of the problem is that the American media spread misinformation about the effectiveness of masks for political gain. For example, I remember the New York Times pushing the idea that vaccines would be less effective than mask wearing even though all evidence suggested that even a vaccine which met the minimum standards for approval would likely be substantially more effective than mask wearing, seemingly because Trump supported vaccines but not masks.

JohnBooty 5y ago
seemingly because Trump supported vaccines but not masks. I read both conservative and liberal media and have never seen it suggested that masks were somehow better than vaccines. First I must strongly state that the idea itself makes no sense: one can wear a mask and be vaccinated; they're not competing ideas in any meaningful way. However, at the outset of COVID-19, we certainly were not sure that there would be effective vaccines, or how long they might take to develop, or what their supply levels would be. Therefore it made sense to take whatever (effective) measures we could, while waiting for a vaccine that was never guaranteed to exist. Nobody argues that a fire extinguisher is better than a squad of professional firefighters, but fire extinguishers can have important utility, especially while you're waiting for help to arrive. As far as the Trump angle, perhaps you can show us a counter example, but I have seen zero evidence that anti-Trump folks have rejected vaccines because Trump favored them. It's a non-factor. One, the liberal/progressive/whatever crowd is overwhelmingly pro-vaccination (in general) to begin with. Two, and perhaps more importantly, they're just not competing with masks in any way. Masks are imperfect; vaccines are more effective but also imperfect and not approved for all people even today. That is how you deal with many if not most threats in the real world: multiple layers of imperfect defences.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
To be fair, doing the exact opposite of what Trump supports is a good rule of thumb if you have no other info or expertise to go on. Though in this particular case, I don't really remember him being all that positive about vaccines for Covid or in general. Here's a publication worrying about him undermining vaccines before Covid was a thing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678397/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678397/ Which is another data point to support the general principle.
bdavis__ 5y ago
There was a period in time where it was disclosed that the vaccines might have an efficacy of 40% or 50%. In this case, the combination of masks and vaccines might have been required for a long time. (hacker news analogy: "just in case Rust doesn't remove all defects, we are still going to need to debug"

by makomk 5y ago

JohnBooty 5y ago

seemingly because Trump supported vaccines but not masks. I read both conservative and liberal media and have never seen it suggested that masks were somehow better than vaccines. First I must strongly state that the idea itself makes no sense: one can wear a mask and be vaccinated; they're not competing ideas in any meaningful way. However, at the outset of COVID-19, we certainly were not sure that there would be effective vaccines, or how long they might take to develop, or what their supply levels would be. Therefore it made sense to take whatever (effective) measures we could, while waiting for a vaccine that was never guaranteed to exist. Nobody argues that a fire extinguisher is better than a squad of professional firefighters, but fire extinguishers can have important utility, especially while you're waiting for help to arrive. As far as the Trump angle, perhaps you can show us a counter example, but I have seen zero evidence that anti-Trump folks have rejected vaccines because Trump favored them. It's a non-factor. One, the liberal/progressive/whatever crowd is overwhelmingly pro-vaccination (in general) to begin with. Two, and perhaps more importantly, they're just not competing with masks in any way. Masks are imperfect; vaccines are more effective but also imperfect and not approved for all people even today. That is how you deal with many if not most threats in the real world: multiple layers of imperfect defences.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

To be fair, doing the exact opposite of what Trump supports is a good rule of thumb if you have no other info or expertise to go on. Though in this particular case, I don't really remember him being all that positive about vaccines for Covid or in general. Here's a publication worrying about him undermining vaccines before Covid was a thing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678397/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678397/ Which is another data point to support the general principle.

bdavis__ 5y ago

There was a period in time where it was disclosed that the vaccines might have an efficacy of 40% or 50%. In this case, the combination of masks and vaccines might have been required for a long time. (hacker news analogy: "just in case Rust doesn't remove all defects, we are still going to need to debug"