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A rationalist would recognize that we update our beliefs as new evidence is available and not attack people for having erroneous beliefs before that evidence wa

by not2b 5y ago

A rationalist would recognize that we update our beliefs as new evidence is available and not attack people for having erroneous beliefs before that evidence was available. The "masks don't work" advice was active for a short time in March 2020 and almost immediately dumped. They thought at the time that only n95 masks would be good enough, these masks were in short supply and health care workers needed them, this was the "politics" of it. But by mid March 2020 people were already being encouraged to make cloth masks and how to do it. That is when my daughter got out the sewing machine and made a bunch, based on instructions from nurses.

polote 5y ago
There was no new evidence. I'm not sure we have even learned anything regarding the efficacy of masks trough the pandemic. All what we know was already known prior of it.
- kbelder 5y ago
  'We' as the scientific community may not have, but 'we' the unwashed public learned much.
  - polote 5y ago
    Being rational doesn't prevent you to be wrong. If your assumption is that the government tells the truth and you conclude that mask don't work. Then you have reasoned rationally. But if you dont trust the governement, and for this specific case you followed them, then this is not rational.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      Aside: As a general rule of thumb, conspiracy theories are not rational.
      - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
        2 years ago I would agree with you 100%. Lately though conspiracy theories become conspiracy facts with alarming frequency. And the speed with which media reaches "We've always been at war with Eastasia" zeitgeist on each shift does not inspire confidence.
- btilly 5y ago
  First, there is active research and we demonstrably have learned something. See https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-020-00763-0 https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1375..., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7, and https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 for several examples. Second, your simplistic analysis demonstrated that you, personally, are ignorant of the real tradeoffs involved in whether masks work. Wearing a mask reduces how much virus leaves your mouth. But when you breathe out, most of the virus is in larger droplets that quickly hit the ground. However breathing out through a mask creates perfect conditions to create an aerosol, which can allow more of the virus to stay in the air for an indefinite period of time. So there is a tradeoff, and there were reasons to question whether cloth masks were better than simple social distancing. It turns out that what matters most is not that you get exposed, but rather the initial viral load that you get. You see, the virus will go on an exponential growth until the relatively fixed time it takes the immune system to figure things out and start shutting it down. If the virus gets a solid head start, the odds of serious illness go up. Therefore the lingering aerosol from a mask is (except if it accumulates in poorly ventilated indoor spaces) of less concern than an unmasked person talking directly to you. So the result is that masks work. Even crappy cloth masks work.
  - varjag 5y ago
    …and as they mentioned, we knew that masks work already.
    - btilly 5y ago
      The quality of our evidence is easy to misjudge in retrospect. The last opportunity to study the effectiveness of mandating low-quality masks in preventing community spread during a pandemic was around a century old. (Literally, the Spanish Flu epidemic.) In the meantime a lot of new and untried modeling tools were in use, as well as updated disease models, and lots of reasons to question old data. See https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppih-covid-19-sag-mask-use-in-community-rapid-review.pdf https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppi... for an idea of what was reasonable for educated specialists in public health to believe. Note phrases like, "There was agreement that although the evidence base is poor, the use of masks in the community is likely to be useful in reducing transmission from community based infected persons, particularly those with symptomatic illness." So it is accurate to say that we had reason to believe that masks work. But it is easy to overstate how much we "knew" it to be true at the time.
tunesmith 5y ago
What a lot of people have forgotten is that in March 2020, they thought COVID was droplets, not aerosol - remember all the emphasis on washing hands and hand sanitizer? - and as such, masks would be overkill for most. Combine that with the worry that people would hoard masks when PPE was in short supply for people would be interacting directly with patients, then the initial discouragement on masks seems more understandable. As the science changed to suggest that COVID was aerosol, scientific opinions on masks got updated as well. It also didn't help that some hyper-rational people got hung up on ranting about how masks weren't perfect, and how the virus could still get through if you wore a mask. It was as if they imagined they heard someone said "masks are 100% effective" and really really wanted to register their counterpoints. So they said "they don't work!" when they meant "they're not 100% effective!", and other people heard "they don't work!" and took it to mean "they're 0% effective!" That's one of those patterns you start to see all over the place when you know to look for it - people confusing "there exists" and "forall".

by not2b 5y ago

polote 5y ago

There was no new evidence. I'm not sure we have even learned anything regarding the efficacy of masks trough the pandemic. All what we know was already known prior of it.

kbelder 5y ago
'We' as the scientific community may not have, but 'we' the unwashed public learned much.
- polote 5y ago
  Being rational doesn't prevent you to be wrong. If your assumption is that the government tells the truth and you conclude that mask don't work. Then you have reasoned rationally. But if you dont trust the governement, and for this specific case you followed them, then this is not rational.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Aside: As a general rule of thumb, conspiracy theories are not rational.
    - UnFleshedOne 5y ago
      2 years ago I would agree with you 100%. Lately though conspiracy theories become conspiracy facts with alarming frequency. And the speed with which media reaches "We've always been at war with Eastasia" zeitgeist on each shift does not inspire confidence.
btilly 5y ago
First, there is active research and we demonstrably have learned something. See https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-020-00763-0 https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1375..., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7, and https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 for several examples. Second, your simplistic analysis demonstrated that you, personally, are ignorant of the real tradeoffs involved in whether masks work. Wearing a mask reduces how much virus leaves your mouth. But when you breathe out, most of the virus is in larger droplets that quickly hit the ground. However breathing out through a mask creates perfect conditions to create an aerosol, which can allow more of the virus to stay in the air for an indefinite period of time. So there is a tradeoff, and there were reasons to question whether cloth masks were better than simple social distancing. It turns out that what matters most is not that you get exposed, but rather the initial viral load that you get. You see, the virus will go on an exponential growth until the relatively fixed time it takes the immune system to figure things out and start shutting it down. If the virus gets a solid head start, the odds of serious illness go up. Therefore the lingering aerosol from a mask is (except if it accumulates in poorly ventilated indoor spaces) of less concern than an unmasked person talking directly to you. So the result is that masks work. Even crappy cloth masks work.
- varjag 5y ago
  …and as they mentioned, we knew that masks work already.
  - btilly 5y ago
    The quality of our evidence is easy to misjudge in retrospect. The last opportunity to study the effectiveness of mandating low-quality masks in preventing community spread during a pandemic was around a century old. (Literally, the Spanish Flu epidemic.) In the meantime a lot of new and untried modeling tools were in use, as well as updated disease models, and lots of reasons to question old data. See https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppih-covid-19-sag-mask-use-in-community-rapid-review.pdf https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppi... for an idea of what was reasonable for educated specialists in public health to believe. Note phrases like, "There was agreement that although the evidence base is poor, the use of masks in the community is likely to be useful in reducing transmission from community based infected persons, particularly those with symptomatic illness." So it is accurate to say that we had reason to believe that masks work. But it is easy to overstate how much we "knew" it to be true at the time.

tunesmith 5y ago

What a lot of people have forgotten is that in March 2020, they thought COVID was droplets, not aerosol - remember all the emphasis on washing hands and hand sanitizer? - and as such, masks would be overkill for most. Combine that with the worry that people would hoard masks when PPE was in short supply for people would be interacting directly with patients, then the initial discouragement on masks seems more understandable. As the science changed to suggest that COVID was aerosol, scientific opinions on masks got updated as well. It also didn't help that some hyper-rational people got hung up on ranting about how masks weren't perfect, and how the virus could still get through if you wore a mask. It was as if they imagined they heard someone said "masks are 100% effective" and really really wanted to register their counterpoints. So they said "they don't work!" when they meant "they're not 100% effective!", and other people heard "they don't work!" and took it to mean "they're 0% effective!" That's one of those patterns you start to see all over the place when you know to look for it - people confusing "there exists" and "forall".