For the masks thing, there was a consensus on something that was wrong, provably wrong, _and yet_ was used successfully by something like 1/4 population (most o

For the masks thing, there was a consensus on something that was wrong, provably wrong, _and yet_ was used successfully by something like 1/4 population (most of Asia). Bit of a strange hill to die on, if you ask me. I don't remember any real consensus that was non a man made virus. I do remember a bunch of guys that had received serious money to do gain of function research up and say that it was NOT gain of function research. The conflict of interest is so glaring as to make it have almost zero predictive power. "Of course they'd say that - the world hasn't changed much now that they actually did". If you're stuck in finding reasons for how this got the way it is, just move a step back and imagine ... not a perfect world, just a normal, shitty world in which: - Surgeon general takes a look at studies, says: masks don't hurt and they very likely help in a hospital setting. If you're in a crowded, risky place that resembles hospital settings you should probably wear them. And just in case, let's buy a bunch of N95... oh, we don't have those, anything close? yeah, KN95 are about the same. Let's buy a bunch just in case. They can't hurt, they definitely help stop the spread from the infected and we'll wait on studies to tell us if they can actually protect the uninfected as well. Hopefully something fast tracked, shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks. ^^^ is NOT rocket science. It's just the opposite of what we heard, at least for a while. I'm not doing the "gain of function, China" thing 'cause it leaves me feeling dirty.