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The CDC has repeatedly made misleading statements though. In particular, the CDC recommended against the use of masks early in the pandemic, which may have cau
by 0xy 5y ago
The CDC has repeatedly made misleading statements though.
In particular, the CDC recommended against the use of masks early in the pandemic, which may have caused many thousands of cases and deaths.
More recently, they've been wishy-washy on masks again. Backflipping repeatedly on whether vaccinated individuals should wear masks.
- Bhilai 5y agoCDC is working with limited information on a novel virus. As they are learning more they are shifting their guidance to match the current understanding about how the virus spreads.
- 0xy 5y agoCDC knowingly lied about masks, though. They knew internally they should be used to mitigate spread, but publicly discouraged their use. There was no new information. There were only lies.
- tastygreenapple 5y agoThen why don't they convey their uncertainty? Seems like the bare minimum. Also, they clearly lied about their reasoning in the initial guidance not to wear a mask, you can understand why people would mistrust them and a public health agency lying to the public at the start of a pandemic is ill-advised yet no one has faced accountability for that deceit.
- bloopernova 5y agoThe various health authorities told people not to use masks at first because: Hospitals were in danger of running out of protective equipment. The public was panic buying anything and everything. Remember empty grocery store shelves? Price gouging people who were hoarding all the hand sanitizer? When those circumstances changed, so did the advice. There's no one on earth who gets everything right first time, and thus never needs to change their mind. Not one single person. Why do you value an opinion or advice that never changes?
- 0xy 5y agoThe CDC did not say "don't buy masks because healthcare professionals need them". The CDC falsely claimed they were not effective. This false narrative persists even today. How many thousands died because they were told by an authority masks don't work? Your point of view seems to suggest that the ends justify the means. I ask you how many deaths are an acceptable amount of collateral damage to protect the health system's access to masks. 1,000? 5,000? 50,000?
- wrycoder 5y agoIt persists, because procedure/surgical masks do virtually nothing to stop SARS2. [0] I won't even mention cloth masks. In sum, of the 14 RCTs that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless—whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone—or actually counterproductive. Of the three studies that provided statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis that was not contradicted within the same study, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than hand hygiene alone, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than nothing, and one found that cloth masks were less effective than surgical masks. N95 are better, but those are not generally available to civilians. [0] https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-evidence https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-e...