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I think it's also worth pointing out that even with them saying masks aren't effective for the public, there was still a run on masks. I don't have the exact da

by ssully 5y ago

I think it's also worth pointing out that even with them saying masks aren't effective for the public, there was still a run on masks. I don't have the exact date, but when I looked for n95's at my local hardware store in March 2020, they were all gone and this was definitely before we were told to wear masks. And soon after we started getting stories about hospitals running low on PPE. I am not saying what the right messaging move was/would have been. But all I do know is that no matter what, masks were going to get run on. I also know that, at least from an American perspective, no matter what the government told people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn and distrustful people.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rfreiberger 5y ago
My father works in Taiwan and he was aware something bad was coming down well before it hit US news. This was late January 2020, and by then most all of the masks at the stores were sold out, followed shortly by the cleaning supplies. I would say the majority of buyers were shipping these back to family in Asia or they were prepairing for the peak that hit a few weeks later.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I don't think people assumed that it was coming to the US, but covid was definitely in public awareness by late January. Some proportion of those people are disaster preppers that bought a ton of masks, just like the toilet paper people.
- VortexDream 5y ago
  I bought a bunch of N95 masks the day after I heard China was locking down Wuhan. There were still plenty of masks at regular prices at the time.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    I bought them right around the time officials started admitting they were helpful. $120 for a box of ten N95 masks.
    - VortexDream 5y ago
      I'm baffled that anybody ever thought they weren't helpful. As if we haven't been using masks against airborne diseases for the past hundred years. But suddenly they would be useless against Covid. Then they point to one or two studies as if they support their argument, when there were at least as many at the same time showing the opposite. Also ignoring decades of evidence of the efficacy of masks. I thought I was taking crazy pills. The default for all airborne disease in the absence of significant evidence (particularly in the case of a novel one) is to use masks. Anything else is pure idiocy. By the time officials admitted they were "helpful" (because of course they were, there's nothing particularly special about Covid in that respect), it was already way too late to get masks. Because anybody with any basic knowledge of disease and medicine had already bought up all the supply long before. Another way of looking at it is in a betting scenario. I want to make money. The two options I can bet on are a) Based on decades of scientific evidence, buy fuck loads of masks on the likelihood of them being anywhere from moderately to highly effective. b) Masks are useless based on two early studies in a highly unstable situation with little accurate information and low confidence, counter to established medical practice with no other basis in reliable evidence. Guess what I'm betting on. Further, the risks associated with being wrong are far lower with option A than with option B.
      - mthoms 5y ago
        Oh I agree completely. I think at the time many of us could read between the lines and see what was really happening: They were preventing a run on masks, and medical professionals needed all they could get. I don't like being lied to, but in this case I think I have some forgiveness because the end goal was justified (at least in my mind). It's such a weird feeling though, I'm very conflicted about it.
reducesuffering 5y ago
> no matter what the government told people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn and distrustful people. Americans are this way because the government continually gives them a reason to. The lying through the pandemic, the Iraq war, it just goes on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ssully 5y ago
  Thank you for clarifying. This is why I don't know what the right answer is on the messaging. The US government, and nearly every government, has a history of lying to people. The other side of the coin though is that during those early months, and well into lock down, everything was up in the air about the virus, how it transmitted, and how to fight it. If I was in the position of how to convey that information to people, in the most honest way possible, I don't know if I would have done a better job (or fucked it up even more).
  - ajkdhcb2 5y ago
    I've disagreed with the general global response at essentially every step. I think any reasonable person would have done better, and get the feeling that there are likely ulterior motives and disgraceful politicised actions to explain how bad the response was. In particular, in the beginning there were very clear indications given by Taiwan and China that there was a dangerous virus spreading among the people. Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. They practiced the opposite of the precautionary principle and horrendous risk management. When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies?
    - hackingforfun 5y ago
      > Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. > When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies? Wouldn't pushing toward a more authoritarian society been not allowing sick Chinese people to travel? Do you think it would have been OK to implement restrictions at the start of the pandemic, just not now?
GloriousKoji 5y ago
If they were open and upfront about limited masks and reserving N95 and other PPE for healthcare workers there was a possibility of a social stigma of individuals buying up and using N95 and PPE. Like how scalpers get the stink eye and angry stares when they take all the toilet paper, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. Sure the masks might not have all gone to the right place but I imagine it would have been better than telling people you don't need masks.
- ssully 5y ago
  Doubtful. Just think about the toilet paper shortage; a common household item that never would have had a supply shortage if people just maintained their regular buying patterns. Now think of masks; a non-household item that a small percentage of households carried. Even if people were reasonable and only bought an amount to cover their needs, that would have introduced hundreds of millions of new buyers for that item.
  - speedybird 5y ago
    Solution, be honest: "Masks work, but we don't have enough and need them for hospitals so you're not allowed to buy any. Wrap a tshirt around your face instead, it's probably better than nothing."
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      The government cannot easily quickly ban the buying/selling of a certain thing like that. Just not how it works, far too slow moving.
      - yissp 5y ago
        They were able to completely shut down entire sectors of the economy pretty quickly quickly.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
kelnos 5y ago
> American perspective, no matter what the government told people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn and distrustful people. Right, but you have to start somewhere. The reason we are distrustful is because past experience with the US government has taught us to be distrustful. The first time the US government applies this idea to trust the people and give truthful information, it probably won't go super well. People will still doubt and mistrust. Trust is built over time, not just by saying "yeah, we've been lying forever now, but trust us, we're going to start telling the truth now". The answer shouldn't be "well, the people aren't going to trust us anyway, so we shouldn't bother being truthful". That's just self-fulfilling the lack of trust, and perpetuates the problem. Someone else pointed out that telling the truth can also allow you to use social pressure to get what you want. As you point out, telling people "masks don't work so don't bother hoarding them" didn't work; people still hoarded them and there was a shortage. And people who hoarded early could later put on a smug grin and say, "yeah, I knew what was going on from the start and did the right thing". If the government had instead said "masks can help, but we need to reserve the supply for hospitals and first responders", then you create social stigma around hoarding masks. It won't stop hoarding 100%, but it can help. At least you probably won't be worse off than the shortages we ended up having anyway, and, meanwhile, you've taken a step that increases trust. And you paint the hoarders as anti-social and selfish.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  > ...create social stigma around hoarding masks. It won't stop hoarding 100%, but it can help... That only works in a society with a certain baseline of trust, accountability, and empathy. If you remember 2019, things were already hyper-partisan, a large minority of the population was in a cult of disinformation, and the media was reeling from the shift away from print and moving towards a clickbaiting 24-hour news cycle.
- spfzero 5y ago
  When the message was "masks don't work for the public", it was translated to "well they work, but not for you" and thus to "grab as many masks as you can before you are relegated to the no-mask-for-you public bin". The messaging was crude, obvious, untrue, and ultimately self-defeating. It only takes a small minority of people to buy up everything, especially small, cheap, lightweight objects sold in quantity packaging.
oceanghost 5y ago
Not just masks, anything that was vaguely safety related. I had to stop resin 3d printing because I couldn't get: * Solvents-- IPA, methylated spirits etc. * Nitrile/Latex Gloves * Respirators (the kind used for painting)
- acrobatsunfish 5y ago
  Yeah I didn't buy a resin printer early bird special because I couldn't get masks gloves or isopropyl
heavyset_go 5y ago
> But all I do know is that no matter what, masks were going to get run on. To add to this, there were several mask runs in late 2019 and early 2020 in China, HK, Taiwan etc. People were buying out entire inventories of masks to sell online. By the time the pandemic became a problem in the US, there was already a global PPE shortage, and people were doing the same thing that happened in other countries, where they'd buy up supplies of PPE just so they could sell it for profit online.

by ssully 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rfreiberger 5y ago

My father works in Taiwan and he was aware something bad was coming down well before it hit US news. This was late January 2020, and by then most all of the masks at the stores were sold out, followed shortly by the cleaning supplies. I would say the majority of buyers were shipping these back to family in Asia or they were prepairing for the peak that hit a few weeks later.

whimsicalism 5y ago
I don't think people assumed that it was coming to the US, but covid was definitely in public awareness by late January. Some proportion of those people are disaster preppers that bought a ton of masks, just like the toilet paper people.
VortexDream 5y ago
I bought a bunch of N95 masks the day after I heard China was locking down Wuhan. There were still plenty of masks at regular prices at the time.
- mthoms 5y ago
  I bought them right around the time officials started admitting they were helpful. $120 for a box of ten N95 masks.
  - VortexDream 5y ago
    I'm baffled that anybody ever thought they weren't helpful. As if we haven't been using masks against airborne diseases for the past hundred years. But suddenly they would be useless against Covid. Then they point to one or two studies as if they support their argument, when there were at least as many at the same time showing the opposite. Also ignoring decades of evidence of the efficacy of masks. I thought I was taking crazy pills. The default for all airborne disease in the absence of significant evidence (particularly in the case of a novel one) is to use masks. Anything else is pure idiocy. By the time officials admitted they were "helpful" (because of course they were, there's nothing particularly special about Covid in that respect), it was already way too late to get masks. Because anybody with any basic knowledge of disease and medicine had already bought up all the supply long before. Another way of looking at it is in a betting scenario. I want to make money. The two options I can bet on are a) Based on decades of scientific evidence, buy fuck loads of masks on the likelihood of them being anywhere from moderately to highly effective. b) Masks are useless based on two early studies in a highly unstable situation with little accurate information and low confidence, counter to established medical practice with no other basis in reliable evidence. Guess what I'm betting on. Further, the risks associated with being wrong are far lower with option A than with option B.
    - mthoms 5y ago
      Oh I agree completely. I think at the time many of us could read between the lines and see what was really happening: They were preventing a run on masks, and medical professionals needed all they could get. I don't like being lied to, but in this case I think I have some forgiveness because the end goal was justified (at least in my mind). It's such a weird feeling though, I'm very conflicted about it.

reducesuffering 5y ago

> no matter what the government told people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn and distrustful people. Americans are this way because the government continually gives them a reason to. The lying through the pandemic, the Iraq war, it just goes on.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ssully 5y ago
Thank you for clarifying. This is why I don't know what the right answer is on the messaging. The US government, and nearly every government, has a history of lying to people. The other side of the coin though is that during those early months, and well into lock down, everything was up in the air about the virus, how it transmitted, and how to fight it. If I was in the position of how to convey that information to people, in the most honest way possible, I don't know if I would have done a better job (or fucked it up even more).
- ajkdhcb2 5y ago
  I've disagreed with the general global response at essentially every step. I think any reasonable person would have done better, and get the feeling that there are likely ulterior motives and disgraceful politicised actions to explain how bad the response was. In particular, in the beginning there were very clear indications given by Taiwan and China that there was a dangerous virus spreading among the people. Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. They practiced the opposite of the precautionary principle and horrendous risk management. When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies?
  - hackingforfun 5y ago
    > Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. > When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies? Wouldn't pushing toward a more authoritarian society been not allowing sick Chinese people to travel? Do you think it would have been OK to implement restrictions at the start of the pandemic, just not now?

GloriousKoji 5y ago

If they were open and upfront about limited masks and reserving N95 and other PPE for healthcare workers there was a possibility of a social stigma of individuals buying up and using N95 and PPE. Like how scalpers get the stink eye and angry stares when they take all the toilet paper, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. Sure the masks might not have all gone to the right place but I imagine it would have been better than telling people you don't need masks.

ssully 5y ago
Doubtful. Just think about the toilet paper shortage; a common household item that never would have had a supply shortage if people just maintained their regular buying patterns. Now think of masks; a non-household item that a small percentage of households carried. Even if people were reasonable and only bought an amount to cover their needs, that would have introduced hundreds of millions of new buyers for that item.
- speedybird 5y ago
  Solution, be honest: "Masks work, but we don't have enough and need them for hospitals so you're not allowed to buy any. Wrap a tshirt around your face instead, it's probably better than nothing."
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    The government cannot easily quickly ban the buying/selling of a certain thing like that. Just not how it works, far too slow moving.
    - yissp 5y ago
      They were able to completely shut down entire sectors of the economy pretty quickly quickly.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago

kelnos 5y ago

> American perspective, no matter what the government told people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn and distrustful people. Right, but you have to start somewhere. The reason we are distrustful is because past experience with the US government has taught us to be distrustful. The first time the US government applies this idea to trust the people and give truthful information, it probably won't go super well. People will still doubt and mistrust. Trust is built over time, not just by saying "yeah, we've been lying forever now, but trust us, we're going to start telling the truth now". The answer shouldn't be "well, the people aren't going to trust us anyway, so we shouldn't bother being truthful". That's just self-fulfilling the lack of trust, and perpetuates the problem. Someone else pointed out that telling the truth can also allow you to use social pressure to get what you want. As you point out, telling people "masks don't work so don't bother hoarding them" didn't work; people still hoarded them and there was a shortage. And people who hoarded early could later put on a smug grin and say, "yeah, I knew what was going on from the start and did the right thing". If the government had instead said "masks can help, but we need to reserve the supply for hospitals and first responders", then you create social stigma around hoarding masks. It won't stop hoarding 100%, but it can help. At least you probably won't be worse off than the shortages we ended up having anyway, and, meanwhile, you've taken a step that increases trust. And you paint the hoarders as anti-social and selfish.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
> ...create social stigma around hoarding masks. It won't stop hoarding 100%, but it can help... That only works in a society with a certain baseline of trust, accountability, and empathy. If you remember 2019, things were already hyper-partisan, a large minority of the population was in a cult of disinformation, and the media was reeling from the shift away from print and moving towards a clickbaiting 24-hour news cycle.
spfzero 5y ago
When the message was "masks don't work for the public", it was translated to "well they work, but not for you" and thus to "grab as many masks as you can before you are relegated to the no-mask-for-you public bin". The messaging was crude, obvious, untrue, and ultimately self-defeating. It only takes a small minority of people to buy up everything, especially small, cheap, lightweight objects sold in quantity packaging.

oceanghost 5y ago

Not just masks, anything that was vaguely safety related. I had to stop resin 3d printing because I couldn't get: * Solvents-- IPA, methylated spirits etc. * Nitrile/Latex Gloves * Respirators (the kind used for painting)

acrobatsunfish 5y ago
Yeah I didn't buy a resin printer early bird special because I couldn't get masks gloves or isopropyl

heavyset_go 5y ago

> But all I do know is that no matter what, masks were going to get run on. To add to this, there were several mask runs in late 2019 and early 2020 in China, HK, Taiwan etc. People were buying out entire inventories of masks to sell online. By the time the pandemic became a problem in the US, there was already a global PPE shortage, and people were doing the same thing that happened in other countries, where they'd buy up supplies of PPE just so they could sell it for profit online.