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> For the current pandemic, they did not initially recommend masking because they could not justify it for the general population over the medical community. Th

by pdonis 5y ago

> For the current pandemic, they did not initially recommend masking because they could not justify it for the general population over the medical community. They wanted to avoid a tragedy of the commons of PPE. Then here's what they should have said: "Masks work, but health care workers need to be prioritized. So we have asked the President to exercise the government's eminent domain power to ensure that adequate supplies of PPE are available to health care workers. That may impact availability of masks for the general public in the near term, until supply chains can respond to the large increase in demand." What they actually said was: "Masks don't work so don't bother trying to buy them."

jasonlotito 5y ago
Back in January 2020 they were saying n95 masks are primarily for health care workers. They didn't say they don't work. There are news articles from then that literally talk about the statements you are claiming they should have said. "Most people don’t know how to use face masks correctly, and a rush to buy masks could prevent the people who need them most — health care providers — from getting them." The Surgeon General under Trump did make a statment: " U.S. surgeon general recently urged the public to “STOP BUYING MASKS!” “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!,” wrote Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Twitter" So maybe you are confusing that statement? Regardless, the messaging was obviously not clear, but I can't find anything confirming the CDC said "masks don't work so don't bother trying to buy them."
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Dr. Fauci went on TV to tell people that there is no reason to wear a mask. He’s strictly NIAID but considering NIAID is in the CDC and that’s under HHS that leaves us with the CDC silent between two guys telling us not to wear masks.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > There are news articles from then that literally talk about the statements you are claiming they should have said. "Most people don't know how to use face masks correctly" is not what I claimed they should have said. That's basically saying "masks don't work unless you're a health care worker who has been trained to wear them properly". Which is wrong since plenty of people who aren't health care workers do know how to wear masks properly. It's not rocket science; you just have to make sure there's a proper seal. Most N95 mask packages give explicit directions about how to do that. > "a rush to buy masks could prevent the people who need them most — health care providers — from getting them." Which, again, is not what I claimed they should have said. The proper response to this valid concern, as I said, would have been to use the government's eminent domain power to ensure that PPE was prioritized to health care workers (or, in the case of the CDC, NIH, etc. who don't have that authority themselves, to recommend to the President to do that). Not to prevaricate about people not knowing how to wear masks properly.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  It should be noted that Jerome Adams was a Trump political appointee, and not an employee of the CDC.
vlovich123 5y ago
There's arguments over whether the CDC was politicized under Trump [1]. It's possible this was career bureaucracy failures of course and the Biden administration is just trying to whitewash that failure by blaming the previous administration. For me however, the fact that right wing politicians appear to consistently exert pressure on scientific agencies [2] to toe the party line gives me a prior that scientific agencies under right wing governments are less trustworthy because they are subject to undue influence. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/01/24/cdc-director-agency-was-muzzled-under-trump/?sh=21d8fc606fed https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/01/24/cdc-dir... [2] This is based on my observations of Canada and the USA where "politically sensitive" topics like global warming, reproductive rights, & gun rights (in the USA) are decidedly marked by publication and public speaking bans on the parts of scientists. These kinds of actions generally do not appear to be present under left-leaning administrations which seem to tolerate dissenting opinions and politically inconvenient statements/papers better. This does not necessarily imply a similar action for something like the CDC/pandemic, but I worry there may be unofficial indirect signalling effects from scientists observing what happens if you cross the current political power base.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > There's arguments over whether the CDC was politicized under Trump As far as I can tell, Trump had little if anything to do with public pronouncements by health officials about mask wearing. He did tend to discount mask effectiveness in his tweets and random public statements, but I think it's pretty well established that no government health officials gave any weight to his statements about that, or about anything else for that matter. I would agree that the Federal government's failure to take obvious steps like using eminent domain power to ensure adequate supplies of PPE to health care workers was Trump's failure while he was President, since the President is the one who has the final say on the Federal government's eminent domain power.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Both Fauci and Birx have stated that they had to moderate their language while speaking under Trump because they didn't want to anger him or be banished from giving information to the public.
ChrisRR 5y ago
The problem though was the question, and the mismatch between how the scientific community and the layman communicate When asked do masks stop the spread of covid, the answer is and has always been no. No mask 100% stops the spread. If you share that information with the common person, it quickly becomes a facebook post about how masks are totally useless. No amount of ifs and buts will convince the common man if they don't want to be convinced. I've seen people even on hacker news adamantly treating Fauci's initial prediction that it would be no more dangerous than the flu as gospel, despite a 16 months of more up-to-date information I see that common misunderstanding that Kary Ellis said that PCR tests can't detect viruses, when he actually said PCR tests can't me used to measure viral loads on every single damn post about PCR tests. It's been debunked so much but people do not want to listen
- pdonis 5y ago
  > When asked do masks stop the spread of covid, the answer is and has always been no. No, the answer is to reject the question, and to redirect it instead to the proper scientific question, which is what fraction of incoming germs a mask will stop. That fraction is practically indistinguishable from 100% for an N95 mask properly sealed, is in the mid to high 90s for medical grade masks or masks of multiple layers of cloth properly sealed, and drops off sharply as the weave of the cloth loosens or the quality of the seal decreases. The problem is that so-called "scientists" refuse to do this. They make authoritative pronouncements instead, which of course are often wrong. Saying "no" to the question "do masks stop the spread of COVID" is just as wrong as saying "yes". But so-called "scientists" are too lazy or too caught up in their own sense of authority to properly reframe the question. So if the public then distrusts them because they make false authoritative pronouncements, they have nobody to blame but themselves. > No amount of ifs and buts will convince the common man if they don't want to be convinced. Most people are not extremists or crackpots. They are quite capable of understanding a response such as I gave above. And they are also quite capable of seeing when a person is not being forthright with them because that person is more concerned with maintaining their position as an authority then with telling the truth and being honest about what we actually do and do not know. So even if some of the things so-called "scientists" say are actually true, the public is right to not believe them, because once someone has shown that they will prevaricate with you, you cannot afford to take anything they say at face value. And that is precisely the position that our current public health authorities, not to mention scientists in many other fields, have gotten themselves into. As I said above, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

by pdonis 5y ago

jasonlotito 5y ago

Back in January 2020 they were saying n95 masks are primarily for health care workers. They didn't say they don't work. There are news articles from then that literally talk about the statements you are claiming they should have said. "Most people don’t know how to use face masks correctly, and a rush to buy masks could prevent the people who need them most — health care providers — from getting them." The Surgeon General under Trump did make a statment: " U.S. surgeon general recently urged the public to “STOP BUYING MASKS!” “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!,” wrote Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Twitter" So maybe you are confusing that statement? Regardless, the messaging was obviously not clear, but I can't find anything confirming the CDC said "masks don't work so don't bother trying to buy them."

renewiltord 5y ago
Dr. Fauci went on TV to tell people that there is no reason to wear a mask. He’s strictly NIAID but considering NIAID is in the CDC and that’s under HHS that leaves us with the CDC silent between two guys telling us not to wear masks.
pdonis 5y ago
> There are news articles from then that literally talk about the statements you are claiming they should have said. "Most people don't know how to use face masks correctly" is not what I claimed they should have said. That's basically saying "masks don't work unless you're a health care worker who has been trained to wear them properly". Which is wrong since plenty of people who aren't health care workers do know how to wear masks properly. It's not rocket science; you just have to make sure there's a proper seal. Most N95 mask packages give explicit directions about how to do that. > "a rush to buy masks could prevent the people who need them most — health care providers — from getting them." Which, again, is not what I claimed they should have said. The proper response to this valid concern, as I said, would have been to use the government's eminent domain power to ensure that PPE was prioritized to health care workers (or, in the case of the CDC, NIH, etc. who don't have that authority themselves, to recommend to the President to do that). Not to prevaricate about people not knowing how to wear masks properly.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
It should be noted that Jerome Adams was a Trump political appointee, and not an employee of the CDC.

vlovich123 5y ago

There's arguments over whether the CDC was politicized under Trump [1]. It's possible this was career bureaucracy failures of course and the Biden administration is just trying to whitewash that failure by blaming the previous administration. For me however, the fact that right wing politicians appear to consistently exert pressure on scientific agencies [2] to toe the party line gives me a prior that scientific agencies under right wing governments are less trustworthy because they are subject to undue influence. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/01/24/cdc-director-agency-was-muzzled-under-trump/?sh=21d8fc606fed https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/01/24/cdc-dir... [2] This is based on my observations of Canada and the USA where "politically sensitive" topics like global warming, reproductive rights, & gun rights (in the USA) are decidedly marked by publication and public speaking bans on the parts of scientists. These kinds of actions generally do not appear to be present under left-leaning administrations which seem to tolerate dissenting opinions and politically inconvenient statements/papers better. This does not necessarily imply a similar action for something like the CDC/pandemic, but I worry there may be unofficial indirect signalling effects from scientists observing what happens if you cross the current political power base.

pdonis 5y ago
> There's arguments over whether the CDC was politicized under Trump As far as I can tell, Trump had little if anything to do with public pronouncements by health officials about mask wearing. He did tend to discount mask effectiveness in his tweets and random public statements, but I think it's pretty well established that no government health officials gave any weight to his statements about that, or about anything else for that matter. I would agree that the Federal government's failure to take obvious steps like using eminent domain power to ensure adequate supplies of PPE to health care workers was Trump's failure while he was President, since the President is the one who has the final say on the Federal government's eminent domain power.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Both Fauci and Birx have stated that they had to moderate their language while speaking under Trump because they didn't want to anger him or be banished from giving information to the public.

ChrisRR 5y ago

The problem though was the question, and the mismatch between how the scientific community and the layman communicate When asked do masks stop the spread of covid, the answer is and has always been no. No mask 100% stops the spread. If you share that information with the common person, it quickly becomes a facebook post about how masks are totally useless. No amount of ifs and buts will convince the common man if they don't want to be convinced. I've seen people even on hacker news adamantly treating Fauci's initial prediction that it would be no more dangerous than the flu as gospel, despite a 16 months of more up-to-date information I see that common misunderstanding that Kary Ellis said that PCR tests can't detect viruses, when he actually said PCR tests can't me used to measure viral loads on every single damn post about PCR tests. It's been debunked so much but people do not want to listen

pdonis 5y ago
> When asked do masks stop the spread of covid, the answer is and has always been no. No, the answer is to reject the question, and to redirect it instead to the proper scientific question, which is what fraction of incoming germs a mask will stop. That fraction is practically indistinguishable from 100% for an N95 mask properly sealed, is in the mid to high 90s for medical grade masks or masks of multiple layers of cloth properly sealed, and drops off sharply as the weave of the cloth loosens or the quality of the seal decreases. The problem is that so-called "scientists" refuse to do this. They make authoritative pronouncements instead, which of course are often wrong. Saying "no" to the question "do masks stop the spread of COVID" is just as wrong as saying "yes". But so-called "scientists" are too lazy or too caught up in their own sense of authority to properly reframe the question. So if the public then distrusts them because they make false authoritative pronouncements, they have nobody to blame but themselves. > No amount of ifs and buts will convince the common man if they don't want to be convinced. Most people are not extremists or crackpots. They are quite capable of understanding a response such as I gave above. And they are also quite capable of seeing when a person is not being forthright with them because that person is more concerned with maintaining their position as an authority then with telling the truth and being honest about what we actually do and do not know. So even if some of the things so-called "scientists" say are actually true, the public is right to not believe them, because once someone has shown that they will prevaricate with you, you cannot afford to take anything they say at face value. And that is precisely the position that our current public health authorities, not to mention scientists in many other fields, have gotten themselves into. As I said above, they have nobody to blame but themselves.