Public health is hard. How important is the truth if you know lying will save millions and millions of lives? Of course you can’t lie too much, or people will i

Public health is hard. How important is the truth if you know lying will save millions and millions of lives? Of course you can’t lie too much, or people will ignore you even when you tell the truth. What if your research on the disease model of alcoholism shows it to both be effective and a fantastical fabrication? Is it noble to publish this? Is it elitist to selectively distribute this knowledge? As for masks— when I reviewed the research last, there were clear benefits in the case of SARS-CoV-1, especially when compared to influenza (which appears to be unaffected by surgical masks.) So, the interesting and, perhaps, less controversial discussion is what sort of masking we would do if we were talking about a pandemic where the body of research data very strongly implied zero (or even slightly negative) effectiveness with masks for that specific contagion. And then the same scenario with a very high effectiveness. I’m not sure we would do anything different either way, and everyone would feel smugly correct while arguing based on the title of studies rather than their content.