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> All presumably to save a mask shortage I don't think so. There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic about whether masks would be helpful

> All presumably to save a mask shortage I don't think so. There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic about whether masks would be helpful. We didn't know if the virus was airborne and there was a question about whether the masks would actually be helpful. For example, the masks could have had very low benefit but encouraged people to touch their face more. Whitty in March 2020: "In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that. The only people we do sometimes use masks for are people who have got an infection and that is to help them to stop it spreading around." I think this was a mistake: common sense suggests that they should have had some effect (and the evidence ended up supporting this). But I don't see any evidence for it being deliberate misinformation to avoid pressure on mask sourcing. I also think that this one mistake should not be held up as the key problem in the pandemic. Public health information in the UK has generally been very good. Most of the missteps in the pandemic were from poor governmental decisions. > no talk of this in the media This is absolutely not true. I've seen this issue discussed ad nauseum.

elihu 5y ago
As far as I know, the advice that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very well from getting Covid has held up pretty good; they're a lot better at protecting everyone else from the mask wearer. The logical flaw then was that telling people to just wear masks if they're infected doesn't work very well if highly contagious people don't know they're infected, which turned out to be the case. I can see where it might have taken awhile to figure that out, but still the lack of transparency about how these decisions were made and the resulting credibility deficit is a problem.
- native_samples 5y ago
  "the advice that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very well from getting Covid has held up pretty good; they're a lot better at protecting everyone else from the mask wearer." They're actually no good at anything. You can compare places that were right next to each other and which differed only in mask mandates, or look at the times mask mandates were introduced and removed. Cases don't shift. See the graphs here, where the numbers from different nearby regions are overlayed on the same graph with the times of mask mandate rule changes: https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-are https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-a... That's why when you dig into the citations of a paper claiming masks work, you invariably find some invalid evidence, like they'll be citing model outputs as evidence of real-world effects, or they'll cite a study whose CI includes zero, etc.
  - chimprich 5y ago
    This is nonsense. You can't do comparisons like that. For example, mask mandates tend to get imposed when cases are rising, and removed when they fall. To say they have no effect on cases is to confuse cause and effect. The conspiracy site you link to has no interest in looking at the data dispassionately. There's a reason why we have data science and peer review to investigate these things.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      The site I link to isn't a "conspiracy site", it's a blog written by a guy who does lots of data analysis. Please, have you not learned yet that this word is meaningless anyway? There are lots of cases where mask mandates were not added and removed at the times you claim, which were geographically next to each other, and in which there was no observed difference. There are lots of cases where mask mandates were added and the trend of the case graph didn't change at all. These are evidence against the hypothesis that masks work which was, note, the standard belief prior to mid-2020. That's why public health officials all said mass masking doesn't work. It's because it doesn't.
      - chimprich 5y ago
        > The site I link to isn't a "conspiracy site", it's a blog written by a guy who does lots of data analysis. Those aren't mutually exclusive. Anyone can throw some graphs together on a blog. Why should we trust him over papers that have been peer reviewed by experts in their fields? It's a series of cherry-picked comparisons. Why is he comparing Germany to Sweden? They don't even share a border. Why not UK to France or Peru to Ecuador? Did he pick those countries because it happens to support his theory? We don't have to wonder, because he admits it: "Perhaps the clearest example of the delusional political obsession with pretending masks matter is found in Southern California." Oh, great. So why are you showing us the "clearest examples"? Why not a comparison of the other places which aren't as "clear"? How can we determine if it's statistically significant if it's not a systematic study? There are lots of other problems with that page. He's a crank.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  I think that's largely true of cloth masks, but well fitted N95 (or similar) masks also protect the wearer.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Droplet transmission works via the eyes as well though. Hospital staff wear an N95, full garments, and a face shield for example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR25COr2FSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR25COr2FSs - and also depend on the hospital having adequate ventilation. And it "sort of" works most of the time.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      That still implies that the masks are doing something. Of course it's not 100%. And it's worth noting the hospital staff have much greater exposure than the general public.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
> There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic Among the civilian population, perhaps. Not among politicians and health officials. At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks to conserve them for health personnel.
- chimprich 5y ago
  > At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks This is not true. I think Fauci etc. admitted that a reason masks weren't recommended early on was partly to conserve masks. That's quite different from the claim that they actively lied about them.
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    Perhaps. But we had a pandemic during the Obama/Biden admin, but no stockpile of appropriate PPE, masks, etc. This was, we were told, the pro-science administration. Pandemics are such a common trope that Hollywood has made multiple (bad) movies revolving around them. Yet it appears we were unprepared for the basics. What Fauci said or why isn't important. The question we should be asking is: Why were in that position to begin with? We were warned - time and again - and each time that warning was ignored.
    - snomad 5y ago
      > We were warned - time and again - and each time that warning was ignored. And at least in the US, their are 1000s of people receiving good money to take that warning seriously. And they still failed.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      This is wrong. The Obama administration did quite a bit to prevent future pandemics and the Trump administration dismantled it all pretty much immediately. Three things come to mind: the pandemic playbook, the pandemic response office, and the public health observers in China that were all recalled under Trump.
cortic 5y ago
>wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. I remember this, at the time we knew people who were infected (and infectious) could take more than 10 days to show symptoms, and if they didn't wear a mask they could infect hundreds. We also knew that anything less than an N95 wasn't designed to protect the wearer anyway (though as it turns out it does), but rather everyone else from the wearer. So it was really disingenuous of them to suggest your mask doesn't protect you, as they knew its everyone else's mask than protects you.. By the time it hit Italy we knew it was airborne, even if not by official measure, out government and the WHO kept this BS up for months after that. Maybe we watch different media, as i have seen nothing about this issue. A few articles online, hidden away, nothing proportional to the seriousness of the issue.
the-alt-one 5y ago
It took a very long time for the Swedish FHM to say that masks work, so I don't know why everyone assumes that the rest lied to prevent a mask shortage.
b112 5y ago
Seeing as at the start, it was 100% known that covid spreads for weeks, prior to showing symptoms, that people may never show symptoms and spread, and further that tests did not exist for months, and were in short supply thereafter, any mask policy predicted upon being aware of infection would be negligent, incompetent, and just plain dumb.
tristor 5y ago
> I don't think so. There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic about whether masks would be helpful. Just like anything, reality is a bit more complicated. I don't think there was any genuine uncertainty about whether masks were helpful or effective, as we already knew that at minimum COVID-19 was droplet spread due to it being so similar to SARS. The issue was whether or not the public could correctly and effectively use masks, because wearing them properly is important as improper wear can actually /increase/ exposure to capture viral particles on the mask material. But rather than just be honest and tell people the truth, they chose to spread simple lies.

elihu 5y ago

As far as I know, the advice that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very well from getting Covid has held up pretty good; they're a lot better at protecting everyone else from the mask wearer. The logical flaw then was that telling people to just wear masks if they're infected doesn't work very well if highly contagious people don't know they're infected, which turned out to be the case. I can see where it might have taken awhile to figure that out, but still the lack of transparency about how these decisions were made and the resulting credibility deficit is a problem.

native_samples 5y ago
"the advice that wearing a mask doesn't protect you very well from getting Covid has held up pretty good; they're a lot better at protecting everyone else from the mask wearer." They're actually no good at anything. You can compare places that were right next to each other and which differed only in mask mandates, or look at the times mask mandates were introduced and removed. Cases don't shift. See the graphs here, where the numbers from different nearby regions are overlayed on the same graph with the times of mask mandate rule changes: https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-are https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-a... That's why when you dig into the citations of a paper claiming masks work, you invariably find some invalid evidence, like they'll be citing model outputs as evidence of real-world effects, or they'll cite a study whose CI includes zero, etc.
- chimprich 5y ago
  This is nonsense. You can't do comparisons like that. For example, mask mandates tend to get imposed when cases are rising, and removed when they fall. To say they have no effect on cases is to confuse cause and effect. The conspiracy site you link to has no interest in looking at the data dispassionately. There's a reason why we have data science and peer review to investigate these things.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    The site I link to isn't a "conspiracy site", it's a blog written by a guy who does lots of data analysis. Please, have you not learned yet that this word is meaningless anyway? There are lots of cases where mask mandates were not added and removed at the times you claim, which were geographically next to each other, and in which there was no observed difference. There are lots of cases where mask mandates were added and the trend of the case graph didn't change at all. These are evidence against the hypothesis that masks work which was, note, the standard belief prior to mid-2020. That's why public health officials all said mass masking doesn't work. It's because it doesn't.
    - chimprich 5y ago
      > The site I link to isn't a "conspiracy site", it's a blog written by a guy who does lots of data analysis. Those aren't mutually exclusive. Anyone can throw some graphs together on a blog. Why should we trust him over papers that have been peer reviewed by experts in their fields? It's a series of cherry-picked comparisons. Why is he comparing Germany to Sweden? They don't even share a border. Why not UK to France or Peru to Ecuador? Did he pick those countries because it happens to support his theory? We don't have to wonder, because he admits it: "Perhaps the clearest example of the delusional political obsession with pretending masks matter is found in Southern California." Oh, great. So why are you showing us the "clearest examples"? Why not a comparison of the other places which aren't as "clear"? How can we determine if it's statistically significant if it's not a systematic study? There are lots of other problems with that page. He's a crank.
nicoburns 5y ago
I think that's largely true of cloth masks, but well fitted N95 (or similar) masks also protect the wearer.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Droplet transmission works via the eyes as well though. Hospital staff wear an N95, full garments, and a face shield for example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR25COr2FSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR25COr2FSs - and also depend on the hospital having adequate ventilation. And it "sort of" works most of the time.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    That still implies that the masks are doing something. Of course it's not 100%. And it's worth noting the hospital staff have much greater exposure than the general public.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

> There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic Among the civilian population, perhaps. Not among politicians and health officials. At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks to conserve them for health personnel.

chimprich 5y ago
> At least Fauci, WHO, and Finnish health authorities HAVE come out afterwards and admitted that they lied about masks This is not true. I think Fauci etc. admitted that a reason masks weren't recommended early on was partly to conserve masks. That's quite different from the claim that they actively lied about them.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Perhaps. But we had a pandemic during the Obama/Biden admin, but no stockpile of appropriate PPE, masks, etc. This was, we were told, the pro-science administration. Pandemics are such a common trope that Hollywood has made multiple (bad) movies revolving around them. Yet it appears we were unprepared for the basics. What Fauci said or why isn't important. The question we should be asking is: Why were in that position to begin with? We were warned - time and again - and each time that warning was ignored.
  - snomad 5y ago
    > We were warned - time and again - and each time that warning was ignored. And at least in the US, their are 1000s of people receiving good money to take that warning seriously. And they still failed.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    This is wrong. The Obama administration did quite a bit to prevent future pandemics and the Trump administration dismantled it all pretty much immediately. Three things come to mind: the pandemic playbook, the pandemic response office, and the public health observers in China that were all recalled under Trump.

cortic 5y ago

>wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. I remember this, at the time we knew people who were infected (and infectious) could take more than 10 days to show symptoms, and if they didn't wear a mask they could infect hundreds. We also knew that anything less than an N95 wasn't designed to protect the wearer anyway (though as it turns out it does), but rather everyone else from the wearer. So it was really disingenuous of them to suggest your mask doesn't protect you, as they knew its everyone else's mask than protects you.. By the time it hit Italy we knew it was airborne, even if not by official measure, out government and the WHO kept this BS up for months after that. Maybe we watch different media, as i have seen nothing about this issue. A few articles online, hidden away, nothing proportional to the seriousness of the issue.

the-alt-one 5y ago

It took a very long time for the Swedish FHM to say that masks work, so I don't know why everyone assumes that the rest lied to prevent a mask shortage.

b112 5y ago

Seeing as at the start, it was 100% known that covid spreads for weeks, prior to showing symptoms, that people may never show symptoms and spread, and further that tests did not exist for months, and were in short supply thereafter, any mask policy predicted upon being aware of infection would be negligent, incompetent, and just plain dumb.

tristor 5y ago

> I don't think so. There seemed to be genuine uncertainty early on in the pandemic about whether masks would be helpful. Just like anything, reality is a bit more complicated. I don't think there was any genuine uncertainty about whether masks were helpful or effective, as we already knew that at minimum COVID-19 was droplet spread due to it being so similar to SARS. The issue was whether or not the public could correctly and effectively use masks, because wearing them properly is important as improper wear can actually /increase/ exposure to capture viral particles on the mask material. But rather than just be honest and tell people the truth, they chose to spread simple lies.