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> The messaging IIRC was a little more nuanced, but delivered poorly No, there was no nuance here and everyone in this thread is mis-remembering or mis-underst

> The messaging IIRC was a little more nuanced, but delivered poorly No, there was no nuance here and everyone in this thread is mis-remembering or mis-understood what actually happened. Masks don't work against COVID. They never did. They don't reduce viral load or anything else either. In fact there was no evidence of masks doing much of anything in the scientific literature pre-COVID (post-COVID it's been polluted by terrible and invalid post-facto rationalization studies). Fauci/CDC/the entire public health community knew this and were saying so explicitly in private emails to each other, as well as in public. This wasn't just a US thing, every country was doing the same thing. UK public health officials were also saying masks didn't work for example. This was not because they were worried about a shortage, as their private emails made clear. It was because there was genuinely no evidence they could point at to support masking everyone. The moment they realized nobody in power cared about evidence anymore and they could do whatever they wanted, suddenly the masks came in. How to explain their previous stance? Oh, it was a noble lie for the greater good. Problem is, it wasn't - the idea of the noble lie is itself the lie. Very confusing, admittedly. But also, it should really be obvious that it's a lie: 1. It's very easy for governments to control imports and distributions of masks (they were virtually all imported from Asia back then). If you actually believe health care workers should be prioritized, lying to people for months in the hope they believe you and then reversing your position is the absolute worst way to do things. Imposing customs controls at the ports is the best way. 2. Anyone who paid attention to case graphs can immediately see that they don't change even a tiny bit when mask mandates are added or removed. See [1] for a few examples but there are hundreds more. [1] https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-are?s=r https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/every-comparison-shows-masks-a...

chimprich 4y ago
That blog post is complete nonsense. You can't look at graphs of when mask mandates were introduced and then lifted, because you can't isolate cause and effect. Mask mandates tend to get introduced when cases are going up, and removed when cases are going down. This would be absolutely shredded in a scientific paper, which is why it's a blog post rather than part of the literature.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Kinda unsettling that we even required masks on the public with no evidence they worked going in, eh? If they truly worked to a level that justified their use, I’d expect it to have made a massive impact on important metrics. Thus far, I see no evidence of that. You can compare the trajectory of various geographic regions and they all follow the same basic shape in the same ball park regardless of policies in place.
  - chimprich 4y ago
    > Kinda unsettling that we even required masks on the public with no evidence they worked going in, eh? No, not in the slightest. The evidence wasn't perfect, but you have to operate using the best working evidence you have. It's logical that face coverings reduce spread of a virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets. The experimental evidence also supports it. The downside, of people being mildly inconvenienced by wearing a cloth over their face, is tiny compared the risks of your health systems getting overwhelmed. The disturbing thing is that we did not initially err on the side of caution. > I’d expect it to have made a massive impact on important metrics. It doesn't have to have a massive impact to be useful. > You can compare the trajectory of various geographic regions and they all follow the same basic shape in the same ball park regardless of policies in place. "Same basic shape". What, you mean up then down, as new variants emerged, and seasonal effects were encountered? How are you assessing that they are the same shape? Have you done an analysis against all countries with reliable data or are you eyeballing the graphs from a few cherry-picked regions by a blogger?
    - native_samples 4y ago
      > The evidence wasn't perfect, but you have to operate using the best working evidence you have. It's logical that face coverings reduce spread of a virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets. You're making two mistakes here, that mask advocates frequently make: 1. At the time this decision was made there was no evidence that masks would have any effect. That's why public health officials around the world were saying they'd have no effect. It wasn't a noble lie, they were actually telling the truth about masks at the start and we can see that by simply searching the literature for evidence masks are effective that predate March 2020. Thus there is no justification for this policy given evidence based decision making. 2. Your claim about what's logical is predicated on the belief that COVID spreads through large droplets of water. This isn't how it works. COVID spreads like a gas, against which masks are useless. > The downside, of people being mildly inconvenienced by wearing a cloth over their face, is tiny compared the risks of your health systems getting overwhelmed If masks don't work then the risk of health systems being overwhelmed is irrelevant. And they don't work, that's the point you keep trying to avoid. But equally as important: the downsides of the policy are far, far greater than "minor inconvenience". If you really believe that's the only downside you have no business forming opinions on health matters at all. Firstly: wearing masks is unnatural and not surprisingly, doing that for too long breaks things. Things like children. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1592670/covid-news-babies-suffering-lockdown-mask-facial-expressions-ofsted https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1592670/covid-news-babies-... The UK education regulator has just issued a report about delays in babies development and struggles with responding to basic facial expressions. They say “Children turning two years old will have been surrounded by adults wearing masks for their whole lives and have therefore been unable to see lip movements or mouth shapes as regularly.” There are certainly many other problems, think of the enormous trash problem it creates too. Secondly, the policy is incredibly destructive in other ways. The entire population spent the last two years being forced to go along with an obviously incorrect and pointless rule, along with absurd caveats like restaurant physics. It's utterly destructive to people's confidence in public health and the ability of governments to make rational decisions. If anyone ever needs any reason to doubt public health ever again, about anything, masks is all the justification they'll ever need.

chimprich 4y ago

That blog post is complete nonsense. You can't look at graphs of when mask mandates were introduced and then lifted, because you can't isolate cause and effect. Mask mandates tend to get introduced when cases are going up, and removed when cases are going down. This would be absolutely shredded in a scientific paper, which is why it's a blog post rather than part of the literature.

spookthesunset 4y ago
Kinda unsettling that we even required masks on the public with no evidence they worked going in, eh? If they truly worked to a level that justified their use, I’d expect it to have made a massive impact on important metrics. Thus far, I see no evidence of that. You can compare the trajectory of various geographic regions and they all follow the same basic shape in the same ball park regardless of policies in place.
- chimprich 4y ago
  > Kinda unsettling that we even required masks on the public with no evidence they worked going in, eh? No, not in the slightest. The evidence wasn't perfect, but you have to operate using the best working evidence you have. It's logical that face coverings reduce spread of a virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets. The experimental evidence also supports it. The downside, of people being mildly inconvenienced by wearing a cloth over their face, is tiny compared the risks of your health systems getting overwhelmed. The disturbing thing is that we did not initially err on the side of caution. > I’d expect it to have made a massive impact on important metrics. It doesn't have to have a massive impact to be useful. > You can compare the trajectory of various geographic regions and they all follow the same basic shape in the same ball park regardless of policies in place. "Same basic shape". What, you mean up then down, as new variants emerged, and seasonal effects were encountered? How are you assessing that they are the same shape? Have you done an analysis against all countries with reliable data or are you eyeballing the graphs from a few cherry-picked regions by a blogger?
  - native_samples 4y ago
    > The evidence wasn't perfect, but you have to operate using the best working evidence you have. It's logical that face coverings reduce spread of a virus spread primarily through respiratory droplets. You're making two mistakes here, that mask advocates frequently make: 1. At the time this decision was made there was no evidence that masks would have any effect. That's why public health officials around the world were saying they'd have no effect. It wasn't a noble lie, they were actually telling the truth about masks at the start and we can see that by simply searching the literature for evidence masks are effective that predate March 2020. Thus there is no justification for this policy given evidence based decision making. 2. Your claim about what's logical is predicated on the belief that COVID spreads through large droplets of water. This isn't how it works. COVID spreads like a gas, against which masks are useless. > The downside, of people being mildly inconvenienced by wearing a cloth over their face, is tiny compared the risks of your health systems getting overwhelmed If masks don't work then the risk of health systems being overwhelmed is irrelevant. And they don't work, that's the point you keep trying to avoid. But equally as important: the downsides of the policy are far, far greater than "minor inconvenience". If you really believe that's the only downside you have no business forming opinions on health matters at all. Firstly: wearing masks is unnatural and not surprisingly, doing that for too long breaks things. Things like children. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1592670/covid-news-babies-suffering-lockdown-mask-facial-expressions-ofsted https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1592670/covid-news-babies-... The UK education regulator has just issued a report about delays in babies development and struggles with responding to basic facial expressions. They say “Children turning two years old will have been surrounded by adults wearing masks for their whole lives and have therefore been unable to see lip movements or mouth shapes as regularly.” There are certainly many other problems, think of the enormous trash problem it creates too. Secondly, the policy is incredibly destructive in other ways. The entire population spent the last two years being forced to go along with an obviously incorrect and pointless rule, along with absurd caveats like restaurant physics. It's utterly destructive to people's confidence in public health and the ability of governments to make rational decisions. If anyone ever needs any reason to doubt public health ever again, about anything, masks is all the justification they'll ever need.