3 ms·

I think GP is referring to the very early days (March 2020 to maybe May or so) when they were advising against the general public masking. Based on what I read

by saghm 4y ago

I think GP is referring to the very early days (March 2020 to maybe May or so) when they were advising against the general public masking. Based on what I read afterwards, it sounds like the idea was that they were worried that the higher end PPE would end out getting bought out by people who were worried (which given the outages on things that in seem pretty unrelated like toilet paper), so they discouraged masking for the general public at first to ensure supply for places like hospitals that needed it most. After a few months, they probably had more confidence in the availability in equipment, so they flipped the recommendation. I remember being surprised by this, since masking was never really something that I had done before or seen my friends and family do, but from reading a bit it seemed clear that it was the right thing to do, so I adapted. I suspect that the bad faith arguments against masking would still have been made if they hadn't first recommended not masking, but it certainly didn't help with getting the general public on board. I'd imagine that a certain segment of the population was not going to follow the recommendations no matter what, and the segment that did properly mask obviously would have even if the messaging had been to mask from the start (or if they didn't say anything about masking until they started recommending it), but I don't have a strong sense of how many people "in the middle" were swayed due to the fact that they at least appeared to have an inconsistent message on this.

spinlock 4y ago
I only watch the pbs news hour and remember Fauchi talking about masks at this time. He never claimed they didn’t work and always pointed out it was about preserving the supply. I suspect other news outlets didn’t give their viewers the full story. But, I’ll never know because I can’t stand most of the news.
- saghm 4y ago
  From a quick search of news at the time, it does seem like it was a bit more nuanced than I remembered, but probably still confusing enough for the average person that they wouldn't really know what was best. I found this PBS article from the end of March 2020 (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/should-you-wear-mask-in-public-if-not-sick-with-coronavirus https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/should-you-wear-mask-in-...), which showed a spectrum of recommendations: > “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS!” Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote in a February 29 tweet. “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.” > Earlier in the day, Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, had told CNN that once there are enough masks, there might be “some very serious consideration” about broadening the mask recommendations. > For now, the advice posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: “If you are NOT sick: You do not need to wear a face mask unless you are caring for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a face mask).” The first quote makes it clear that the concern is about the supply for healthcare, but saying "they are not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus" probably did not make it easier to convince people to wear masks a couple months later; regardless of the technical meaning behind it, I think most people would read that and boil it down to just remembering "masks don't help" without the context behind it. On the other hand, while the final quote doesn't go as far as saying they don't help, it doesn't give the context about the priority in conserving masks for healthcare facilities, so it seems likely some people would find it confusing later when the recommendation changed without context for why. Ideally, people would be getting information from a variety of sources, see some form of all three quotes above and understand the whole picture, but it seems like a losing strategy to rely on this; it seems like having more cohesive messaging around this would have been more effective, but that's hard to do even in a vaccuum, let alone in a high pressure situation with a bunch of people who probably never had had to collaborate this heavily before.
  - spinlock 4y ago
    > “In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite,” he added, noting risks from an improperly fitted mask or touching the face while taking it off or putting it on. it's hard to remember what our state of mind was back then. Hillary Clinton wrote a book in 2015 as she was preparing to run for president. She dedicated a chapter to PPE and was very interested in funding research into helping doctors get PPE on and off more safely. Those were the learnings taken from the Ebola outbreak where taking off your PPE improperly could get you infected. We know know that Covid isn't really transmitted by touching your face so much as from the arousals that we breath. But, back then, people were still in the Ebola mindset of "don't touch your face."

by saghm 4y ago

spinlock 4y ago

I only watch the pbs news hour and remember Fauchi talking about masks at this time. He never claimed they didn’t work and always pointed out it was about preserving the supply. I suspect other news outlets didn’t give their viewers the full story. But, I’ll never know because I can’t stand most of the news.

saghm 4y ago
From a quick search of news at the time, it does seem like it was a bit more nuanced than I remembered, but probably still confusing enough for the average person that they wouldn't really know what was best. I found this PBS article from the end of March 2020 (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/should-you-wear-mask-in-public-if-not-sick-with-coronavirus https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/should-you-wear-mask-in-...), which showed a spectrum of recommendations: > “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS!” Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote in a February 29 tweet. “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.” > Earlier in the day, Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, had told CNN that once there are enough masks, there might be “some very serious consideration” about broadening the mask recommendations. > For now, the advice posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: “If you are NOT sick: You do not need to wear a face mask unless you are caring for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a face mask).” The first quote makes it clear that the concern is about the supply for healthcare, but saying "they are not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus" probably did not make it easier to convince people to wear masks a couple months later; regardless of the technical meaning behind it, I think most people would read that and boil it down to just remembering "masks don't help" without the context behind it. On the other hand, while the final quote doesn't go as far as saying they don't help, it doesn't give the context about the priority in conserving masks for healthcare facilities, so it seems likely some people would find it confusing later when the recommendation changed without context for why. Ideally, people would be getting information from a variety of sources, see some form of all three quotes above and understand the whole picture, but it seems like a losing strategy to rely on this; it seems like having more cohesive messaging around this would have been more effective, but that's hard to do even in a vaccuum, let alone in a high pressure situation with a bunch of people who probably never had had to collaborate this heavily before.
- spinlock 4y ago
  > “In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite,” he added, noting risks from an improperly fitted mask or touching the face while taking it off or putting it on. it's hard to remember what our state of mind was back then. Hillary Clinton wrote a book in 2015 as she was preparing to run for president. She dedicated a chapter to PPE and was very interested in funding research into helping doctors get PPE on and off more safely. Those were the learnings taken from the Ebola outbreak where taking off your PPE improperly could get you infected. We know know that Covid isn't really transmitted by touching your face so much as from the arousals that we breath. But, back then, people were still in the Ebola mindset of "don't touch your face."