17 ms·

There WAS a LOT of misinformation about covid, and a lot of it could cause real harm. Quite true. Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent o

by causi 4y ago

There WAS a LOT of misinformation about covid, and a lot of it could cause real harm. Quite true. Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. That irrevocably shattered a whole lot of people's faith in the CDC and the government in general. People saw that the agency tasked with protecting their lives had lied to them, and once the truth was revealed discovered those lies had done nothing but open the door for price gougers to buy up the entire mask supply. What the CDC had told them not to buy for a dime a piece they now told them to buy for ten dollars a piece, and the new law now required them to have it. Once they threw their own credibility on the fire, people had to go looking for something else to believe in. For many of them it was crazy conspiracy theories and demagogues.

arcticbull 4y ago
> Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. They made it clear after the fact that this was done because there wasn't an adequate supply of masks for 330M people, and they needed to secure a supply for first responders. The job of the government is to make tough decisions like this in times of crisis. You can agree or disagree but this was neither malicious nor in my opinion outside the scope of the role. We also knew a lot less about what was going on at that time, and once again, that means we need to extend some degree of leniency to folks making conservative if difficult choices like this. If it came down to it yeah of course we need to secure the supply for first responders first. Now we never should have been in that position in the first place but that was the fault of past administrations, not the CDC in the moment and didn't change what needed to be done. > It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. Some masks, but not all masks. Single layer cloth masks do nothing. [1] N95s sure, but even at peak COVID most people weren't wearing N95s, they were wearing non-medical surgical-style masks, which only block between 30 and 70% of particles. Even still while less effective than N95s, those surgical masks do help. [2] [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/8460528/masks-effectiveness-omicron/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8460528/masks-effectiveness-omicr... [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296
- jacquesm 4y ago
  An important consideration that I have not seen mentioned yet is that masks have a 'best before date', this is because they are infused with a static charge that aims to attract particles to the mask material and this charge doesn't last forever. You can 'recharge' masks but that's a lot of work and usually not in the normal path for such supplies. So stockpiles that were present were not going to be effective against viruses (which are very small particles). Add to that that this was before there was positive confirmation the virus was airborne (though there were plenty of people suggesting that none had proof) to make the chaos complete. I don't think that even with hindsight there was a set of decisions that would not have left something to be disputed.
  - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
    Other countries got it right. When the CDC was dithering about whether masks work and whether the virus was airborne (which should have been clear by early February with all the case evidence we had from Asia), their South Korean counterparts ordered Samsung to purchase tons of meltblown fibers, because making the masks themselves is not hard. Then the Korean government instituted limits on exports and rationing of what was on the market. I worked in a hospital in Seoul, and we (non-caregivers) got two N95s per week. This is what the US government should have done: used the defense production act to provide a guaranteed purchaser with 2 or 3-year contracts for whoever could manufacture masks or mask components domestically ASAP, instead of ruining their credibility to calm panic, and then coordinated the states in temporarily controlling rationing until supplies stabilized. The idiocy that is a national stockpile is another thing. If the stockpile is of persihables what you really need is a nationally mandated buffer, with the govt paying suppliers to rotate through X days of stock on hand.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      I wonder how much of the damage to South Korea was due to that one group of people that went around infecting others on purpose, if not for that they may well have done much better still.
    - 4y ago
ethanbond 4y ago
This whole part of the narrative is, unfortunately, a story about how people cannot be delivered nuanced messages even while screaming that they deserve nuance. The CDC did not say that makes do not work. They said we do not know if masks work, which was (and mostly still remains) true. Only person who said we have positive knowledge that masks don’t work was USSG Jerome Adams, and that was pretty late in the ordeal.
- causi 4y ago
  February 29th 2020 was "pretty late in the ordeal"?
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    It did seem pretty late to me at the time, but admittedly that was deep in COVID time warp era. Regardless of your assessment, USSG isn’t CDC. CDC nor FDA nor NIH ever said “masks don’t work.” They said what was true: we don’t know if they do work.
- newsclues 4y ago
  As someone that has been trained by one of the few organizations that develops leadership (military)... The communications and advise from the medical establishment and media, were so terrible that that I question incompetence and lean towards corruption. The flip flopping, the political and idealogical justifications, the theatre of everything without substance. The People can handle nuanced messaging, what they can't handle is lies, obfuscation, and leaders who refuse to admit they are wrong.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Yeah see people say all this but the actual example they use is a thing that didn’t happen. The nuanced, correct message was that we don’t know if masks work. That’s what they said. What you heard was “masks don’t work.” So what we actually learned is that people are not capable of receiving nuanced messages, at least among the people who are pissed off about not having received a nuanced message (which they did).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lettergram 4y ago
> It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. All studies done at scale, in peer reviewed journals before and since the pandemic have shown that not to be the case. N95s work, if used properly, that’s it. If you work / have worked with people in biosafety labs they’ll tell you. What we did during the pandemic was effectively role play. Cloth masks, surgical masks, kN95s, all do approximately nothing. Only thing you could maybe argue is people avoided each other a bit more and spit didn’t travel… but the virus was airborne and that was considered highly likely even in Jan 2020. Fauci’s FOIA requested private emails cover a lot of this; as does many many of the top epidemiologist (who were censored). *Addendum*: It’s the same with the companies, CDC and FDA who suppressed ivermectin research https://twitter.com/rwmalonemd/status/1607710183022628864 https://twitter.com/rwmalonemd/status/1607710183022628864 IMO the real reason they claimed “masks didn’t work”, “alternative drugs don’t work”, etc is because they needed the EUA. The companies producing the vaccines lobbied to get everything else suppressed so they could role out mRNA tech. That tech will allow them to offer pretty much any genetic therapy. Government had every incentive as well, more centralization and no liability. Pushing alternatives would pose more risks, with no upside. Imo this was inevitable. It was only preventable with an open market of ideas, which Twitter, Facebook and others suppressed.
- Jotra7 4y ago
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- mrcwinn 4y ago
  I'm willing to believe your claim that only N95 masks work, and other options do nothing at all, but what am I to do with seemingly reliable information that states otherwise? https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... It's just one source, but I'm genuinely curious.
  - lettergram 4y ago
    I say go to all large scale peer reviewed research prior to 2020. You’re taking some story from someone who writes for a college publication, not a peer reviewed source. There are researchers from Stanford who said exactly what I did above. Trillions of dollars were pumped into propaganda and research in 2020. It takes years to go through, receive grants, construct experiments, get approvals, analyze and validate. We are only now starting to see initial results for new masking studies. They still need to be replicated, etc. Here’s an example of a large scale study from 2015 where cloth masks increase risk of illness (over nothing): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/ Here’s a 2021 study showing masks aren’t really good as well (a randomized control trial) https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 My general point isn’t the specifics, it’s that the jury is out.
_cenw 4y ago
I find this not very credible as the biggest contributor to the anti-masker anti-vaxer movement, especially because that movement exists in places where most people don't even know what the CDC is.
- jesusofnazarath 4y ago
  [dead]
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  The CDC was not the only institution that spread this anti-mask narrative.
themitigating 4y ago
"CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID." Can you provide the source for this?
- timerol 4y ago
  Late Feb 2020 until early April 2020 https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    It is clear that the message in almost all that mask communication was that masks actually do work, but please save them for medical personnel... here are a few weak reasons why they probably won't help you that much anyway. And comparatively, they are way more critical for medical personnel. They should have just communicated it that way rather than trying to downplay effectiveness. Shortages abounded anyway.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  “The” source? Assuming you were alive and paying any attention the past two years, the source would be your own eyes and ears, consuming the (US) CDC’s official communications. I wasn’t even in the US and encountered them! In fact, I once even repeated one of their false claims about masks very early last year during a recorded zoom call with a friend. Then after looking at the very different claims from my local CDC, I realized the US one was wrong.
  - code_runner 4y ago
    I think so much of the messaging would have been better if there were disclaimers about “we are still doing research” and “based on our knowledge at this time”… or even timeboxing the advice so it’s updated every 12-48 hours even if unchanged. This specific messaging has been a rallying point for people who don’t even believe covid exists. At least that was the case in the US
BryantD 4y ago
It’s wild how we’ve completely forgotten the fomite hypothesis that was assumed for the first couple of months of the pandemic. Remember the guy who wanted us to bleach our vegetables? Remember all the distilleries making hand sanitizer because touch was the only thing that mattered? You don’t have to assume the CDC was full of lies if you remember that they were working from an inaccurate hypothesis at a time when reducing transmission rates seemed like it might be the most important thing in the world.
- kodah 4y ago
  It wasn't a bad thesis, that would be giving them credit they don't deserve: https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8735-4022-a1f5-1580bc732c45 https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8... Dr Fauci feared the rising costs of masks and whether the medical system would have enough. That wasn't his decision to make, but he made it. He later started using a new line, which is that they weren't aware that 40-50% of people were asymptomatic which was irrelevant for the problem at hand.
  - BryantD 4y ago
    That’s a great read! Fauci explains what facts he didn’t have at the time and why learning those facts changed his mind. If Covid was only transmissible by people with symptoms, you could control spread by asking those people to stay home and everyone else is clear — no masks needed. If it’s impossible to know if you’re infectious without testing, masks make more of a difference. More effective ones are obviously better. I certainly knew at the time that I was triaging masks because health care workers were more important than me. I still have a note on my fridge from February thanking me for donating some N95s I had from wildfire season. The trade off was pretty clear.
    - kodah 4y ago
      That's a narrative change, not a changing thesis. He knew at the time masks were needed by the general public but lied to the American public so that healthcare workers would have an adequate supply. He admits to that much. Again, a decision that was not his to make. He then realized that the lie was worse than he'd anticipated and started encouraging masks. Couple that with that Dr Fauci has been tied to being knowledgeable on gain of function research and most people can read between the lines.
clairity 4y ago
yet, masks did nothing other than stoke fears and division, as you're doing here. our masking behavior was, and continues to be, irrational, in that it was done at the wrong times with ill-conceived intent. people worried about masking against strangers, when most transmission happened from someone you knew and trusted (probably 95+%). they were generally ineffective by design (<n95), worn incorrectly (loosely), and worn at the wrong times (outdoors/retail). basically no one wore masks at home around their family and friends, where it might have actually reduced some transmission. understanding this, a little distancing was just as, if not more, effective and less divisive despite the literal interpersonal distance. the CDC was initially correct in assessing that (the way we wear) masks would not be a panacea for covid, but that was politically unpalatable which is why it was walked backed so haphazardly. masks, and all the CDC outrage around them, was effectively mediopolitical redirection of our anger toward each other rather than toward our corporatocratic institutions to quickly and correctly assess the threat and then appropriately deploy (only) effective measures.
- ryanbrunner 4y ago
  > most transmission happened from someone you knew and trusted (probably 95+%) While this is true, at least in the early pandemic when social circles were pretty tight (often just your household, but even if not quite a bit smaller than during normal times), the virus has to be introduced to that social circle, it won't just manifest itself out of nothing in one of it's members. Masking when not interacting with that circle will help keep the virus out of that circle of people in the first place. This is a very hard thing to maintain for long periods of time, but in the context of 2020 it's a reasonable approach to take.
  - clairity 4y ago
    sure, but that fits into the extant ~5%. it just takes a friend of a friend/family member to spread through social circles, since they overlap greatly, even for the tightest ones. as i see it, masks make sense in 2 general cases: 1) when uncertainty about transmission and lethality is high, as was the case in nov/dec 2019, until population risk is more closely bounded 2) when situational risk is measurably elevated over baseline, like having comorbidities, surgery, packed mass transit, etc. by april 2020, we (in the US at least) had enough information that masking wasn't going to be that panacea, when taking human behavior into account (trust channels, weariness, etc.). yet, it was still weaponized by the media and politicians. i know this because i was making these very same points back in april 2020. to be effective, a mask has to be worn at the right times (like being face-to-face with another human) and correctly (creating a tight seal around the nose and mouth using an effective filtering material). most people weren't doing either of these most of the time.
dredmorbius 4y ago
The US CDC's advice for the general public not to wear masks was born of several factors: 1. A severe shortage of masks which were considered to be particularly effective, specifically N-95 masks capable of filtering viral particles. Such masks as were available were being preferentially directed to healthcare providers and first-responders. 2. A concern that the general public would not wear or use masks appropriately, and might take additional compensatory risks on the premise that masks, often utilised suboptimally, provided strong protection. Note too that at the time vented masks, which had a flap that opened on exhale (and hence transmitted any viral particles to the environment) were fairly popular and widely-utilised. 3. A thought that COVID-19 was not as subject to airborne transmission as it turned out to be --- fomite-based transmission (particles on surfaces generally transferred by hand) was thought to be significant. Subsequent evidence has shown this to be far less the case than thought at the time. 4. A general lack of hard knowledge of specifics of the novel coronavirus, resulting in recommendations based on general principles of vector reduction drawn from other diseases. 5. A decidedly muddled, politicised, and anti-scientific response from the US administration at the time. For those keeping score, that was not the present Administration, though from discussion in this thread, that might not be clear. 6. In an epistemic environment in which trust in media, government, and expertise had been under prolonged attack. All of this was discussed at the time, and in particular Zeynep Tufekci was discussing most of these factors as early as 17 March 2020 in New York Times opinion pieces and elsewhere. Example: "Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired" Subtitle reveals much: "To help manage the shortage, the authorities sent a message that made them untrustworthy." ... First, many health experts, including the surgeon general of the United States, told the public simultaneously that masks weren’t necessary for protecting the general public and that health care workers needed the dwindling supply. This contradiction confuses an ordinary listener. How do these masks magically protect the wearers only and only if they work in a particular field? Second, there were attempts to bolster the first message, that ordinary people didn’t need masks, by telling people that masks, especially medical-grade respirator masks (such as the N95 masks), needed proper fitting and that ordinary people without such fitting wouldn’t benefit. This message was also deeply counterproductive. ... It is of course true that masks don’t work perfectly, that they don’t replace hand-washing and social distancing, and that they work better if they fit properly. And of course, surgical masks (the disposable type that surgeons wear) don’t filter out small viral particles the way medical-grade respirator masks rated N95 and above do. ... [P]roviding top-down guidance with such obvious contradictions backfires exactly because lack of trust is what fuels hoarding and misinformation. <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...> There's much more, the piece is well worth revisiting and should be a key document in future studies of the pandemic and its senselessly botched response. Failures to accurately describe the circumstances and context of the CDC advice, or to acknowledge that the CDC rapidly reversed course once this became evident are themselves harmful. Science is that which adapts to new knowledge and understanding. Dogma is that which clings to articles of faith despite evidence, in the interest of advancing a specific ideological agenda. For all its faults, the CDC followed science. Incorrectly initially as it turns out, but ultimately correcting itself rather than insisting on dogma. That point is made in another comment on this thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34150615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34150615> The further complication is in crafting effective, credible, useful, and actionable messaging in a time of crisis. Here too the CDC failed, but in large part because significant other actors were strongly intent (and remain strongly intent) in seeing it fail.
cbsmith 4y ago
> Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. That's not what they said, which kind of highlights just how much misinformation was indeed being spewed well before then.

by causi 4y ago

arcticbull 4y ago

> Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. They made it clear after the fact that this was done because there wasn't an adequate supply of masks for 330M people, and they needed to secure a supply for first responders. The job of the government is to make tough decisions like this in times of crisis. You can agree or disagree but this was neither malicious nor in my opinion outside the scope of the role. We also knew a lot less about what was going on at that time, and once again, that means we need to extend some degree of leniency to folks making conservative if difficult choices like this. If it came down to it yeah of course we need to secure the supply for first responders first. Now we never should have been in that position in the first place but that was the fault of past administrations, not the CDC in the moment and didn't change what needed to be done. > It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. Some masks, but not all masks. Single layer cloth masks do nothing. [1] N95s sure, but even at peak COVID most people weren't wearing N95s, they were wearing non-medical surgical-style masks, which only block between 30 and 70% of particles. Even still while less effective than N95s, those surgical masks do help. [2] [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/8460528/masks-effectiveness-omicron/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8460528/masks-effectiveness-omicr... [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296

jacquesm 4y ago
An important consideration that I have not seen mentioned yet is that masks have a 'best before date', this is because they are infused with a static charge that aims to attract particles to the mask material and this charge doesn't last forever. You can 'recharge' masks but that's a lot of work and usually not in the normal path for such supplies. So stockpiles that were present were not going to be effective against viruses (which are very small particles). Add to that that this was before there was positive confirmation the virus was airborne (though there were plenty of people suggesting that none had proof) to make the chaos complete. I don't think that even with hindsight there was a set of decisions that would not have left something to be disputed.
- ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
  Other countries got it right. When the CDC was dithering about whether masks work and whether the virus was airborne (which should have been clear by early February with all the case evidence we had from Asia), their South Korean counterparts ordered Samsung to purchase tons of meltblown fibers, because making the masks themselves is not hard. Then the Korean government instituted limits on exports and rationing of what was on the market. I worked in a hospital in Seoul, and we (non-caregivers) got two N95s per week. This is what the US government should have done: used the defense production act to provide a guaranteed purchaser with 2 or 3-year contracts for whoever could manufacture masks or mask components domestically ASAP, instead of ruining their credibility to calm panic, and then coordinated the states in temporarily controlling rationing until supplies stabilized. The idiocy that is a national stockpile is another thing. If the stockpile is of persihables what you really need is a nationally mandated buffer, with the govt paying suppliers to rotate through X days of stock on hand.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    I wonder how much of the damage to South Korea was due to that one group of people that went around infecting others on purpose, if not for that they may well have done much better still.
  - 4y ago

ethanbond 4y ago

This whole part of the narrative is, unfortunately, a story about how people cannot be delivered nuanced messages even while screaming that they deserve nuance. The CDC did not say that makes do not work. They said we do not know if masks work, which was (and mostly still remains) true. Only person who said we have positive knowledge that masks don’t work was USSG Jerome Adams, and that was pretty late in the ordeal.

causi 4y ago
February 29th 2020 was "pretty late in the ordeal"?
- ethanbond 4y ago
  It did seem pretty late to me at the time, but admittedly that was deep in COVID time warp era. Regardless of your assessment, USSG isn’t CDC. CDC nor FDA nor NIH ever said “masks don’t work.” They said what was true: we don’t know if they do work.
newsclues 4y ago
As someone that has been trained by one of the few organizations that develops leadership (military)... The communications and advise from the medical establishment and media, were so terrible that that I question incompetence and lean towards corruption. The flip flopping, the political and idealogical justifications, the theatre of everything without substance. The People can handle nuanced messaging, what they can't handle is lies, obfuscation, and leaders who refuse to admit they are wrong.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Yeah see people say all this but the actual example they use is a thing that didn’t happen. The nuanced, correct message was that we don’t know if masks work. That’s what they said. What you heard was “masks don’t work.” So what we actually learned is that people are not capable of receiving nuanced messages, at least among the people who are pissed off about not having received a nuanced message (which they did).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lettergram 4y ago

> It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. All studies done at scale, in peer reviewed journals before and since the pandemic have shown that not to be the case. N95s work, if used properly, that’s it. If you work / have worked with people in biosafety labs they’ll tell you. What we did during the pandemic was effectively role play. Cloth masks, surgical masks, kN95s, all do approximately nothing. Only thing you could maybe argue is people avoided each other a bit more and spit didn’t travel… but the virus was airborne and that was considered highly likely even in Jan 2020. Fauci’s FOIA requested private emails cover a lot of this; as does many many of the top epidemiologist (who were censored). *Addendum*: It’s the same with the companies, CDC and FDA who suppressed ivermectin research https://twitter.com/rwmalonemd/status/1607710183022628864 https://twitter.com/rwmalonemd/status/1607710183022628864 IMO the real reason they claimed “masks didn’t work”, “alternative drugs don’t work”, etc is because they needed the EUA. The companies producing the vaccines lobbied to get everything else suppressed so they could role out mRNA tech. That tech will allow them to offer pretty much any genetic therapy. Government had every incentive as well, more centralization and no liability. Pushing alternatives would pose more risks, with no upside. Imo this was inevitable. It was only preventable with an open market of ideas, which Twitter, Facebook and others suppressed.

Jotra7 4y ago
[dead]
mrcwinn 4y ago
I'm willing to believe your claim that only N95 masks work, and other options do nothing at all, but what am I to do with seemingly reliable information that states otherwise? https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... It's just one source, but I'm genuinely curious.
- lettergram 4y ago
  I say go to all large scale peer reviewed research prior to 2020. You’re taking some story from someone who writes for a college publication, not a peer reviewed source. There are researchers from Stanford who said exactly what I did above. Trillions of dollars were pumped into propaganda and research in 2020. It takes years to go through, receive grants, construct experiments, get approvals, analyze and validate. We are only now starting to see initial results for new masking studies. They still need to be replicated, etc. Here’s an example of a large scale study from 2015 where cloth masks increase risk of illness (over nothing): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25903751/ Here’s a 2021 study showing masks aren’t really good as well (a randomized control trial) https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 My general point isn’t the specifics, it’s that the jury is out.

_cenw 4y ago

I find this not very credible as the biggest contributor to the anti-masker anti-vaxer movement, especially because that movement exists in places where most people don't even know what the CDC is.

jesusofnazarath 4y ago
[dead]
amadeuspagel 4y ago
The CDC was not the only institution that spread this anti-mask narrative.

themitigating 4y ago

"CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID." Can you provide the source for this?

timerol 4y ago
Late Feb 2020 until early April 2020 https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...
- jjeaff 4y ago
  It is clear that the message in almost all that mask communication was that masks actually do work, but please save them for medical personnel... here are a few weak reasons why they probably won't help you that much anyway. And comparatively, they are way more critical for medical personnel. They should have just communicated it that way rather than trying to downplay effectiveness. Shortages abounded anyway.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
“The” source? Assuming you were alive and paying any attention the past two years, the source would be your own eyes and ears, consuming the (US) CDC’s official communications. I wasn’t even in the US and encountered them! In fact, I once even repeated one of their false claims about masks very early last year during a recorded zoom call with a friend. Then after looking at the very different claims from my local CDC, I realized the US one was wrong.
- code_runner 4y ago
  I think so much of the messaging would have been better if there were disclaimers about “we are still doing research” and “based on our knowledge at this time”… or even timeboxing the advice so it’s updated every 12-48 hours even if unchanged. This specific messaging has been a rallying point for people who don’t even believe covid exists. At least that was the case in the US

BryantD 4y ago

It’s wild how we’ve completely forgotten the fomite hypothesis that was assumed for the first couple of months of the pandemic. Remember the guy who wanted us to bleach our vegetables? Remember all the distilleries making hand sanitizer because touch was the only thing that mattered? You don’t have to assume the CDC was full of lies if you remember that they were working from an inaccurate hypothesis at a time when reducing transmission rates seemed like it might be the most important thing in the world.

kodah 4y ago
It wasn't a bad thesis, that would be giving them credit they don't deserve: https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8735-4022-a1f5-1580bc732c45 https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8... Dr Fauci feared the rising costs of masks and whether the medical system would have enough. That wasn't his decision to make, but he made it. He later started using a new line, which is that they weren't aware that 40-50% of people were asymptomatic which was irrelevant for the problem at hand.
- BryantD 4y ago
  That’s a great read! Fauci explains what facts he didn’t have at the time and why learning those facts changed his mind. If Covid was only transmissible by people with symptoms, you could control spread by asking those people to stay home and everyone else is clear — no masks needed. If it’s impossible to know if you’re infectious without testing, masks make more of a difference. More effective ones are obviously better. I certainly knew at the time that I was triaging masks because health care workers were more important than me. I still have a note on my fridge from February thanking me for donating some N95s I had from wildfire season. The trade off was pretty clear.
  - kodah 4y ago
    That's a narrative change, not a changing thesis. He knew at the time masks were needed by the general public but lied to the American public so that healthcare workers would have an adequate supply. He admits to that much. Again, a decision that was not his to make. He then realized that the lie was worse than he'd anticipated and started encouraging masks. Couple that with that Dr Fauci has been tied to being knowledgeable on gain of function research and most people can read between the lines.

clairity 4y ago

yet, masks did nothing other than stoke fears and division, as you're doing here. our masking behavior was, and continues to be, irrational, in that it was done at the wrong times with ill-conceived intent. people worried about masking against strangers, when most transmission happened from someone you knew and trusted (probably 95+%). they were generally ineffective by design (<n95), worn incorrectly (loosely), and worn at the wrong times (outdoors/retail). basically no one wore masks at home around their family and friends, where it might have actually reduced some transmission. understanding this, a little distancing was just as, if not more, effective and less divisive despite the literal interpersonal distance. the CDC was initially correct in assessing that (the way we wear) masks would not be a panacea for covid, but that was politically unpalatable which is why it was walked backed so haphazardly. masks, and all the CDC outrage around them, was effectively mediopolitical redirection of our anger toward each other rather than toward our corporatocratic institutions to quickly and correctly assess the threat and then appropriately deploy (only) effective measures.

ryanbrunner 4y ago
> most transmission happened from someone you knew and trusted (probably 95+%) While this is true, at least in the early pandemic when social circles were pretty tight (often just your household, but even if not quite a bit smaller than during normal times), the virus has to be introduced to that social circle, it won't just manifest itself out of nothing in one of it's members. Masking when not interacting with that circle will help keep the virus out of that circle of people in the first place. This is a very hard thing to maintain for long periods of time, but in the context of 2020 it's a reasonable approach to take.
- clairity 4y ago
  sure, but that fits into the extant ~5%. it just takes a friend of a friend/family member to spread through social circles, since they overlap greatly, even for the tightest ones. as i see it, masks make sense in 2 general cases: 1) when uncertainty about transmission and lethality is high, as was the case in nov/dec 2019, until population risk is more closely bounded 2) when situational risk is measurably elevated over baseline, like having comorbidities, surgery, packed mass transit, etc. by april 2020, we (in the US at least) had enough information that masking wasn't going to be that panacea, when taking human behavior into account (trust channels, weariness, etc.). yet, it was still weaponized by the media and politicians. i know this because i was making these very same points back in april 2020. to be effective, a mask has to be worn at the right times (like being face-to-face with another human) and correctly (creating a tight seal around the nose and mouth using an effective filtering material). most people weren't doing either of these most of the time.

dredmorbius 4y ago

The US CDC's advice for the general public not to wear masks was born of several factors: 1. A severe shortage of masks which were considered to be particularly effective, specifically N-95 masks capable of filtering viral particles. Such masks as were available were being preferentially directed to healthcare providers and first-responders. 2. A concern that the general public would not wear or use masks appropriately, and might take additional compensatory risks on the premise that masks, often utilised suboptimally, provided strong protection. Note too that at the time vented masks, which had a flap that opened on exhale (and hence transmitted any viral particles to the environment) were fairly popular and widely-utilised. 3. A thought that COVID-19 was not as subject to airborne transmission as it turned out to be --- fomite-based transmission (particles on surfaces generally transferred by hand) was thought to be significant. Subsequent evidence has shown this to be far less the case than thought at the time. 4. A general lack of hard knowledge of specifics of the novel coronavirus, resulting in recommendations based on general principles of vector reduction drawn from other diseases. 5. A decidedly muddled, politicised, and anti-scientific response from the US administration at the time. For those keeping score, that was not the present Administration, though from discussion in this thread, that might not be clear. 6. In an epistemic environment in which trust in media, government, and expertise had been under prolonged attack. All of this was discussed at the time, and in particular Zeynep Tufekci was discussing most of these factors as early as 17 March 2020 in New York Times opinion pieces and elsewhere. Example: "Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired" Subtitle reveals much: "To help manage the shortage, the authorities sent a message that made them untrustworthy." ... First, many health experts, including the surgeon general of the United States, told the public simultaneously that masks weren’t necessary for protecting the general public and that health care workers needed the dwindling supply. This contradiction confuses an ordinary listener. How do these masks magically protect the wearers only and only if they work in a particular field? Second, there were attempts to bolster the first message, that ordinary people didn’t need masks, by telling people that masks, especially medical-grade respirator masks (such as the N95 masks), needed proper fitting and that ordinary people without such fitting wouldn’t benefit. This message was also deeply counterproductive. ... It is of course true that masks don’t work perfectly, that they don’t replace hand-washing and social distancing, and that they work better if they fit properly. And of course, surgical masks (the disposable type that surgeons wear) don’t filter out small viral particles the way medical-grade respirator masks rated N95 and above do. ... [P]roviding top-down guidance with such obvious contradictions backfires exactly because lack of trust is what fuels hoarding and misinformation. <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...> There's much more, the piece is well worth revisiting and should be a key document in future studies of the pandemic and its senselessly botched response. Failures to accurately describe the circumstances and context of the CDC advice, or to acknowledge that the CDC rapidly reversed course once this became evident are themselves harmful. Science is that which adapts to new knowledge and understanding. Dogma is that which clings to articles of faith despite evidence, in the interest of advancing a specific ideological agenda. For all its faults, the CDC followed science. Incorrectly initially as it turns out, but ultimately correcting itself rather than insisting on dogma. That point is made in another comment on this thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34150615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34150615> The further complication is in crafting effective, credible, useful, and actionable messaging in a time of crisis. Here too the CDC failed, but in large part because significant other actors were strongly intent (and remain strongly intent) in seeing it fail.

cbsmith 4y ago

> Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. That's not what they said, which kind of highlights just how much misinformation was indeed being spewed well before then.