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> That's still lying. They gave you, the individual, false information, ... Yes it was lying. Yes it was false information. No, that's not outside the scope of

> That's still lying. They gave you, the individual, false information, ... Yes it was lying. Yes it was false information. No, that's not outside the scope of their role at times. > ... and not for your own good. Quite the contrary, that misinformation would actually harm you if you believed it. No, it was for the individual good. Hoarding of masks by randos in the middle of nowhere leading to no supply for the first responders in hospital puts you, the individual, at greater risk. If all the hospital staff have COVID and no ability to stop transmission within hospital because Bob the Prepper has filled his underground HEPA filtered bunker with masks, yes, that puts you at risk. You can weigh the trade-offs but your statement that there was no other way of viewing the situation is simply wrong. > Do you really not see how destructive this was? Do you really expect people to not only forgive but most importantly forget this lie, just because they "made it clear after the fact"? How were you supposed to know they're not lying, again, about the vaccines and their safety? Again, a crap situation, but one that the CDC wasn't responsible for. It was their job to mitigate to the best of their abilities. Tough times call for tough decisions. We know how groups react, we knew what people would have done. I'm pissed the stockpiles were allowed to run low, and I'm happy the first-responders were prioritized as I believe this gave everyone the best chance. > It really baffles me when now government officials whine about people not trusting them, anymore. It doesn't surprise me, but that doesn't mean it was the wrong choice at the time given what we knew. [edit] They had an optimization problem: basically nobody in the population had COVID at the time, but those who did were likely to end up in hospital. Spreading out the limited masks over a population where almost nobody had it put far more people at risk than concentrating the supply in hospitals where far more people had it. This isn't rocket science. People were hoarding pasta at the time, and you think people were going to make good decisions about masks? The first casualty of War is Truth as they say.

causi 4y ago
Yes it was lying. Yes it was false information. No, that's not outside the scope of their role at times. Lying to people about their personal health for the greater good of society gets you the Tuskegee Experiment.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Completely different, sorry, and a wildly disingenuous comparison. There was no public health crisis at the time that required this, let alone to run it for 40 years. Let's keep to intellectually honest discourse and avoid hyperbole shall we? This is a contentious enough topic as is.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    > wildly disingenuous comparison No, it is not. The parallels are there so strikingly.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      The only similarity is an authority figure said something untrue. By that measure the NORAD Santa tracker is "like Tuskegee." Shades of grey exist and context matters. The world is not black and white and that isn't comfortable. However the point of delegating authority is to make difficult decisions with imperfect information in challenging circumstances that don't make sense at an individual level. Not to mention the commenter who even made that comparison seems to have no idea what Tuskegee was actually known for (as they make no mention of the racial animus inherent in the 'study' if you can even call it that). It's wild to me that someone would make that comparison with the benefit of Wikipedia in this the year of our lord 2022.
  - causi 4y ago
    Both were public health officials lying to citizens about the effectiveness of particular actions in protecting their own health. The Tuskegee Experiment directly damaged the health of 458 people and killed 128 of them. The CDC lying about masks put the health of 330 million people at risk and killed...who knows? Maybe it saved more than it killed, but it did kill people. And that's the thing. The CDC didn't come out and say "we lied to you but the ends justified the means; killing some of you was worth saving more of you". They just tried to pretend it never happened, or alternatively that nobody could possibly have any idea that face masks could help you not infect your neighbors. Primum non nocere
  - 4y ago
shaky-carrousel 4y ago
What about telling people the truth, that there were no masks for everyone and they had to prioritize first responders? Treat people like adults and they will behave like adults. Treat them like kids and they'll behave like kids. Also, once you know you have been lied to, the trust is shattered, whatever the excuses. How people is going to trust again the CDC, knowing that it lied before?
- philjohn 4y ago
  Because large groups of people have shown, time and again, they don't act rationally. Look at toilet paper - one rumour that it would run out, despite shops, the government, everyone, saying there is more than enough and the rabble went out and hoarded.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    The solution to the toilet paper problem wasn't lying to everyone by telling them that toilet paper was ineffective at removing shit from our asses. It was ultimately handled at the retail end where stores limited the number that people could buy and/or held back inventory. Masks could have been handled in the same way: from the manufacturer/retailer end. Masks could have been pulled off shelves and diverted to healthcare workers until they could be sold in limited numbers to consumers.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      > It was ultimately handled at the retail end To be clear “handling” here meant that there were extensive and pervasive country-wide shortages, and many people went without toilet paper for weeks, including myself. People who needed toilet paper went without, while others hoarded more than they’d need for a year. That’s the problem people were trying to avoid with masks. First responders and doctors needed them most, but we had people out there literally willing to buy as many as they could for their own personal supply. You can’t wait for the invisible hand of the market to just sort this kind of thing out.
      - 4y ago
gadders 4y ago
Once you realise governments feel justified using the "noble lie", you will never trust them again.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  That should be put in the “pro” column when judging the CDC’s actions then?
autoexec 4y ago
> Again, a crap situation, but one that the CDC wasn't responsible for. They simply messed up. All they had to do was say nothing and reach out to the manufacturers making N95 masks and their retailers. Just going to Walmart and Amazon and getting them to pull their stock would have prevented the vast majority of people from getting their hands on them. A non-trivial number of Americans at the time had already been wrongly and loudly bleating about how masks were useless and were really about "controlling the population". The CDC lying to the public was plain wrong. However well-intentioned, it was a terrible shortsighted error in judgement that cost them all credibility. The CDC is perhaps the one agency we most need people to trust and they proved themselves to be untrustworthy.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  The better question is: Knowing we've had a respiratory pandemic in the recent past, and knowing another would happen eventually, why were we so unprepared? And who - naming names - is responsible for that? Why isn't this being asked and discussed?
  - autoexec 4y ago
    No doubt! Even if the CDC hadn't lied they'd still have a lot to answer for.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    My understanding is that N95 masks have a shelf life (2-5 years?), so stock would need to be regularly repurchased. The bigger issue is the sheer cost of preparation against an exponentially-reproducing threat. All other disasters can be prepared for with state of the art gear because they are, by nature, limited. Ergo, a limit amount of gear can be rapidly transported to location and will suffice. In contrast, a pandemic requires "multiple for every single person" levels of stock. Which is outside most capitalist supply bounds (i.e. no one can even produce that much stock).
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      Just do stock rotation. Bring stock in, release old stock to hospitals and such where it will be used right away.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 4y ago
This is precisely the closed-world solution that authoritarian governments lean on, with the exact same results. The open-world answer is to tell people the correct information, use government mandates to mitigate the immediate shortages for healthcare workers, and use government economic power to spin up production asafp, and make politicians actually do their job of leading people through the crisis.
tristor 4y ago
> Bob the Prepper has filled his underground HEPA filtered bunker with masks As a bit of a prepper, being a prepper is about being prepared. Being prepared means you don’t need to buy essential PPE in the midst of a crisis. What I observed were people hoarding to intentionally cause supply shortages so they could price gouge on the secondary market. Scalpers in other words. Preppers and Scalpers are not the same thing and the continuous insinuations that they are is as offensive as it is stupid. Preppers are the only reason many communities had PPE for medical staff. I donated respirators and P95 masks to my local hospital during COVID, exactly zero of which were purchased during the pandemic. In fact I didn’t buy any masks during the pandemic except a cloth mask later on. Given that a situation like COVID was pretty much bound to happen sooner rather than later, most preppers consider biohazards as one of the primary things they prepare for.

causi 4y ago

Yes it was lying. Yes it was false information. No, that's not outside the scope of their role at times. Lying to people about their personal health for the greater good of society gets you the Tuskegee Experiment.

arcticbull 4y ago
Completely different, sorry, and a wildly disingenuous comparison. There was no public health crisis at the time that required this, let alone to run it for 40 years. Let's keep to intellectually honest discourse and avoid hyperbole shall we? This is a contentious enough topic as is.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  > wildly disingenuous comparison No, it is not. The parallels are there so strikingly.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    The only similarity is an authority figure said something untrue. By that measure the NORAD Santa tracker is "like Tuskegee." Shades of grey exist and context matters. The world is not black and white and that isn't comfortable. However the point of delegating authority is to make difficult decisions with imperfect information in challenging circumstances that don't make sense at an individual level. Not to mention the commenter who even made that comparison seems to have no idea what Tuskegee was actually known for (as they make no mention of the racial animus inherent in the 'study' if you can even call it that). It's wild to me that someone would make that comparison with the benefit of Wikipedia in this the year of our lord 2022.
- causi 4y ago
  Both were public health officials lying to citizens about the effectiveness of particular actions in protecting their own health. The Tuskegee Experiment directly damaged the health of 458 people and killed 128 of them. The CDC lying about masks put the health of 330 million people at risk and killed...who knows? Maybe it saved more than it killed, but it did kill people. And that's the thing. The CDC didn't come out and say "we lied to you but the ends justified the means; killing some of you was worth saving more of you". They just tried to pretend it never happened, or alternatively that nobody could possibly have any idea that face masks could help you not infect your neighbors. Primum non nocere
- 4y ago

shaky-carrousel 4y ago

What about telling people the truth, that there were no masks for everyone and they had to prioritize first responders? Treat people like adults and they will behave like adults. Treat them like kids and they'll behave like kids. Also, once you know you have been lied to, the trust is shattered, whatever the excuses. How people is going to trust again the CDC, knowing that it lied before?

philjohn 4y ago
Because large groups of people have shown, time and again, they don't act rationally. Look at toilet paper - one rumour that it would run out, despite shops, the government, everyone, saying there is more than enough and the rabble went out and hoarded.
- autoexec 4y ago
  The solution to the toilet paper problem wasn't lying to everyone by telling them that toilet paper was ineffective at removing shit from our asses. It was ultimately handled at the retail end where stores limited the number that people could buy and/or held back inventory. Masks could have been handled in the same way: from the manufacturer/retailer end. Masks could have been pulled off shelves and diverted to healthcare workers until they could be sold in limited numbers to consumers.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    > It was ultimately handled at the retail end To be clear “handling” here meant that there were extensive and pervasive country-wide shortages, and many people went without toilet paper for weeks, including myself. People who needed toilet paper went without, while others hoarded more than they’d need for a year. That’s the problem people were trying to avoid with masks. First responders and doctors needed them most, but we had people out there literally willing to buy as many as they could for their own personal supply. You can’t wait for the invisible hand of the market to just sort this kind of thing out.
    - 4y ago

gadders 4y ago

Once you realise governments feel justified using the "noble lie", you will never trust them again.

sokoloff 4y ago
That should be put in the “pro” column when judging the CDC’s actions then?

autoexec 4y ago

> Again, a crap situation, but one that the CDC wasn't responsible for. They simply messed up. All they had to do was say nothing and reach out to the manufacturers making N95 masks and their retailers. Just going to Walmart and Amazon and getting them to pull their stock would have prevented the vast majority of people from getting their hands on them. A non-trivial number of Americans at the time had already been wrongly and loudly bleating about how masks were useless and were really about "controlling the population". The CDC lying to the public was plain wrong. However well-intentioned, it was a terrible shortsighted error in judgement that cost them all credibility. The CDC is perhaps the one agency we most need people to trust and they proved themselves to be untrustworthy.

chiefalchemist 4y ago
The better question is: Knowing we've had a respiratory pandemic in the recent past, and knowing another would happen eventually, why were we so unprepared? And who - naming names - is responsible for that? Why isn't this being asked and discussed?
- autoexec 4y ago
  No doubt! Even if the CDC hadn't lied they'd still have a lot to answer for.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  My understanding is that N95 masks have a shelf life (2-5 years?), so stock would need to be regularly repurchased. The bigger issue is the sheer cost of preparation against an exponentially-reproducing threat. All other disasters can be prepared for with state of the art gear because they are, by nature, limited. Ergo, a limit amount of gear can be rapidly transported to location and will suffice. In contrast, a pandemic requires "multiple for every single person" levels of stock. Which is outside most capitalist supply bounds (i.e. no one can even produce that much stock).
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Just do stock rotation. Bring stock in, release old stock to hospitals and such where it will be used right away.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mindslight 4y ago

This is precisely the closed-world solution that authoritarian governments lean on, with the exact same results. The open-world answer is to tell people the correct information, use government mandates to mitigate the immediate shortages for healthcare workers, and use government economic power to spin up production asafp, and make politicians actually do their job of leading people through the crisis.

tristor 4y ago

> Bob the Prepper has filled his underground HEPA filtered bunker with masks As a bit of a prepper, being a prepper is about being prepared. Being prepared means you don’t need to buy essential PPE in the midst of a crisis. What I observed were people hoarding to intentionally cause supply shortages so they could price gouge on the secondary market. Scalpers in other words. Preppers and Scalpers are not the same thing and the continuous insinuations that they are is as offensive as it is stupid. Preppers are the only reason many communities had PPE for medical staff. I donated respirators and P95 masks to my local hospital during COVID, exactly zero of which were purchased during the pandemic. In fact I didn’t buy any masks during the pandemic except a cloth mask later on. Given that a situation like COVID was pretty much bound to happen sooner rather than later, most preppers consider biohazards as one of the primary things they prepare for.