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As someone that has been trained by one of the few organizations that develops leadership (military)... The communications and advise from the medical establis

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).
- kevinmrose 4y ago
  So they still don't know if masks work? Can we get a concrete answer on this at some point? It seems like this type of back and forth messaging is the problem. Maybe we should all apologize to people who questioned the need to wear masks if we still don't know whether or not they're effective.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Correct, we still do not really know whether masks at a population level tend to reduce transmission. A big, big part of the problem is that it’s very hard to know how many people are wearing masks, how consistently, whether they change their behavior when they do, etc etc. What we probably know is that if 100% of the population wore masks 100% correctly 100% of the time and kept 100% of their prior behavior, it would probably reduce transmission more than 0% for some pathogens. This is another way of saying, “we don’t really know,” and it gives you an idea of why it’s hard to figure it out. The ambush on “masks don’t work” was because it seems almost certainly the case that masks don’t hurt, and it’s likely the case that if masks have any benefit, that benefit will be proportional to levels of compliance, so if we get to choose between levels of compliance, higher is probably better. My personal view is that after half the population came to view “no masks” as a part of their political identity, the overall pushiness on masks probably netted out to negative, but this is not blame I can assign to CDC et al.
    - kevinmrose 4y ago
      Wouldn't it have just been easier to explain it than to lie to the public and then continue to deny and defend the lying after it's already been exposed?
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        What lying? CDC et al never said masks don’t work. I don’t know how many times I need to repeat this.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        kevinmrose 4y ago
        I don't know if we can call it outright lying, but going from "you don't need a mask" to basically saying you shouldn't be allowed in public without one seems like either incompetence or corruption on the CDC's part. You can argue semantics all you want to try to justify their behavior, but that is what people see and it doesn't increase trust or confidence in them as an organization.
        ethanbond 4y ago
        Yes, people see that because they think authority figures have some Magic Answer Box that they’re pulling or withholding answers from, rather than the reality which is that our understanding of the situation was shifting day by day. The Magic Answer Box people are demanding that they be trusted with nuance and detail and yet continuously demonstrate Magic Answer Box thinking in the face of nuanced and detailed information.
        maxerickson 4y ago
        We also went from a few hundred identified cases per day in February to ~25,000 per day identified in late March/April.
        4y ago
  - sampo 4y ago
    > So they still don't know if masks work? It took decades to get medical doctors to start washing their hands [1]. It took decades to get people to use seat belts in cars [2]. It took decades to accept that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer [3]. Masks work [4], but it will take decades before this is accepted through the chain of command in the medical profession, and not only by front line science. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Conflict_with_established_medical_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Conflict_with... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Hist... [4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-are-a-proven-way-to-defend-yourself-from-respiratory-infections/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-are-a-prove...
    - newsclues 4y ago
      Fluid mechanics are well understood. There are people who understand how air moves, and have a good understanding of how viruses travel. Masks have been hailed as a silver bullet (so that people don't have to get active and eat well and be healthy, and government and businesses don't have to upgrade HVAC systems), to the point where people think they work outside! Are there masks that work? Yes. Is that cheap surgical mask or a cotton one really effective? No.
- SilasX 4y ago
  Correct, we don’t know if masks work … in the same sense that we “don’t know” if parachutes work[1]. That is, we don’t (and can’t) do the level of randomized controlled trials that would precisely mimic real-world application. Nevertheless, we’re capable of appropriate risk based inference. We can verify that masks slow down the spread of airborne particles and we know SARS-type viruses spread that way. Combined with the low cost of mask wearing and the huge impacts of a pandemic, a good risk analysis weighs heavily in favor of using them. Even accepting the over-skeptical view you’ve given, official statements were still overconfident. Fauci was saying in February 2020 that “there’s no reason for anyone to be wearing a mask”, which you can’t justify by these claims of ignorance. “A small chance of slowing a SARS-type virus” is a great reason to wear a mask! [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-prediction/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-p...
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Yep, agreed with all of this which is why I think when it became the case that the general population wearing masks would not have negative impacts on supply for medical workers, it made sense to default to “wear masks.” When the gen pop wearing masks would have a negative impact on supply, it seems defensible at least to advocate against the population buying masks. Note that what confuses people here is not that the consensus on whether masks work or not changed, but that it didn’t change. “We don’t know if masks work, don’t get them” turned to “we don’t know if masks work, start wearing them.” I agree it would’ve helped the credibility issue a lot if they were more open about the supply calculus behind the scenes, but I’m personally pretty confident this would’ve yielded worse outcomes. No chance that the population wouldn’t have scrambled for masks and therefore no chance that the people who did actually in reality need them most would’ve gotten them. Of course there’s a lot, a lot of room for criticism of the mask/PPE shortage existing at all, but obviously the solution to that looks different than the solution to “CDC said masks don’t work.”
    - SilasX 4y ago
      But they weren’t advising the public not to wear masks based on genuine skepticism, but on a confused belief that it would have the narrow effect of relieving the supply crunch, with no long term effect on mask compliance in the future, even given the loss of trust from having told the public BS reasons not to wear them. (Like the Fauci quotes and assertions of ineffectiveness.) That was stupid, and foreseeably so.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Khaine 4y ago
  Sorry, I don't think that's right. The CDC were terrible at messaging. It constantly sounded like they flip flopped, came up with absurd requirements. What's worse so many Americans took what they said as dogma, and massively attacked anyone who questioned their nonsense. From https://reason.com/2022/02/07/that-study-of-face-masks-does-not-show-what-the-cdc-claims/ https://reason.com/2022/02/07/that-study-of-face-masks-does-... "A study[1] published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supposedly shows that wearing a face mask in public places dramatically reduces your risk of catching COVID-19. The CDC summed up the results in a widely shared graphic[2] that says wearing a cloth mask "lowered the odds of testing positive" by 56 percent, while the risk reduction was 66 percent for surgical masks and 83 percent for N95 or KN95 respirators. If you read the tiny footnotes, you will see that the result for cloth masks was not statistically significant. So even on its face, this study, which was published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, did not validate the protective effect of the most commonly used face coverings—a striking fact that the authors do not mention until the end of the sixth paragraph. In 2020, the CDC went from dismissing the value of general mask wearing[3] to describing it as "the most important, powerful public health tool we have." In September 2020, then–CDC Director Robert Redfield asserted[4], without any evidence, that masks were more effective at preventing infection than vaccines would prove to be. Even before the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant, Redfield's successor, Rochelle Walensky, implied the same thing, exaggerating[5] the evidence supporting mask use in a way that made vaccination seem inferior." So even in 2022, they are misleading the public. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/social-media/mm7106e1_MaskingEffectiveness_IMAGE_04Feb22_1200x675_1-medium.jpg?_=96372?noicon https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/social-media/mm7106e1... [3] https://reason.com/2020/04/06/the-cdcs-revised-face-mask-advice-is-based-on-information-that-was-available-months-ago/ https://reason.com/2020/04/06/the-cdcs-revised-face-mask-adv... [4] https://reason.com/2020/09/17/suggesting-that-face-masks-are-more-effective-than-vaccines-the-cdcs-director-exemplifies-the-propaganda-that-discourages-people-from-wearing-them/ https://reason.com/2020/09/17/suggesting-that-face-masks-are... [5] https://reason.com/2021/11/09/the-cdcs-director-implies-that-face-masks-are-more-effective-than-vaccines-at-preventing-covid-19-infection/ https://reason.com/2021/11/09/the-cdcs-director-implies-that...

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).

kevinmrose 4y ago
So they still don't know if masks work? Can we get a concrete answer on this at some point? It seems like this type of back and forth messaging is the problem. Maybe we should all apologize to people who questioned the need to wear masks if we still don't know whether or not they're effective.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Correct, we still do not really know whether masks at a population level tend to reduce transmission. A big, big part of the problem is that it’s very hard to know how many people are wearing masks, how consistently, whether they change their behavior when they do, etc etc. What we probably know is that if 100% of the population wore masks 100% correctly 100% of the time and kept 100% of their prior behavior, it would probably reduce transmission more than 0% for some pathogens. This is another way of saying, “we don’t really know,” and it gives you an idea of why it’s hard to figure it out. The ambush on “masks don’t work” was because it seems almost certainly the case that masks don’t hurt, and it’s likely the case that if masks have any benefit, that benefit will be proportional to levels of compliance, so if we get to choose between levels of compliance, higher is probably better. My personal view is that after half the population came to view “no masks” as a part of their political identity, the overall pushiness on masks probably netted out to negative, but this is not blame I can assign to CDC et al.
  - kevinmrose 4y ago
    Wouldn't it have just been easier to explain it than to lie to the public and then continue to deny and defend the lying after it's already been exposed?
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      What lying? CDC et al never said masks don’t work. I don’t know how many times I need to repeat this.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - kevinmrose 4y ago
        I don't know if we can call it outright lying, but going from "you don't need a mask" to basically saying you shouldn't be allowed in public without one seems like either incompetence or corruption on the CDC's part. You can argue semantics all you want to try to justify their behavior, but that is what people see and it doesn't increase trust or confidence in them as an organization.
        ethanbond 4y ago
        Yes, people see that because they think authority figures have some Magic Answer Box that they’re pulling or withholding answers from, rather than the reality which is that our understanding of the situation was shifting day by day. The Magic Answer Box people are demanding that they be trusted with nuance and detail and yet continuously demonstrate Magic Answer Box thinking in the face of nuanced and detailed information.
        maxerickson 4y ago
        We also went from a few hundred identified cases per day in February to ~25,000 per day identified in late March/April.
      - 4y ago
- sampo 4y ago
  > So they still don't know if masks work? It took decades to get medical doctors to start washing their hands [1]. It took decades to get people to use seat belts in cars [2]. It took decades to accept that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer [3]. Masks work [4], but it will take decades before this is accepted through the chain of command in the medical profession, and not only by front line science. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Conflict_with_established_medical_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Conflict_with... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#History [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Hist... [4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-are-a-proven-way-to-defend-yourself-from-respiratory-infections/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-are-a-prove...
  - newsclues 4y ago
    Fluid mechanics are well understood. There are people who understand how air moves, and have a good understanding of how viruses travel. Masks have been hailed as a silver bullet (so that people don't have to get active and eat well and be healthy, and government and businesses don't have to upgrade HVAC systems), to the point where people think they work outside! Are there masks that work? Yes. Is that cheap surgical mask or a cotton one really effective? No.
SilasX 4y ago
Correct, we don’t know if masks work … in the same sense that we “don’t know” if parachutes work[1]. That is, we don’t (and can’t) do the level of randomized controlled trials that would precisely mimic real-world application. Nevertheless, we’re capable of appropriate risk based inference. We can verify that masks slow down the spread of airborne particles and we know SARS-type viruses spread that way. Combined with the low cost of mask wearing and the huge impacts of a pandemic, a good risk analysis weighs heavily in favor of using them. Even accepting the over-skeptical view you’ve given, official statements were still overconfident. Fauci was saying in February 2020 that “there’s no reason for anyone to be wearing a mask”, which you can’t justify by these claims of ignorance. “A small chance of slowing a SARS-type virus” is a great reason to wear a mask! [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-prediction/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-p...
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Yep, agreed with all of this which is why I think when it became the case that the general population wearing masks would not have negative impacts on supply for medical workers, it made sense to default to “wear masks.” When the gen pop wearing masks would have a negative impact on supply, it seems defensible at least to advocate against the population buying masks. Note that what confuses people here is not that the consensus on whether masks work or not changed, but that it didn’t change. “We don’t know if masks work, don’t get them” turned to “we don’t know if masks work, start wearing them.” I agree it would’ve helped the credibility issue a lot if they were more open about the supply calculus behind the scenes, but I’m personally pretty confident this would’ve yielded worse outcomes. No chance that the population wouldn’t have scrambled for masks and therefore no chance that the people who did actually in reality need them most would’ve gotten them. Of course there’s a lot, a lot of room for criticism of the mask/PPE shortage existing at all, but obviously the solution to that looks different than the solution to “CDC said masks don’t work.”
  - SilasX 4y ago
    But they weren’t advising the public not to wear masks based on genuine skepticism, but on a confused belief that it would have the narrow effect of relieving the supply crunch, with no long term effect on mask compliance in the future, even given the loss of trust from having told the public BS reasons not to wear them. (Like the Fauci quotes and assertions of ineffectiveness.) That was stupid, and foreseeably so.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Khaine 4y ago
Sorry, I don't think that's right. The CDC were terrible at messaging. It constantly sounded like they flip flopped, came up with absurd requirements. What's worse so many Americans took what they said as dogma, and massively attacked anyone who questioned their nonsense. From https://reason.com/2022/02/07/that-study-of-face-masks-does-not-show-what-the-cdc-claims/ https://reason.com/2022/02/07/that-study-of-face-masks-does-... "A study[1] published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supposedly shows that wearing a face mask in public places dramatically reduces your risk of catching COVID-19. The CDC summed up the results in a widely shared graphic[2] that says wearing a cloth mask "lowered the odds of testing positive" by 56 percent, while the risk reduction was 66 percent for surgical masks and 83 percent for N95 or KN95 respirators. If you read the tiny footnotes, you will see that the result for cloth masks was not statistically significant. So even on its face, this study, which was published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, did not validate the protective effect of the most commonly used face coverings—a striking fact that the authors do not mention until the end of the sixth paragraph. In 2020, the CDC went from dismissing the value of general mask wearing[3] to describing it as "the most important, powerful public health tool we have." In September 2020, then–CDC Director Robert Redfield asserted[4], without any evidence, that masks were more effective at preventing infection than vaccines would prove to be. Even before the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant, Redfield's successor, Rochelle Walensky, implied the same thing, exaggerating[5] the evidence supporting mask use in a way that made vaccination seem inferior." So even in 2022, they are misleading the public. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/social-media/mm7106e1_MaskingEffectiveness_IMAGE_04Feb22_1200x675_1-medium.jpg?_=96372?noicon https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/social-media/mm7106e1... [3] https://reason.com/2020/04/06/the-cdcs-revised-face-mask-advice-is-based-on-information-that-was-available-months-ago/ https://reason.com/2020/04/06/the-cdcs-revised-face-mask-adv... [4] https://reason.com/2020/09/17/suggesting-that-face-masks-are-more-effective-than-vaccines-the-cdcs-director-exemplifies-the-propaganda-that-discourages-people-from-wearing-them/ https://reason.com/2020/09/17/suggesting-that-face-masks-are... [5] https://reason.com/2021/11/09/the-cdcs-director-implies-that-face-masks-are-more-effective-than-vaccines-at-preventing-covid-19-infection/ https://reason.com/2021/11/09/the-cdcs-director-implies-that...