> healthcare providers needed them first. It's super confusing due to all the lying, but actually that's the revisionist history. The real timeline goes like t

> healthcare providers needed them first. It's super confusing due to all the lying, but actually that's the revisionist history. The real timeline goes like this: 1. Scientists are asked if masks will work to stop COVID. They say no because there's little to no evidence in the literature that surgical/cloth masks can stop the spread of a respiratory virus. This initial position is correct. 2. There is a very short lived campaign by professional activist types called #MasksForAll which pressures public health officials to recommend masks for everyone. 3. Scientific advisors discuss in private and say things like "it probably won't help but can't really hurt so why not" and agree to support it. 4. Message changes. 5. People demand explanations for why the message changed. Mostly officials stay silent and refuse to answer. Fauci specifically (not so much elsewhere) claims that this was a vast conspiracy (!) to manage supply chain capacity. But this isn't correct and private correspondence uncovered afterwards reveals this, for example, Fauci is asked in private emails what he thinks about masks and answers the same way as in step (1). What happened here took a lot of work to uncover, but there's no longer any doubt about the correct sequence of events here. The idea of "masks don't work" being a noble lie, is itself a lie, which is why it's so confusing - Fauci and allies lied about lying. As an example of just one piece of evidence pointing in this direction, a BBC journalist tweeted: https://archive.is/20201205224307/https://twitter.com/deb_cohen/status/1282244773030633473#selection-4233.0-4270.1 https://archive.is/20201205224307/https://twitter.com/deb_co... > We had been told by various sources WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying. This point was put to WHO who did not deny (she later deleted the tweet as orthodoxy inverted and the true reasons for masking were covered up) But there's also the fact that mask mandates didn't have any effect when introduced, which shows that the initial stance was the correct one. And the posited conspiracy is a stupid one too. Almost all masks were imported and governments can easily seize shipments at the ports to control distribution if they need to. Lying to the public (and by extension, health workers) is by far the most idiotic way to manage supply chains imaginable. Why did they do this? Public health seems to have big cultural problems with the idea that tradeoffs exist. In both private and public they tend to describe their proposed policies as being cost-free. If you and everyone around you genuinely believes that any health policy is pure upside then why not mandate masks? It can't hurt and might help, therefore, you must do it. But people outside public health culture expect recommendations to be stable and tradeoffs to be justified. So they conclude that they must lie to the public, because they know deep down that expressing their true beliefs and true level of uncertainty would discredit them.