Not wearing masks for Covid-19 is a ‘big mistake,’ top Chinese scientist says | Hacker News Reader

Not wearing masks for Covid-19 is a ‘big mistake,’ top Chinese scientist says

sciencemag.org

37 pointssohkamyung3 comments

When the dust settles in this crisis, the scientific and medical communities need to have a discussion on how they communicate with the public. Countless times I see statements to the media along the lines of "There's no evidence that masks work". But this is a truism, infectious diseases exist along a spectrum of transmissibility, as the transmissibility of COVID-19 is still a matter of active research, then of course there's no evidence that masks work. That's simply what it means for a disease to be new. Yet the public in the West hears it as "Masks don't work".

We heard “masks don’t work” because that is literally what they were saying.

>> “Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!” tweeted Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. Surgeon General, on Feb. 29. “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!” In an interview with Fox & Friends, Adams said that wearing a mask can even increase your risk of getting the virus. “Folks who don’t know how to wear them properly tend to touch their faces a lot and actually can increase the spread of coronavirus.”

https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/

Gutting trust in medical and scientific institutions by telling obvious lies right as a pandemic got rolling will go down as one of the greatest failures of public health communication in US history.

Lying by omission is a well-used technique.

What this does is... sort of... lying by superfluous detail. Every bit is true, but the lay reader might well end up with the wrong impression. (Unless that the right impression — if reserving masks for health care workers is the optimal strategy. I have no idea how likely that may be.)

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