The reason government and medical signaling on the subject has been so mixed is that it isn’t apparent they are very effective, especially the jury rigged cloth masks that people are using.
I have yet to see a single western leader to recommend those masks for all the interactions (indoor at least). Case point - yesterday I went shopping in fairly large supermarket in Switzerland, and there were maybe 5 other customers (out of at least 100 in the store during that time, probably close to 200 plus all the staff) wearing masks, or gloves. People at least often kept their distance (not always possible in aisles), but that's about it. In a country which has one of most per-capita infections globally.
Why? They rely heavily on politicians doing right stuff. Mostly it works, but in these times politicians prefer keeping economy running (they delayed strong measures when things were getting worse than bad in Italy few kms from their border due to fear of financial impacts... well now they are worse but delayed by few days).
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1
The reason government and medical signaling on the subject has been so mixed is that it isn’t apparent they are very effective
The reason signaling has been mixed is because they were trying to preserve supply for medical professionals. The reason that medical professionals need them is because they work.
Can't remember seeing any controlled studies on the efficacy of social distancing either.
Many of the healthcare professionals in the countries that dealt with SARS are calling for universal mask wearing. I'd much rather trust their intuition and judgement than governments and media outlets passing the buck to the WHO.
No, but we have mountains of evidence from respiratory diseases throughout history, including the common cold and seasonal flu, that distancing lowers transmission.
It's why people are encouraged to stay home from work when they are sick, and why in normal situations, people in lines of work where they cannot afford to stay home from work get sick more often.
Social distancing is one of the oldest public health protocols we have for disease transmission control.
Sure, many old practices for disease prevention amount to nothing but old wives tales, but social distancing likely isn't one of them.
Healthcare workers wear masks. I'm pretty sure they have a pretty good idea whether masks work.
All we need to do is bring the reproductive number below 1, not necessarily all the way to 0.