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Comment by hrayr | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's contradicting. Directly contradicting would be "Don't wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19". What you described sounds more like extending the current WHO recommendations.

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I think "You need to wear a mask when you go out of the house" directly contradicts "you only need to wear a mask when taking care of someone with COVID-19"

The "only" is a typo.

Nope, check the link.

No I mean it is a typo on the WHO page, I sent them feedback suggesting this phrasing:

"Wear a mask if you are healthy and you are taking care of a person with COVID-19."

It’s a bit presumptuous to assume that the WHO has a typo in a document like this. Besides their messaging has been consistent.

Anyone can make a mistake.

I've worked at large government agencies. These things are reviewed and signed off by dozens of people before posting.

Besides, like I said this is not the only place they've said this. They've been consistent in down-playing the importance of masks.

How do you know they made a typo, rather than that's what they meant?

Hanlon's Razor

Perhaps it's neither malice, nor stupidity, but rather... just a different opinion to yours?

> "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," WHO executive director of health emergencies Mike Ryan said Monday. - https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/...

WHO has been saying "uninfected" people should not wear masks from the beginning. That's bad advice unless you're trying to save masks for medical works which makes it a well-intentioned untruth. Either way I don't like YouTube deleting a video that contradicts this WHO "advice".

Thanks for explaining, I didn't know that. That advice is certainly bad. I agree with your take.

That doesn’t really imply that you cannot or should not. The “only” there means they aren’t necessarily recommending you to do so but it is not forbidden.

So requiring you to wear masks in other situations does not contradict, because otherwise “doctors should wear masks at all times in hospital” would also contradict that (assuming the doctor isn’t taking care of just Covid-19 patients).

No they're definitely saying not to wear masks because they think it's net harmful. For example

> WHO also said community masking could lead to a "false sense of security" and cause people to ignore other evidence-based measures like handwashing and self-isolation.

That still doesn't seem like a contradiction to me since they are not explicitly recommending not to do it, only suggesting to be aware of the possible downsides.

That said, they also don't explicitly recommend to not take vitamin C or turmeric so the examples given by YouTube are already in conflict

because it is true, the N95 mask don't protect you from the virus completely, and the masks that city advocate to use (non N95) don't do anything to protect you, they are there to protect others from you. If you sneeze or talk those masks will restrict most of the droplets from traveling far.

> because it is true

I don't have an opinion on whether it's true or not myself. I’m not qualified to say.

I just know that reputable authorities disagree on it. So how can you enforce a truth here?

This is the heart of the issue. Just because legitimate and identifiably bad advice exists doesn't mean this is suddenly widely applicable to all health information. Youtube isn't banning content that the WHO is "absolutely certain is true" either, they are using any of the (frequently changing) general advice coming out of WHO.

There's always tons of grey area on what is true or good advice. No matter how much 'science' is thrown around, or credentialism ("they have a PhD!"), or credibility some international organization has, that does not make this any less true. Especially when it comes the speech of the general public - not some advice via some formal expert forum or government body.

Even Snopes.com is littered with incorrect and politicized positions, and unlike the WHO, their actual stated goal is trying to determine what is true or not. WHO has a million different incentives beyond this.

What is useful advice for governments to disseminate, given tons of competing interests (which is what WHO specializes in), doesn't automatically translate to what regular people should be allowed or not allowed to discuss in an open forum.

Additionally, we're not being asked to just trust WHO to have good advice and good intentions, Youtube is telling everyone to trust WHO information proxied via an Youtube moderation teams interpretation of it, via an opaque no-appeals process.

Anyone who has used any major platform before (Reddit, Paypal, etc) knows how stupid moderation teams can be. And the vast majority of moderation teams haven't been stupid enough to try to determine what is 'true' or not. Because that's crazy.

The only way I might support this is if it helps bring about the demise of Youtube.

And so continues this disgustingly paternal approach of "nudging" people to do things instead of presenting clear information and empowering citizens to take correct action.

Only in the same sense that "take vitamin C" is an extension of the WHO recommendations, and Wojcicki explicitly mentioned that as an example of what's banned.

My understanding here, from the quote in the article, is that one is ok to say 'Take vitamin C', but it is not ok to say 'Take vitamin C, it will cure you [of x]'.

> I don't think that's contradicting.

Sure it is. Only means exclusively, one, no more. They're saying, "You exclusively need to wear a mask if you're taking care of a person with C-19". This action, excluding all others.

"Only" qualifies "need". "you only need to wear a seat belt on public roads" and "you should wear a seat belt on private roads" are not contradictions.

You're confusing a declarative v. an imperative statement. What you propose is a declarative, and you're correct that it ain't contradictory.

The WHO's messaging, however, is imperative¹ (emphasis theirs):

"For healthy people wear a mask only if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCov infection"

This makes it clear that it directly contradicts the more widely-accepted similarly-imperative advice of "wear a mask in public, no matter what".

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¹: https://www.who.int/images/default-source/health-topics/coro...

In English, "you only need to" is completely different from "you need to only".

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