FUD around masks and their effectiveness is being deliberately spread by people and groups with a political agenda, primarily through disinformation campaigns on social media. This isn't an entirely organic phenomenon.
Also, there's no character limit here, you can write the entire phrase instead of using obscure acronyms.
But, the reason there weren't rigorous studies supporting mask usage was not because they don't work, but because nobody was willing to run a study where you exposed half the subjects to a virus without any protection just to prove that masks would help the other half. It's the same reason there aren't any double-blind studies proving that parachutes help you if you fall out of a plane.
That was well before the CDC and surgeon general were telling people masks are bad for you don’t buy them. The masks were long gone by then.
No, this is specifically addressed in the SSC piece. The CDC has been against masks for many years; their advice on masks this year was the same advice they've always given. There is absolutely no reason to believe they put any further thought into it than that.
White lies are still lies that cause people to lose faith in any advice you might have.
So it is not that the CDC was malicious / selfish / conspiring. They did what they believed was the best policy response. Even if we know better now that they should have just published instructions on making community masks and advocating their use.
> nobody was willing to run a study where you exposed half the subjects to a virus without any protection
Running the studies is effectively impossible due to ethics constraints. The CDC were probably lying about their reasoning because if you put all these facts together the CDC would not ever be able to take a position on countermeasures until it was clearly too late. I dunno what their idea of Disease Control is for pandemic, but a little bit of "balance of probability" thinking probably happened.
Even if we'd discovered masks were a complete waste of time, the cost-benefit of everybody spending $10 for hastily sewn cloth mask was clearly in favour of recommending the idea. We've had entire economies parked up, I'm sure the labour could have been found to do some knitting. As projects go it would have been a very productive use of time. They just didn't want to disrupt the supply of medical masks and showed a rather dire level of panic and unpreparedness.
And they too admitted to spreading FUD about masks, in the misguided belief that stopping average people from using masks would leave more masks for the health care providers.
That should reinforce the important point that we're dealing with unqualified, clown-show/amateur-hour political appointees in multiple levels of government, making critical decisions, at this point, a point in time, unlike most points, where leadership or it's lack matters.
And I know that FUD is just a long-standing acronym for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and I too could just write that. But being so long-standing, the term not is only convenient but has come mean a particular kind of fear, uncertainty and doubt, that spread through a particular of public relations system.
"Listen, we believe masks are effective but we don't have enough for medical personnel who need them right now so unless you absolutely need one please stay home, stay safe, and leave them to doctors, nurses, and other emergency personnel."
No misinformation and the vast majority of people would have complied.
Lying to everyone just cost them credibility and probably lives when this is all said and done.
Still a major win over our current situation.
Government officials see us behaving like this, they assume we're too dumb and self-centered to do the right thing, so they attempt to manipulate us in order to get us to behave properly.
For you to support claim 1 all you need to do is post links to the meta-analyses or randomised control trials that show the effectiveness of masks to prevent the spread of respiratory disease. There are lots of RCTs around mask wearing to prevent the spread of respiratory disease.
> And they too admitted to spreading FUD about masks
No they didn't. They haven't even changed their advice. Now they say "it may prevent the spread", they definitely don't say "it does prevent the spread", and they're still trying to preserve stocks of medical supplies.
In light of this point, how much would you trust a vaccine approved by the FDA or CDC?
I’ll wait until it’s approved by reputable non-US health care agencies. Especially if a vaccine magically arrives before November 3rd.
There was a severe shortage of N95's at the time, and if the public thought masks were important, there would have been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community would have had squat. Given that masks, particularly N95s are actually effective in a Healthcare environment ... it was the exactly the right call to make.
Get the masks to those who it will actually help, not the public for whom it will make a smaller difference.
Once production is ramped, or we have enough PPE, then it makes sense to have a pro-mask policy for the public.
From a communications perspective, it's obviously problematic, but in terms of equipment triage, it's highly rational and we actually want our leaders making these kinds of tough decisions.
The WHO and various governments should have been more efficient in their messaging however.
Uh, you what actually happened? There was been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community got squat. It's bizarre to have to recite headline news from two months ago ... doctors in NYC using garbage bags instead of real protection. Hand sanitizer unavailable. Nurses in hospital prohibited from using their own masks and not getting them from the hospitals. The Federal government hoarding PPEs for who knows what asinine reason.
As I said, there was excess demand for PPE, but by and large, most medical staff did have access.
That there were some doctors who were unable, means that obviously there was some shortage.
But Dr. Fauci and the WHO had of indicated that 'every American should wear a mask' - then all doctors would have been wearing garbage bags through the entire affair.
The 'excess demand' from natural concern was bad enough, but 350 Million Americans clamouring for N95's would have wiped out any hope of keeping the medical staff in place.
It was a rational decision given the risks and unknowns: We need to get PPE to doctors because the value to the general public is limited.
A tough and difficult decision at the time, but they did the right thing.
This still happened, though. All the stores that sold masks to consumers sold out, very rapidly, at the same time the Surgeon General was tweeting that they didn't work.
They should've ordered they be pulled from sale, not lied about their efficacy.
Which likely wouldn't happen because it's not like someone who gets a profitable contract from the Federal government, retools their factory, isn't going to then try and squeeze as much production out of that as they can anyway.
Lying is never a defensible policy. If there was reasonable concern about run on PPE, then perhaps government order restricting or banning their sale to general population (like it was done by some governments) should be considered.
This seems to have been effective, as most of the restrictions have been lifted and we are back to sporadic local clusters by now.
That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a ton of clowny behavior from leadership.
I'm sad that the original messages didn't come across as the nuanced issue that it is. Hospitals need the N95 stuff because they are exposed at high rates for a long time. Hospitals also educate their staff on proper protocol when wearing a mask so that people don't negate the effectiveness by wearing it wrong or touching their face after removing it.
The public isn't educated on proper mask wearing procedure. We don't know how to test that a mask fits properly. We don't have the same training to avoid cross contamination and poor mask hygiene. We don't understand the marginal benefits of masks and how it creates a false sense of security causing us to take more risks and spread the disease more quickly.
So at first, it makes perfect sense to funnel the best masks to the highest risk people and encourage "stay at home" (instead of "go outside with a mask") because it limits disease spread the most and protects the community.
I'm sad that it has turned in to "but they said masks did nothing" as an excuse to not wear them. It was never that they did nothing, it's that masks ALONE is not enough. Masks and proper behavior are necessary together.
If you have the correct behaviour (hand washing, distancing) the mask provides you no benefit.
The only point to wearing a mask is if you are unable to maintain that distance, or you're stuck in a room with symptomatic people. But if you're doing that you're also provided with eye protection and gloves and a gown and copious water for handwashing, and you've probably been trained to don and doff the PPE correctly, and maybe you even have a person acting as a PPE spotter helping you put it on or take it off correctly.
That aside, there is high overlap these days between people that say masks don't work and people that are completely negligent about distancing. It is a little ironic, as there were concerns that belief in masks would make people distance less due to sense of security.
So there definitely was some narrative going around back in March that masks had an actively negative effect for an individual, not just that masks do nothing. That said, anyone who is an anti-masker at this point is being ridiculous.
FUD is no more an obscure acronym than CDC. FFS this is a programming and tech forum, people throw acronyms around all the time.
It. Was. Not. The WHO and CDC both issued guidance that public use of personal protective equipment was a bad idea, for fundamental scarcity reasons. And in both cases the messaging was done poorly in a few spots and could have been interpreted as statement that masks don't work against covid. They were heavily criticized for this at the time, and the criticism was carried by the media. No expert ever told people that masks don't work, or that the public shouldn't wear them. They were telling people to save them for the health care workers!
And getting to the point upthread: that bit of misinformation is, again, something being deliberately propagated by people with a political agenda.
> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus...
https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/12337257852839321...
It's not surprising people got "masks don't work" from that messaging.
> but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
“ CDC does not currently recommend the use of facemasks to help prevent novel #coronavirus. Take everyday preventive actions, like staying home when you are sick and washing hands with soap and water, to help slow the spread of respiratory illness. ”
Look at the most recent CDC mask advice. They're not saying "masks work", they're using much more cautious language: "masks may work". https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...
Bullshit. Most of all because it's not a binary issue at all. Even if masks reduce the number of particles you exhale and inhale only by 30%, that makes a huge difference for the population as a whole.
Parent comment doesn't claim it is binary, or rest on it being binary. Post good quality evidence to show that marks work.
The article points out that contrarians, often conservative, promoted mask wearing until the US government reversed its position and said that masks do work.
Suddenly, anti-lockdown protests, conspiracy theories and mask objecting started happening, and mask wearing became politically polarizing. It would be interesting to see where these people get their information from...one suspects that the answer will be skewed heavily toward social media.
I think the simplest explanation is that the conservative right now views literally every issue as a them-versus-us issue, and as soon as it was clear that "they" thought we should wear masks, a very predictable conservative backlash occurred. I'm not sure if the president helped launch this particular battle in the "culture war" or was just a cheerleader as usual.
Do your own Googling next time.
My question was rhetorical. I know it's not true. I hoped you would look it up and realize your comment was inaccurate.
Their election interference was so wildly successful that they'd have no reason not be trying to inflict further damage on the US now.
The US government reversed itself on masks and recommended them before the rest of the English-speaking world. The WHO only endorsed masks a few weeks ago. I don't like Trump, but these are facts.
It seems to have been politicized after Mike Pence visited the Mayo Clinic, and didn't wear a mask, and then Trump was then pushed on the issue, and reacted characteristically. If Pence had set a good example and worn a mask, or of there hadn't been a huge uproar about him not wearing a mask, would the issue have turned into a front in the culture war?
That's not facts, that's spin. From your phrasing, it sounds like you're saying that prior to a "few weeks ago" that the WHO policy was somehow anti-mask. It wasn't, even in January. Their policy was always that PPE should be reserved for health care workers due to scarcity, and in a few (A FEW) instances their wording of that recommendation was poor and might plausibly imply that masks don't work.
No expert ever interpreted the WHO policy the way you people insist on doing. And at this point this insistence is just pathological.
Until Zeynep Tufekci's New York Times oped, the consensus was indeed that "masks don't work" for Covid. I documented numerous instances on social media of healthcare professionals insulting and belittling those who wore masks based on what you describe as "poor wording".
Here is a Time article from 4 March that sums up the expert consensus on masks at that point (in fact it has direct quotes from experts, including an infectious diseases professor, a leading psychologist, and the Surgeon General): that masking was "superstitious", didn't work and claiming that wearing a a mask equated to knocking on wood, or not walking under a ladder. https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/