Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

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Western governments recommending against masks is one of the biggest government fuck-ups I've ever witnessed and now there's no lack of people trying to cover it up and find excuses for it.

The quote below is from "Professional and Home-Made Face Masks Reduce Exposure to Respiratory Infections among the General Population". There's enough studies looking at this for SARS and influenza- including for the general population - that it is highly irresponsible to err on the side of not using masks even if there's no clear evidence for population usage for SARS-2.

"Opportunistic data collected during the SARS epidemic in Asia suggested that population-wide use of face masks may significantly decrease transmission of not only SARS but also influenza [3,4,5,6,7]. As part of pandemic preparedness, many are contemplating the contribution wide-spread use of masks could have [8,9]."

3. Lau JTF, Tsui H, Lau M, Yang X (2004) SARS transmission, risk factors and prevention in Hong Kong. Emerging Infectious Diseases 10: 587–92.

4. Lo JYC, Tsang THF, Leung Y, Yeung EYH, Wu T, et al. (2005) Respiratory infections during SARS outbreak, Hong Kong, 2003. Emerging Infectious Diseases 15: 1738–41.

5. Wilder-Smith A, Low JGH (2005) Risk of respiratory infections in health care workers: lesson on infection control emerge from the SARS outbreak. Southeast Asian Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health 36: 481–488.

6. Wu J, Xu F, Zhou W, Feikin DR, Lin C-Y, et al. (2004) Risk factors for SARS among persons without known contact with SARS patients, Beijing, China. Emerging Infectious Diseases 10: 210–16.

7. Tang CS, Wong CY (2004) Factors influencing the wearing of facemasks to prevent the severe acute respiratory syndrome among adult Chinese in Hong Kong. Preventive Medicine 39: 1187–93.

8. World Health Organisation Writing Group (2006) Nonpharmaceutical Inter- ventions for Pandemic Influenza, International Measures. Emerging Infectious Diseases 12: 81–87.

9. World Health Organisation Writing Group (2006) Non-pharmaceutical Interventions for Pandemic Influenza, National and Community Measures. Emerging Infectious Diseases 12: 88–94.

Most of the people in the USA denying mask use are right wingers who choose to listen to politicians rather than scientists, that's the 90% problem, not what you're pointing out. Their leaders tell them masks don't work and they listen. Others listened to scientists and we're better for it but if half the country is ignoring it, it greatly reduces the effectiveness of masks. The CDC backtracked within a month or two that masks could be a good idea even homemade ones to limit the aerosols. To say anything else is nitpicking, we've have 6 months and people still deny it. Nothing you pointed out would have changed it since Trump double downed on not wearing a mask and his luddites followed behind him.

It's absolutely insane (or a transparent deception) to make the argument that CDC in March saying "don't wear masks" is the problem here for eroding trust, when the right political wing was opposed to scientific voices even before that, and 9 months later so many people are opposing mask wearing now? How can one say out of one side of their mouth that the CDC was wrong then, and out the other side day that the CDC advice is wrong now? If CDC was wrong about masks in March, why are people who say that still opposed to wearing masks?

It's insane to hold the people who claim to be scientists to a higher standard than the people who don't?

With regards to our lovely two-party system, both sides (yes I know) typically only cite "science" when it suits them. In the defense of "the left" (sorry I hate talking about politics as if it's one-dimensional), it does seem like data supports their policies more often than it does the right, but again, a false dichotomy is the wrong way of looking at this.

Remove politics from the discussion and science is still facing a crisis: reproducibility crisis, proposing unfalsifiable theories, spending more time worrying about positive results than finding the truth, politics influencing science (not just the other way around as it should be), the profit-driven concerns of higher learning institutions, etc, etc.

The CDC is not the man on the street. The man on the street can distrust an institution that suggests something unscientific when they are requesting trust from the public.

Doesn't matter if said man on the street thinks the earth is flat, has a mental disorder or likes tennis more than soccer.

An institution should not be judged on the merits of the people judging them.

Also, people not wanting the government to force them what to do with their bodies is not quite the same as them not believing that there is a health risk when not wearing masks. Stop conflating the two. Engage the argument instead of the strawmen (or don't, but be honest about it.)

US politics are irrelevant. As I've said, this was happening universally outside of Asia.

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