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Comment by grahamburger | Hacker News Reader

> But by far the likeliest explanation in my mind is that these institutions knowingly lied to the public in an attempt to manipulate people into not buying masks,

As I remember it, the advice wasn't "don't wear masks," the advice was "stay home." If they said "go buy masks," that would mean leaving your house to get a mask, which would directly contradict the more important advice of staying home. Also if they said wear a mask when you leave the house it would have been interpreted as "it's ok to go on with normal events as long as we have masks" which wasn't the message they were trying to send, either. The message was stay home, and at the time it was probably the right message, and not a lie.

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Yeah, no. People could have worn masks they already had, ordered masks online if any were available, the market for home-made masks would have emerged like it ended up doing later. And even if people did go out to buy masks, people were already going out on essential trips like the grocery store, pharmacy, and continuing to go to work for many people. Making one trip to buy a mask and then wearing that mask on all other essential trips for the next few weeks would have been a big net win even if you did have to go into a store to buy that mask.

> As I remember it, the advice wasn't "don't wear masks," the advice was "stay home."

There was “stay home” but also “stop buying masks because you are stopping medical, first responder, etc. personnel from getting them and they aren't useful for the general public” during the initial PPE supply shortage and hoarding.

This wasn't a lie, AFAICT, but Aa statement that was completely correct public health statement in the context it was given that was widely interpreted as an individual health statement.

> was completely correct public health statement in the context it was given that was widely interpreted as an individual health statement.

There was no misunderstanding, the message was "don't wear a mask unless you're sick, masks don't help the wearer they only help keep a sick person from spreading it to others around them". That was just a lie at the time, we didn't know that for sure and we had every reason to suspect the opposite.

> There was no misunderstanding, the message was "don't wear a mask unless you're sick, masks don't help the wearer they only help

I've heard lots of people say that was the message, but it wasn't the one I heard and it's not the one I find in any of the documented statements from public health officials.

I definitely remember a lot of talk from experts saying non-surgical masks don't work and that surgical masks should be saved for medical professionals.

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