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Comment by dabbledash | Hacker News Reader

It isn’t fine. At a time when being able to trust public health officials is so important, to see officials blow their credibility with this kind of thing is incredibly frustrating.

If was stupid anyway. “Masks don’t work and also we need them for healthcare workers.” Did anyone actually believe this?

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All he had to do was say "Instead of buying, we recommend making a cloth mask". The data in contemporary studies was limited at the time, but we had the historical experience of the 1918 flu suggesting that the simple masks used then were effective, and you get a win either way: cloth doesn't work, you still buy time and the population is predisposed to wear masks of any sort, even if they lose some trust in being given inaccurate reccomendations. Cloth does work, and it's even better.

As well, the aspect of HCW shortages, while real, inverts the "front line" of the pandemic to be in the clinics and ICUs and not ordinary gatherings. Prevent spread in the latter and you won't need so much of the former.

Fauci also made a mess of AIDS too, so his track record with public health is...questionable.

Fauci is more a politician than a scientist. We needed a scientist to tell us the truth, not another canned politician to fog up our perceptions. The media ate it up and propped up Dr Falsie. The non-thinking media watching fanatics ate it up and they created the monster.

Did your media worship at the foot of Trump's altar? Because I don't recall there being much choice between which version you're going to believe.

Any idea where I could read more about Fauci messing up the response to AIDS? I’d always assumed he handled so well that he was the obvious guy to turn to for COVID-19.

Exactly. It was incredibly stupid and turned what could have been a moment of realized civic spirit, as I truly believe most Americans would not hoard masks if they were asked to, into yet more evidence that institutions are rotten and cannot be trusted.

> I truly believe most Americans would not hoard masks if they were asked to, into yet more evidence that institutions are rotten and cannot be trusted.

You are being idealistic. Even if 99,99% of americans would not hoard masks, the remaining 0,01% could hoard virtually all of the supply. I don't believe you genuinely believe that literally every single american would "not hoard masks when asked to".

Or perhaps it is your estimation that is overly pessimistic, we will never know. Either way, if you ask me, right now the country would be better off with more idealism and less cynicism from its leaders.

Really? Do you genuinely believe that - if the government were to ask its citizens "please don't hoard and markup these incredibly valuable life-saving masks which are available for everyone to buy in large quantities" - you genuinely believe that literally every american would heed that request?

I'll be happy to take your word for this if you want to confirm "yes" you actually believe this. Otherwise I will assume you don't actually believe this, you were just throwing rhetoric around.

Perhaps you should read what I wrote. It is not the same thing you seem to be objecting to.

So you acknowledge that some people would hoard masks regardless, and therefore, your original suggestion "just ask people not to hoard" was overtly idealistic and would not prevent hoarding of masks?

Are you being intentionally obtuse just to get a fight going, or you really do not understand what "I truly believe most Americans would not hoard masks if they were asked to" means? In case of the later, it means that I truly believe most, but not all, Americans would do the right thing and the nation would be able to handle the few sociopaths that who would indeed hoard.

Thanks for the clarification. It seems we disagree on whether we could handle "the few sociopaths" who would indeed hoard. Let's leave it at that.

If only 10% of americans hoarded masks it would have ruined the supply, no give than 30% of America followed Trump blindly, you actually think only 10% of Americans would have went out and gotten masks for themselves and their families when a plague of uncertain lethality was on the rise? I don't have much faith in that here or any other country that didn't just flat out enforce it.

Yes, I do believe it, even the 30% of Trump loyalist, which I do not think are any less patriotic than the elite. But only if their leaders were trustworthy and frank and not patronizing, cynical assholes, transparently lying all the time.

Did he really blow his credibility though? There is a double standard at work. People who are generally honest and accurate only have to slip up a handful of times and suddenly are deemed non-credible. At the same time, in the same media venues, you have people who lie a dozen times a day and remain credible. I’m all for holding government officials to a high standard, but most of the trump administration would have been laughed out of the room had they been held to the same standard as fauci.

What I think I hear you saying is: 1. Maybe if someone like Trump can lie all the time snd still be believed by ~30-40% of people, it doesn’t matter whether a public figure is honest, people will just believe them anyway. 2. It’s unfair to criticize Fauci for dishonesty when other people aren’t criticized for being worse.

To these I would say:

1. Public health officials start out more trusted than controversial politicians, but they don’t have many die-hards who will just believe no matter what either. So, someone like Fauci has more to lose from being dishonest. I don’t think we can conclude that because Trump “got away with it” that Fauci can too.

And even if he were as impervious to criticism on this front as Trump, 40% of people trusting someone in his position wouldn’t be nearly good enough.

2. I’m not sure about this one. I think Trump got a lot of (completely deserved) criticism for being mendacious. It’s true that some of the people who always gave him a pass criticize Fauci for dishonesty, but what are you donna do? People are hypocrites. I think more people would trust public health experts if they were more honest, and that’s all that matters to me.

It depends on the masks. Health care workers on COVID wards use high spec masks, N95 or equivalent, and they do seem to be very effective. The kind of open sided masks most of the public use have limited evidence of effectiveness. Similarly the face shields are intended to protect from projectile slater of body fluids from patients coughing explosively. There’s no evidence at all they provide protection from people breathing nearby but I still see people using them in public.

So it’s a complex issue. I do support mask wearing in public. It certainly doesn’t do any harm and I think it encourages good habits and makes people think about what they do and why. I suspect if they are effective, at least some of that effectiveness comes from those peripheral effects. Still, every little helps.

“I do support mask wearing in public. It certainly doesn’t do any harm and I think it encourages good habits and makes people think about what they do and why.”

Very simplistic statement. What is “in public”? How is touching a mask (and therefore your face) constantly a guaranteed win? Why has the virus not raged incredibly in locations with fewer mask mandates? Would it make more sense to require masks “in private” where people are in closer contact? Requiring them outside “in public” where people are spaced out is symbolic and authoritarian; it makes people like you feel better. Hardly a reason for a policy.

> Why has the virus not raged incredibly in locations with fewer mask mandates?

You mean a location like the entire US? It has raged incredibly. Don't fool yourself into thinking anywhere in the US, mask mandate or not, actually has a high rate of mask usage.

The only way to do any sort of comparison would be the US versus another country which actually follows a mask mandate. Even then, the comparisons are hard because those countries likely did lots of things right.

> Requiring them outside “in public”

Yes, masks outside are dumb in many situations. But, this was in direct response to people just moving their large parties outside with no distance. Unfortunately any time a rule is not spelled out in great detail, people look for loopholes as a form of protest. Ironically, this leads to rules spelled out in symbolic and authoritarian ways.

Did you miss where I said it’s a complex issue?

it was even hard to defend as a noble lie since it was an obvious self contradictory statement.

it just reflects how the ruling class view the peasants.

It's not like he was trying to keep masks for the rich. While may would say nurses are in a noble profession, few would say they're nobility in America.

I don't think GP's point was a "rich vs poor" argument, but more "the populace is stupid, we have to lie to them so they won't go do stupid things".

This to me resonates with what happened in France during 2020. Many were complaining about how the government was treating the people "like babies" instead of treating them "like adults". Nothing came up related to the "rich vs poor" strife which, usually, comes up very, very quickly here.

I think this whole crisis shed some light on the communication skills required from the various authorities. I sympathise with people not liking to be treated like kids, I don't either. But then, looking at people's actual behavior [0], it did make me wonder what the actual, correct, communication should have been.

It's clear to me that "the people" is not one homogenous blob made of identical individuals. People will interpret a message differently and will behave differently when faced with the same exact situation. I guess the whole difficulty of this is that the government and various authorities implicated in managing this crisis can't have the message wrapped in different packages, each targeted to a certain group of people.

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[0] I'm thinking of an episode in early March 2020, right before the lockdown, when the message was "let's all try to take measures to prevent the spread, namely let's stop all bunching up". This was a message from the President, broadcast on public TV, at the time one of the most widely viewed ones. Can't remember the day, but it was during the week. The very next Sunday, so less than one week later, people swarmed the parks in Paris with no attempt whatsoever at distancing.

Was everyone out there? Of course not. Was it even a majority? I don't know, probably not. But those same people would then take public transportation with hundreds of thousands of other people to go to work with other people and so on. All when we were concerned about a virus that was easily spreading through air.

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