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About number 3, it was a blatant lie to keep the PPE for medical workers. I understand the rationale there, but I don't think it's worth treating people like children and lying to them - even if it temporarily gives a better result. Because now when they say masks work, plenty of people are understandably skeptical - and that makes them vulnerable to believing less credible sources of information on the topic.

I fully believe masks help, despite as you say, there being little specific evidence for Covid19, because we have good reason to think they reduce transmission just based on how masks work, evidence in general to support masks in a medical setting, and the transmission mechanism of the virus.

However, I have zero sympathy for the authorities struggling to get people to take them seriously about masks after they started off by lying about it.

And after an established history of authorities and politicians lying, it's little wonder conspiracy theories proliferate. You reap what you sow.

> However, I have zero sympathy for the authorities struggling to get people to take them seriously about masks after they started off by lying about it.

This is a common argument, but it is honestly kind of ridiculous. Like how can you claim with a straight face both:

a) Authorities lied about masks not working, and

b) Since authorities are known liars (see a), their current claims that masks do work must be untrue.

Do these people really not know there is now broad consensus in what people knowledgeable on the topic believe works, or are they just making bad faith arguments because they don't want to follow it?

Keep in mind I'm not claiming B. I'm saying that the authorities lying gives people a reason to be skeptical about future claims.

The dangers of crying wolf.

The authorities/institutions are always advancing their agenda. truth/lying is irrelevant. In most cases the agenda is consistent over years so it’s hard to notice the changes. During Covid the health agency agendas pivoted so rapidly their agenda changes where more abrupt. First, they needed to keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed so they said stuff about REAL n95 masks not working so healthcare could get them. Then they needed to stop people getting Covid figured masks might work so they said wear a face covering .. it can’t hurt. And then trump conspicuously didn’t wear a mask deep into the pandemic so it became about making trump look stupid and stopping his re-election, so the justification for masks came in full force shortly after trump went around not wearing one. Had trump been one of the first people wearing a mask talking about “China flu” early on. this whole mask policy would have been flipped.

> Do these people really not know there is now broad consensus in what people knowledgeable on the topic believe works

I mean, I don't think there is broad consensus. I think there is a hell of a lot of group think going on. Going against the grain literally gets you ridiculed, mocked, harassed, called an idiot and if you are in the medical industry... probably gets you on the blacklist.

I don't trust a single bit of research generated about masks, or anything, while in the middle of a politically charged pandemic. All of it should be taken with a very healthy grain of salt.

The idea that every intelligent, well meaning person agrees with what we are doing is lunacy. It would be insane to think that. This whole thing went from "go on cruises" to "lock it all down" in literally a week's time. Of course intelligent, well intentioned people might not agree with what is going on. It amazes me that people assume everybody smart has to be for all this.

Going against the grain literally gets you ridiculed, mocked, harassed, called an idiot and if you are in the medical industry... probably gets you on the blacklist.

"The blacklist"? Which one is that?

Google “dr loses job over Covid” to see the examples we are allowed to

Got it, thanks, that was good reading. Where is that consolidated into a black-list? It’s crazy that hiring and firing in the US comes to that list.

Again that missed the point entirely. It certainly wasn't lying. We know and knew that some masks are effective. n95 masks when worn correctly are definitely safer than not having one full stop.

we didn't know then which masks were also going to be effective and didn't know if those masks would be worse than not wearing one at all. there was also the issue of shortages of the effective masks for medical pros that needed them. that informed the speaking at the time and at no point was that a lie. and we do have studies now that masks do decrease the likelihood of transmission so we do know now that those cloth masks are effective.

1. shortage of proper n95 masks(look at toilet paper during the beginning)

2. no evidence of other masks being useful or not harmful at the time so they said socially distance yourself as a primary mode of protection and wash your hands often.

It certainly wasn't lying.

It certainly was: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus.... That's not a statement that mask effectiveness is uncertain, it's an authoritative statement that they don't help.

one political appointee from an administration that handled it about the worst as it could saying that(which also doesn't say what you think it says) doesn't change the facts of it... the overwhelming messaging at the time was how i noted it and wasn't a lie.

The fact that they ask on one hand not to buy PPE because there is a shortage for medical workers while on the other hand saying they're actually counter productive against covid19 is at least circumstantial evidence for the claim.

It would be difficult to prove they definitely lied without an admission of guilt or leaked internal communications.

it's not a conspiracy theory. fauci admitted as much in this interview: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

Thank you. I thought I remembered they admitted it, but I didn't trust my memory. Case closed.

> it was a blatant lie to keep the PPE for medical workers.

Can you post a link to the published studies that you think CDC / WHO should have been using to inform their decisions around masks?

> evidence in general to support masks in a medical setting

We really do have lots of testing for masks in medical settings, and most of them struggle to show benefit.

You're saying masks don't work at all and there is little reason to wear them even in a medical setting?

I don't want to say that's impossible that we're doing something widely despite it being ineffective - because that does happen. But the burden of proof is on you if you want to make such a strong claim against the consensus view, and I reject your attempt to foist it on me.

Probably you'll counter that you're just talking specifically about the public using masks to prevent covid19, and I agree the evidence to support that is thin. But that's to be expected, because it's also new. Again we have good reason to suspect that if masks work at preventing spread of respiratory illness in a medical setting, they should work for the public with covid19 too. So if you want to claim that, again the burden of proof is on you to make a strong case against the consensus view of the general efficacy of masks in preventing spread of respiratory illness.

1. Do you like to be manipulated? I don't.

2. It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread.

3. It's the job of government agencies and officials to use communications skills to avoid these issues. If they talk like pedantic scientists then their messaging will fail, and if they don't know that they are in the wrong job.

Rhetorial questions being, of course, one of the very oldest manipulation techniques.

https://people.uwplatt.edu/~ciesield/platovsoph.htm

> It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread

But how could one have been sure that a mutation has not changed certain behaviors in dangerous ways. Given potential adverse impact I have no problems overcompensating in the caution department till more light is shed and at that point one needs to dial down.

I don't know that anybody can be 100% sure of anything. But all along there have been experts on coronaviruses who have known what to expect from this pandemic [0]. They know that coronaviruses don't mutate into different strains like influenza. They've studied multiple coronaviruses, some far more deadly than this one, and it's never happened before. They expect this one to weaken, if anything.

Personally I am very disappointed in the media coverage of the science applicable to this pandemic, specifically how much supposition is interjected by non-experts. For the clicks, I guess.

[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

As for your point 3: the current article, amusingly, has the following sentence: "There’s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface."

I was not sure what to make of that, precisely for the reason you mention.

Here we have still the message: there is no evidence of a transmission in trains. (because they don't note the names of the passengers, I presume)

Indeed, "there is no evidence" can just mean "we didn't look very hard." As in, "there is no evidence the attackers accessed PII" (because logging was disabled).

By now, "we haven't had time to look hard" is no excuse not to provide evidence that disinfecting surfaces works. If there is no evidence for that, it's almost certainly not true.

I looked through a few papers, but I couldn't find more than: experts agree now formites are overrated. While saying that lab experiment shows formites can survive for days on surfaces (and then claiming that this experimemt was conducted with artificial high load).

About #3, there's a problem when the message is worded exactly the same way for "we didn't have time to test masks yet" and "we have evidence that those medicines are harmful, but we won't seek confirmation because we are looking for helpful ones instead".

But that is of secondary importance, because early in the pandemics a lot of health organizations made it very clear that not using masks should be the policy. It wasn't a communication problem, they were just lying to people to get to a goal (masks not disappearing from the market, a good goal). That's wrong on many different ways.

What I found deeply troubling was that many healthcare workers who weren’t in on the “noble lie” jumped on the “masks don’t work” bandwagon. They mocked and belittled mask-wearers on social media. They turned into anti-masking fanatics. It was a frightening display of of zealousness from the semi-informed. They just as quickly became pro-mask and ignored their previous stance.

What was really amusing was that Trump and company were busy preaching the use of masks and how they would save us, while the WHO and a lot of medical bodies were busy trying to misrepresent "we don't know" into "masks don't work" so people wouldn't rush into buying them.

Then suddenly we got a few studies settling down that masks worked, and on the 2 or 3 days it took for those studies to be known both camps completely reversed their messages and insisted that they always had that new message and never changed their anything.

> they didn't do studies

No, they did do lots of studies for flu, and they really struggle to find a benefit for masking. Importantly, the quality of evidence for masks as source control (infected people wear masks to prevent transmission) was really bad.

(People should wear masks)