Comment by nuerow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nuerow | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> My country's government, like many others (including the US, I think?), blatantly lied about masks at the beginning, saying that they didn't work or were counterproductive for laypeople (...)

You should really revisit those claims because it's quite likely you got them all completely wrong.

I'm also living in a country where its government argued against mass adoption of surgical masks and gloves, but the argument was no way close to your claim.

The rationale was that this mass increase in demand for surgical masks and gloves would deplete the current stockpile and production capacity, thus leaving healthcare professionals and other frontline workers without access to basic protective equipment.

We're talking about a spike in demand that directly lead to the death of healthcare and frontline workers[1].

Consequently, we've saw multiple governments and health officials stating that the public should not go on a shopping binge for protective equipment to lower the pressure from the supply-side.

The same problem was also observed in a run for respirators.

In all these cases, once the production capacity was ramped up, governments naturally started providing incentives and even mandating their use.

[1] https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/comment/healthcare-wor...

> You should really revisit those claims because it's quite likely you got them all completely wrong.

> I'm also living in a country where its government argued against mass adoption of surgical masks and gloves, but the argument was no way close to your claim.

I'm not making wrong claims, because I'm not saying all governments did the same thing. In my country the messaging was definitely as I said. The argument was that masks wouldn't work for laypeople because they needed specialized training to be worn right (another clear lie, my wife is a doctor, has always used masks and never got such training beyond a few simple instructions that can be given in 30 seconds. And that did not change with the pandemic) and we would probably make the problem even worse by wearing them incorrectly, touching them with our hands and contracting the virus.

If your goverment was more sincere and still succeeded in preventing people from hoarding masks, I suppose it can be counted as evidence against my claim that lying was actually the best thing to do. But not all societies are equal. In my country I'm quite convinced that if the government had given the same messaging as in yours, people would have hoarded and made the shortage in healthcare worse. Although of course, this is just from my subjective impression of how my countrymen work and not a scientific claim.

> I'm not making wrong claims, because I'm not saying all governments did the same thing. In my country the messaging was definitely as I said. The argument was that masks wouldn't work for laypeople because they needed specialized training to be worn right (another clear lie, my wife is a doctor, has always used masks and never got such training beyond a few simple instructions that can be given in 30 seconds.

Again, I feel you should really revisit the events and review your claim. Even if we accept it at face value, it only makes any sense to raise concerns over "hey didn't work or were counterproductive for laypeople" if they were advising against mass adoption, and advising people to not go out of their way to buy surgical masks and latex gloves only makes sense if the goal is to mitigate spikes in demand to ensure the medical community still has access to them.

Let's put it this way: did you saw any government at all advising against buying toilet paper?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com