This didn’t prove anything about them failing to do so. This is just a bunch of assumptions into conflicts of interests with zero actual evidence.
Generally the people who talk about “no evidence of safety and effectiveness” have no idea who CDER / CBER are, no idea what an IND is, no idea how clinical trials are done, and no idea of how the FDA does postmarket surveillance / monitoring. Basically they are not informed enough to have a well reasoned opinion or argument.
Somebody not even being able to name the correct federal agency - which is not obscure insider knowledge - is a sure sign they are a crank who does not know what they are talking about.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200301001854/https://twitter.c...
That was NOT what they did.
This is wrong for a couple reasons. First, it would have led to a run on masks, which were already in short supply for medical professionals. My girlfriend is a physician at a major east coast hospital and has been treating patients with COVID from day 1. People don't seem to want to accept how dire the lack of PPE was for them. Intubating a patient with COVID isn't on the same level as walking past someone in the supermarket. The situation was dangerous. To add to this, even if we somehow equipped everyone with a properly fitted N95, the average American would amaze you with their inability to use it effectively. On multiple occasions I've seen adults in crowded airports lower their masks to sneeze, for example.
It would seem to me that credibility would be paramount. Perhaps mitigate the mask thing with something weaselly like "At this time, we believe a gaiter or a bandanna is sufficient so don't go buying them up." That little white lie strikes me as much better than "masks don't work y'all" -- which emphatically was the message they put out.
It goes into the history of the CDC, what the pandemic playbook looked like in terms of "public relations" and how (and why!) it failed spectacularly in March/April of 2020.
The answer is complicated and not straightforward.
My read has been that, from a technical perspective, we knew exactly what policy and PR responses were appropriate, but executive politics leaked-in and delayed/prevented those appropriate responses.
Pandemic response is supposed to be led by the CDC and supported by state, federal, local government officials. What we saw, instead, was politicians trying to lead and control the narratives, to disastrous effect.
In my mind, it wasn't a party-affiliated error, but an ego-affiliated error. The biggest offenders were Cuomo [2], Pence, and Trump.
[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-yea...
[2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leade...