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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

I say this as someone as fully vaxxed and boosted -- they really did mess up some weird things in the beginning, especially on masking?

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Technically the Surgeon General played a big part in muddying messaging on masking [1], but the CDC takes full responsibility for the PCR fiasco.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200301001854/https://twitter.c...

Masking seems like a normal way to prevent respitory diseases. It is still advised if someone wants full protection.

Right, that is my point. The CDC should clearly the whole time have been "Go ahead and mask, it can't hurt. Even a bandana or whatever if we're worried about the good ones for doctors"

That was NOT what they did.

And even if they did that, that's ok - CDC made a mistake. However, some people - not necessarily you - draw the conclusion to be "haha, look ... CDC makes mistakes we can't trust them!! Down with experts!".

It's a bad mistake though. Like, really bad. Like, that gave the anti-maskers SO MUCH FUEL.

> The CDC should clearly the whole time have been "Go ahead and mask, it can't hurt. Even a bandana or whatever if we're worried about the good ones for doctors"

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.

Absent clear evidence to the contrary, I strongly suspect the strategy of knowingly lying about (or recklessly getting wrong) the core concept of "whether or not masks work to prevent airborne disease" is the greater long term harm if you're the agency that's supposed to "make public declarations about diseases."

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.

If anyone is curious, the new yorker had an amazing piece of long-form reporting on the earlier days of the pandemic, written near the end of 2020 [1]. Section 14 is about masks in particular.

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...

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