Actually, yes. For the first half of the pandemic, much of the medical community was unsure if COVID was airborne.

Examples:

- https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai...

- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7

- https://archive.is/wPD2D (Tweet from WHO)

Note that "airborne" has a specific meaning in medical literature. Everyone agreed COVID could be transmitted in the air by respiratory droplets. But to be truly "airborne" means the virus could be aerosolized and float freely, without being attached to a larger droplet.

Both droplet-based and aerosolized/"airborne" spread allows viruses to be transmitted in the air. But a truly "airborne" virus can travel much farther.

It's the difference between needing 6 feet and 20 feet of distance to prevent spread.

(To put it bluntly, it's the difference between avoiding spittle, or avoiding the equivalent of cigarette smoke. Two very different threat models.)

Early in the pandemic there was a very aggressive "you don't need masks and please don't buy them because hospitals need them"

Ex: "US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams not only wants people to stop buying facemasks to prevent the novel coronavirus, but warns that you actually might increase your risk of infection if facemasks are not worn properly. [...] On Sunday, Adams posted on Twitter that people should stop buying masks. Rather, he tweeted that to keep yourself and those around you healthy, wash your hands often, avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands and disinfect surfaces."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona...

Yes, in the early days of the pandemic there was a lot of official resistance to acknowledging this, mostly because doing so would have meant accepting that COVID was effectively unstoppable.

The consensus and official line amongst epidemiologists (and the health organizations and media that relayed this official line to the public) was that COVID was only transmitted by droplet transmission i.e. droplets that fall to the ground within several feet (hence the 6 feet / 2 meters social distancing rule) and don't float around in the air. This was despite obvious evidence of outbreaks that could have only occurred via ventilation systems or the virus floating around in the air in an elevator.

Here's an article going over the issue and what convinced them to change their mind: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...

It turned out they were wrong not just about COVID, but a whole host of other diseases, based on erroneous criteria about what sized droplets could float in the air. Ironically, doctors from centuries ago with their theories of "miasma" / bad air would have been closer to the truth.

You don't remember health authorities telling people masks don't work, and to wipe your groceries down? I do.

Yes I believe it was the WHO or US government (the only sources I was following at the time) that explicitly stated they "did not have evidence" covid was airborne.

The entirety of first half was "Nurses and Doctors need the mask, please don't buy them."

I don’t know your definition of credible. But the Swedish institute of health (my translation) still has articles of it being spread by droplets. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb...