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Comment by toomim | Hacker News Reader

The experts began by saying "Don't wear masks." The CDC and the Surgeon General told all Americans to stop wearing masks.

I was one of the few people who thought for myself, read the studies, saw that all evidence in Korea and China pointed to this being an airborn pathogen, and learned how the electrostatic field in melt-blown fabric attracted covid particulates to it and filtered them from the air.

I was one of the few people wearing masks, staying safe, back in February when everyone looked at me crazy for wearing masks, because I was going against what the experts said.

I don't see how you can go through that period where the experts are telling you the opposite of the truth, and then continue to believe them.

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> The experts began by saying "Don't wear masks." The CDC and the Surgeon General told all Americans to stop wearing masks.

Yes. Not because masks didn't work, but because they were in short supply and medical and emergency personnel needed them more. And because the level of transmissibility was underestimated at first.[1]

March 2020, CDC: “Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be saved for caregivers."

April 3, 2020: "After insisting for weeks that healthy people did not need to wear masks in most circumstances, federal health officials change their guidance in response to a growing body of evidence that people who do not appear to be sick are playing an outsize role in the COVID-19 pandemic."

US coronavirus hospitalizations are going up again. There's been a low the last three summers, and then it picks up again.[2] Time to stock up on N-95 masks. Don't bother with anything less.

[1] https://archive.is/69Pmz#selection-2157.0-2183.1

[2] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklyhospi...

You're whitewashing when you say "Not because masks didn't work." Here's a direct tweet from the U.S. Surgeon General on Feb 29, 2020 telling people that masks don't work:

> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!

Here's a quote from him saying masks increase your risk:

> You can increase your risk of getting it by wearing a mask if you are not a health care provider. Folks who don’t know how to wear them properly tend to touch their faces a lot and actually can increase the spread of coronavirus.

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

It seems that yourself and Animats are in essential agreement.

As was said above:

    Not because masks didn't work, but because they were in short supply and medical and emergency personnel needed them more.

I'm outside the US - I recall the US Surgeon General making those statements at the time and it seemed very clear that logistics and pragmatics were being discussed rather than the "science of masks".

At that time most of the US had no general spread of COVID - the midwest buying up all the masks wasn't doing anything useful other than making those few places that actually needed masks there and then more dangerous.

As your quote states:

    if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!

That was, what, like one month at the very start? Masks were a fixture in my household by April or May, as I recall.

Again, "beating the experts one time" does not mean that betting against them is a good bet. For every person that fits your description there are a hundred not getting vaccinated because they've "done their research". The literal comment right below mine is some anti-vax nonsense right here on HN, in a community that is overwhelmingly better-educated than the public at large.

The CDC was recommending against KN95 and N95 masks even after Omicron, so it was more like 2 years, not one month. I was also someone who wore proper masks against the advice of experts.

I agree that going with the experts is the best course of action for the general public. We need to be able to disagree with experts, but we need to be able to do it in an informed manner, with proper research to back up the ideas. However, most of the general public is unable to do so.

Beating the experts? They knowingly lied about medical science in a matter of life and death with a straight face to millions of people. And you line up and kiss the ring and say thank you for the nudging, may I have another?

Sorry, what did they lie about? Not sure I follow (and don't have access to the article or the archive links, it seems..)

"The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material."

"And given that that's the case, now when we're talking about vaccinated people being indoors in settings where you don't know what the status is, particularly in an area, as you mentioned correctly, that has a high degree of protection, the recommendation is that you wear a mask even indoors, even if you're vaccinated."

The only thing that changed was that people were vaccinated en masse and the virus had become even more transmissible. So that whatever infinitesimal effect the mask had before, against the delta variant it was now beyond useless.

I could sit here all day and list more and more deliberate falsehoods, but they're well-documented and no serious person denies that there was extensive lying by experts for political and social purposes under the guise of dispassionately relaying the most credible and up-to-date medical information.

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