There was a lot of stuff like that during the first month or two, not only in the US. Downplaying the importance of masks was widespread during the first months, when in a lot of places, masking up for most people meant pulling a knitted shawl up above your nose. Remember, that was the time when people stockpiled toilet paper and hand soap, and also a time when there was still a ton of speculation about what we were dealing with and how to best handle it. It wouldn't surprise me if some governments deliberately downplayed the role of proper masks in the prevention of aerosol formation just to cover up their own failure to secure essential medical supplies.
Terrible supply chain, or incredible supply chain that is 100% based on just -on-time and forecasting, and has no flexibility?
Covid has shown that the current way of things is so fucking fragile that chunks of the world economy start to go crazy from a boat going sideways. We are basically 3 days from collapse all the time.
It's not exactly misleading if you don't know you are wrong yourself. There were a number of things which they got wrong early on, like the fomite thing. Fomites were big, until they found out they were not very important for spreading the virus at all.
It is misleading to spread the impression that "there's no reason to think masks work" for an extremely contagious respiratory virus a la SARS.
These people are not idiots. This is respiratory disease 101 and the obvious PSA to provide us "wear a mask until we know what's going on, ideally N95".
They were likely spreading this disinformation because of PPE shortages.
Because they don't have that power. They can only give public health guidance and do studies.
Feds were already buying up PPE / diverting it internationally from people who had already purchased it and were going with a denial strategy. Doctors and nurses were coming up with elaborate protocols for reusing PPE because they didn't have enough.
Because they don’t have that power. They can only give public health guidance and do studies.
They don't have the power to make it happen but they have the power to request it. And, like, there is no reason why it wouldn't be done if they couldn't do it any other way. Masks weren't the only thing they were wrong about early on.
Getting the early stages of a pandemic response right is insanely important, and they continued to back the droplet theory after they started recommending the use of masks
The CDC was wrong about masks during the start of the pandemic because pretty much the entire world was and they weren't sure how to deal with the novel virus. What I don't understand is how it follows that they're definitely wrong about everything. And, like, it wasn't a couple of weeks ago, it's been months since they started recommending masks worldwide.
The thing is, using Google I had also found tons of research which said masks didn't make much of a difference, because with many diseases which were spread largely via fomites, including many types fo flu, people used masks improperly and it ended up even making it worse in some cases. In some other cases some research showed that there is a benefit but it isn't that significant. Like, yeah, it's not hard to find that sort of research via Google, but it's not hard to find research saying the opposite either. That is the issue, there was conflicting research, there were misunderstandings about how the virus spreads, and there was also a big misunderstanding that was uncovered, which is that droplets larger than previously thought so could stay in the air for very long, since previously they had decided on a threshold which turned out to be wrong, and it had persisted so long because there weren't many physicists working on that sort of stuff to tell the doctors they were wrong. Lockdowns and distancing on the contrary are what I would never expect anyone to say they didn't know were effective.
I mean yeah I've noticed it tons, there was a point where many people were doom posting about vaccines being dangerous, or being ineffective, or impossible to supply, etc. Then there was another wave which was about how the mutations that surfaced had surely rendered them useless. None of these things happened. Unless something nasty happens in India now, it doesn't seem like there will be a big surge again this year either in the US or Europe or even most of LatAm and many places have returned to semi-normalcy already. It's like people really want to believe it's gonna last forever.
What are you talking about, they've been talking about masks for months now
They told people masks were unnecessary when covid got to the US, which contributed significantly to the early spread
That was like the first month of the pandemic.
There was a lot of stuff like that during the first month or two, not only in the US. Downplaying the importance of masks was widespread during the first months, when in a lot of places, masking up for most people meant pulling a knitted shawl up above your nose. Remember, that was the time when people stockpiled toilet paper and hand soap, and also a time when there was still a ton of speculation about what we were dealing with and how to best handle it. It wouldn't surprise me if some governments deliberately downplayed the role of proper masks in the prevention of aerosol formation just to cover up their own failure to secure essential medical supplies.
That's exactly the motive: PPE supplies were limited so they ran a public health disinformation campaign.
And now the CDC is spreading another recommendation contrary to the most basic public health policy analysis.
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Terrible supply chain, or incredible supply chain that is 100% based on just -on-time and forecasting, and has no flexibility?
Covid has shown that the current way of things is so fucking fragile that chunks of the world economy start to go crazy from a boat going sideways. We are basically 3 days from collapse all the time.
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It's all about a good quarter, never about long-term access.
And it bred skepticism of public health authorities - who were absolutely misleading the public during a global pandemic.
It's not exactly misleading if you don't know you are wrong yourself. There were a number of things which they got wrong early on, like the fomite thing. Fomites were big, until they found out they were not very important for spreading the virus at all.
It is misleading to spread the impression that "there's no reason to think masks work" for an extremely contagious respiratory virus a la SARS.
These people are not idiots. This is respiratory disease 101 and the obvious PSA to provide us "wear a mask until we know what's going on, ideally N95".
They were likely spreading this disinformation because of PPE shortages.
Again, if they were spreading it because of PPE shortages, why couldn't they just say "we need to ration PPE" and leave it at that?
Because they don't have that power. They can only give public health guidance and do studies.
Feds were already buying up PPE / diverting it internationally from people who had already purchased it and were going with a denial strategy. Doctors and nurses were coming up with elaborate protocols for reusing PPE because they didn't have enough.
They don't have the power to make it happen but they have the power to request it. And, like, there is no reason why it wouldn't be done if they couldn't do it any other way. Masks weren't the only thing they were wrong about early on.
Getting the early stages of a pandemic response right is insanely important, and they continued to back the droplet theory after they started recommending the use of masks
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Yes, like more than a year ago. And your post said a couple of weeks ago.
Like why are you just talking about the US, the same thing happened everywhere.
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The CDC was wrong about masks during the start of the pandemic because pretty much the entire world was and they weren't sure how to deal with the novel virus. What I don't understand is how it follows that they're definitely wrong about everything. And, like, it wasn't a couple of weeks ago, it's been months since they started recommending masks worldwide.
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The thing is, using Google I had also found tons of research which said masks didn't make much of a difference, because with many diseases which were spread largely via fomites, including many types fo flu, people used masks improperly and it ended up even making it worse in some cases. In some other cases some research showed that there is a benefit but it isn't that significant. Like, yeah, it's not hard to find that sort of research via Google, but it's not hard to find research saying the opposite either. That is the issue, there was conflicting research, there were misunderstandings about how the virus spreads, and there was also a big misunderstanding that was uncovered, which is that droplets larger than previously thought so could stay in the air for very long, since previously they had decided on a threshold which turned out to be wrong, and it had persisted so long because there weren't many physicists working on that sort of stuff to tell the doctors they were wrong. Lockdowns and distancing on the contrary are what I would never expect anyone to say they didn't know were effective.
deleted by creator
I mean yeah I've noticed it tons, there was a point where many people were doom posting about vaccines being dangerous, or being ineffective, or impossible to supply, etc. Then there was another wave which was about how the mutations that surfaced had surely rendered them useless. None of these things happened. Unless something nasty happens in India now, it doesn't seem like there will be a big surge again this year either in the US or Europe or even most of LatAm and many places have returned to semi-normalcy already. It's like people really want to believe it's gonna last forever.
deleted by creator