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.
Then why were they saving masks for healthcare workers?
Healthcare workers wear masks regardless. The argument was never that no kind of mask would ever help at all in any case, it was that the benefit wasn't that serious at that point since ostensibly people wouldn't use them properly, they wouldn't be N95 masks so not as effective, they would mostly only prevent people from giving it to others and not from not contracting it themselves, that they would give people a false sense of security, and that healthcare workers work in an environment where there are tons of aerosols being produced. I remember all that sort of stuff going around, and the central point seemed to be "we should save them for the healthcare workers".
Like, if they knew it would make a big difference, they could have just asked governments to ration them for the time being.
Can you post some of these studies and meta studies that show the masks weren’t effective at preventing SARS infections? I posted some.
Yes, but not now because I'm on mobile. I remember reading them because I remember many articles back then citing them.
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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.
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But there were meta studies saying the opposite too, that's the issue. And in some cases, both were true but in different contexts.
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Healthcare workers wear masks regardless. The argument was never that no kind of mask would ever help at all in any case, it was that the benefit wasn't that serious at that point since ostensibly people wouldn't use them properly, they wouldn't be N95 masks so not as effective, they would mostly only prevent people from giving it to others and not from not contracting it themselves, that they would give people a false sense of security, and that healthcare workers work in an environment where there are tons of aerosols being produced. I remember all that sort of stuff going around, and the central point seemed to be "we should save them for the healthcare workers".
Like, if they knew it would make a big difference, they could have just asked governments to ration them for the time being.
Yes, but not now because I'm on mobile. I remember reading them because I remember many articles back then citing them.
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