I can’t recall who said that originally, but I followed both the WHO and CDC closely at the time. At the time, there was very little evidence that wearing masks would reduce transmission. It was well publicized that health care professionals lacked adequate quantities surgical masks and respirators, and there were legitimate concerns over the extent to which non fit tested respirators would protect members of the public and the risk that people would rely on masks at the expense of other mitigation measures.Vēritās wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 11:04 pmThe CDC never said that. Dumb lies like this one is the reason we're basically a third world country when it comes to national emergencies. Don't blame government because idiots like Tucker Carlson lie to millions of dumb Americans who are dying to be fed B.S. about how the government is screwing everything up.drumdude wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 10:35 pmIt didn’t help that the CDC said early on that masks didn’t work, a “noble lie” to protect mask inventory.
If you want Americans to act responsibly, you should probably treat them like adults. The government has undermined a lot of their own credibility, and you can’t blame the American public for those mistakes.
Public making really became an issue when the CDC reacted to hospitals running out of respirators and surgical masks by advising health care providers to, as a last resort, use a bandana or other cloth barrier to provide at least some protection against droplet transmission. As there was no cloth or bandanna shortage, members of the public began making and using cloth masks. At the time, there was only one study that addressed cloth masks. It was during the Vietnam war in a hospital setting. And it observed that the cloth masks became a source of transmission as bacteria or virus particles collected on the surface of the fabric. So, there as a valid concern that the benefit of a cloth barrier could be outweighed by surface transmission from the mask to the hands.
I was paying close attention to all this because I’d signed up to be a census enumerator in early 2020, and I was trying to figure out the best strategy for going door to door to hundreds of stranger’s homes without becoming infected or bringing the disease home.
Based on my own review of the very sparse literature on making by the public, I initially avoided using cloth masks. But as researchers began to seriously investigate the issue, I was convinced that wearing a cloth mask would provide a net reduction in my chances of becoming infected, especially if I handled it carefully and practiced good hand hygiene.
All this is to say that the notion that the CDC flat out lied about masks dramatically oversimplifies what was actually going on. There was very little scientific evidence addressing use of masks by the general public and legitimate concerns that general masking could actually increase the overall risk of exposure. As actual research progressed, advice changed.