[ValentineC]

> In all the countries mentioned in the article people wear masks when in public, often just against pollution (i.e. Thailand).

Singapore resident here. Not enough people are wearing masks in Singapore, and the government has only distributed a token 4 masks per household (family members living at the same address), with no further measures to allow a family to replenish their mask supply.

A lot of us can't buy new ones at reasonable prices even if we want to.

[Roritharr]

German resident here, our chief virologist that everyone listens to, Christian Drosten, was firmly against mask usage in the common population, until just now, the RKI was similarly unhelpful when communicating advice for the disease.

The population is completely confused and feel righteous anger now telling people off when they wear professional (medical disposable, or ffp3/n95) masks to go shopping or elsewhere. It's insane.

[danmaz74]

I don't know about that expert, but the reason I usually hear about not using masks is so that health professionals could get them - ie, the problem is that supply isn't currently enough for everybody, and we should prioritise those for which it's most helpful.

[ceejayoz]

The problem with using "masks don't work!" to keep the supply available for healthcare is later on, when supply is available for universal mask wearing, they'll have eroded public trust when they do the 180 on the advice.

They should've instead:

* Banned sales of masks to the public until healthcare and other essential workers had enough stock.

* Honestly conveyed the reasons for the above ban, in WWII-style "do your part" advertisements etc.

* Encouraged homemade cloth masks, bandannas, etc. to reduce the spread of droplets.

* Ramped up surgical mask production to get supply to the general public as soon as possible.

[cmurf]

a) implies competency b) where's the profit? U.S. is a country where solidly 1/3, with enough political capital to prevent alternatives, believe that healthcare is a product not a right

(another 1/3 don't care because the system doesn't affect them, until it does)

[a_tractor]

>where solidly 1/3... believe that healthcare is a product not a right

And I guess the opposing 1/3 just don't understand the difference between positive and negative rights?

Healthcare, as a matter of fact, does represent a collection of products and services, and access to those products and services represent a positive right because it requires somebody else to provide something for you.

It is only negative rights, those which define what other people can not do to you, that should be considered inalienable. The right to free spreech doesn't require somebody else to go to school for 20 years so that you can express yourself, they just aren't allowed to prevent you from doing so.

Intentionally or not, people like you confuse the issue by treating both positive and negative rights as the same, and actually do not seem to understand, or are avoiding acknowledgment of the fact, that treating a positive right as some kind of natural right carries the high potential that you will be demanding access to another human being's labor or resources against their will, and in America, 1/3 of use are against the enslavement of others.

[Roritharr]

That makes total sense, but the communication discouraged people from wearing any kind of mask, even self-made ones.

[rkachowski]

This is one message that has me really confused. Why are masks being sold to the general public if this is the case? It's as if manufacturers and suppliers are helpless but to profit from public demand and the fault is a personal moral failure on behalf of everyone that wants to buy a mask for their own use. How can medical supplies be interrupted by public usage? Are doctors expected to swing past a pharmacy on the way to work and stock up on the supplies they need?

And then in many Asian cultures it's considered a moral failure to not wear a mask in these times, yet hospitals function. This problem clearly isn't universal, or inherent in capitalist functioning.

[marnett]

At least in the US the main reason is the public hysteria that would be brought on by the mass cultural shift. The reality is most households in the US do not have masks. There would be similar chaos that the US has seen with toilet paper but on a more dire scale because they DO actually help and, unlike toilet paper, when they are gone they WON'T be replenished in a timely manner because there is a shortage of retail masks.

It's propaganda. It is reasonable propaganda as having to have actual PSAs on how to sew your own masks or make them out of materials at home would really start ramping up the general anxiety.

[bitexploder]

Thank you. This is extremely frustrating and shaming individuals who buy masks is dumb. Why are they in the retail system at all if they are so important for healthcare workers?

[PeterStuer]

It is saddening to see the experts also succumb to straight lying to the public. I'm sure they think this is 'for the best', because there aren't enough masks to go round and what there is needs to go to first line healthcare workers.

But trust is hard to gain and easily lost. A real compounding factor in this crisis is also that our leaders have lost all credibility. In many, if not most, countries, the citizens just know that actions that were and are being taking are neither competent nor in their best interest. The specific implementations of democracy we implemented never selected for reason, precaution nor long term benefits or well-being for all.

So most of us have a political 'leadership' (and I do not mean a specific country or party, it's mostly across the board, with few exceptions) that has lost all credibility, trust and moral authority long before this happened, leaving the population already at best confused, but mostly mistrusting and (justifiably) cynical.

For scientists to go 'on message', telling obvious non-truths, just further undermines the already shaky ground they were on after decades of anti-science propaganda.

I really, really hoped they would refrain from this, but, judging by what is happening in my own country and what the science community is publicly communicating (privately it is a completely opposite discourse), I sadly must say that the opposite is true.