[acqq]

The quote from your link, from March 1st:

- "CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear a facemask to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including COVID-19," the CDC says. "Facemasks should be used by people who show symptoms of COVID-19 to help prevent the spread of the disease to others."

So, March 1, CDC already said: "Facemasks should be used by people who show symptoms of COVID-19 to help prevent the spread of the disease to others."

What have we learned since? That even the people who don't show symptoms indeed spread the disease to others. So the advice was based on the false assumption, and had to be corrected.

Where the false assumption comes from? There were other infections where the infected were able to spread the disease to others only once they show symptoms.

What follows from the new knowledge? That the facemasks should be used by people who can spread COVID-19 to help prevent the spread of the disease to others. Which means: everybody.

And that is scientific process: when you learn something new, you admit to yourself and everybody else that the previous handling was based on the wrong assumption, and you adapt. You don't keep claiming that the Earth is in the non-moving center of the Universe, just because you claimed that before you learned more.

The problem is that the broad population is not only not used to adapt to the new knowledge, it's that the religions and political parties want the people to keep the same "group" identification and fix beliefs, is spite of anything.

Unfortunately, it's also true that there was an aspect of "temporary policy of what is possible." And there was a real, hard and sad reason for that: the whole western world was woefully unprepared, including not having enough masks. A lot of Asian countries were much better prepared, and had enough masks and had the policies that required them in spite of whatever was fashion in the west and had the people ready to follow the policies.

[watwut]

Imo, it is entirely fair to criticize CDC on its handling of this point. The asymptomatic transmission was possibility before March. It is not a shocking new possibility, it was possibility all along.

There were countries that mandated and propagated masks long long before CDC stopped claiming masks do nothing.

[acqq]

> There were countries that mandated and propagated masks long long before CDC stopped claiming masks do nothing.

The first country that immediately used masks was, of course, China. Followed by Taiwan and many other Asian countries.

But saying that was not popular, politically, because "we are different." Not to a virus.