[Goronmon]

One example I could give right now is the US where mask-wearing has become a partisan issue.

You don't need a deepfake video of some scientists claiming masks are useless/evil/deadly. You just need to label masks as some kind of "liberal" hoax and half the country now hates mask-wearing.

If that's all it takes to influence the population why are deepfakes a large concern?

[mc32]

Foreword: I believe masks help.

It doesn’t help that leading Health organizations have changed their point of view over time. It also doesn’t help that mask manufacturers place a disclaimer regarding effectiveness of the masks. That and very few people wear them right —which decreases their effectiveness such that they might as well be a good luck charm.

Hygiene, distancing, minimizing contact time as well as wearing a mask and goggles help. But a mask by itself is of limited effectiveness though not useless.

[stouset]

Changing your point of view over time as new data becomes available is the hallmark of integrity.

Anyone who claims a position which doesn’t change at all as we learn more and more about a novel challenge should be viewed with less credibility, not more.

[dx87]

It doesn't sound like they changed their mind based on new data. In June, Fauci said that they knew masks would help, but deliberately downplayed their usefulness because they anticipated a shortage for medical workers. Telling people "Yeah, we were lying before, sorry, but you can totally trust us now" isn't integrity.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...

[stouset]

You're making this out as if this was a simplistic decision where everyone in the medical community agreed that masks were beneficial but agreed not to tell anyone because of limited supply and that's simply not the case.

In other interviews, Fauci clearly discusses how the community perspective changed as we saw greater asymptomatic spread:

> When it became clear that we could get the infection could be spread by asymptomatic carriers who don't know they're infected, that made it very clear that we had to strongly recommend masks. > > And also, it soon became clear that we had enough protective equipment and that cloth masks and homemade masks were as good as masks that you would buy from surgical supply stores," Fauci added. "So in the context of when we were not strongly recommending it, it was the correct thing.

So yes, while some hesitancy was due to (extremely legitimate) worries about exacerbating shortages of PPE, the other half is that they legitimately didn't think that mask-wearing would help the average person when the expectation was that symptomatic people would stay home and prevent the spread.

As that turned out not to be reflective of how this virus spreads, the recommendations changed.

Policy choices like these are almost never made for single, simplistic reasons. Even just these two points (effectiveness, limited supply) are almost certainly less than what they were considering. But when it became clear that both effectiveness was higher than expected and supply issues were resolved by the widespread use of simple cloth masks, those factors combined strongly shifted the balance toward pushing their use.

[johnfn]

I think that's something that you and I agree on, but something the general public wouldn't. Just think of how the public perceives politicians that change their minds constantly - they're "waffling", they're spineless, they're weak-willed, they're "just catering to the majority" (as if that was a bad thing! but I digress...) Then consider how much the public loves politicians that are steadfast. Look how much we laud Sanders for holding to the same principles he's held his entire life. (Sure, we might disagree with him for other reasons, but at least he's _consistent!_) Look how much we admire the politicians who voted against the Iraq war, as if they couldn't have changed their mind in the meantime.

(In the political sphere, the reason for this is pretty clear. If you're continuously shifting your view from day to day as mores change, then that's a clear indicator that you don't have any particular insight into what the true good views are. You're a follower, not a leader. Plus, it kinda sucks if I voted for you to uphold position A, only for you to change your mind and support B the next day.

Of course, when it comes to health, we want the exact opposite - we basically want a weak-willed spineless leader who immediately caves his opinion to whatever the most up-to-date scientific information is. :-) But who's ever going to respect someone like that..?)

[mc32]

I agree with you partially, however in this case it was for political (not necessarily partisan) reasons (not enough stock, wanted to reserve it for medical personnel, export restrictions, etc.)

[quicklime]

Don’t forget that it was initially thought that the virus could not be transmitted in asymptomatic cases. As time went on, it became clearer that this was happening, and we couldn’t rely on isolation alone.

Anyone could be infected but asymptomatic, you never really know if you’re contagious, and wearing a mask helps with that.

Once this became known, the right thing to do was to change the advice on face coverings.

[basch]

That was another case of information being conveyed that the speakers knew to be untrue, and there was immediate skepticism that the speakers were lying.

[stouset]

Pointing to the fact that some people were skeptical doesn't mean anything. There's immediate (and ongoing) skepticism that this entire damn pandemic is a hoax, FFS.

As with any expert group, the medical community defaulted to going with what they know. In the context of virology, in the overwhelming majority of real-world cases, diseases spread symptomatically. SARS-CoV-19 is genuinely a novel threat in the scale of its transmissivity while asymptomatic and while there was certainly evidence of this early on, it takes non-zero time for this component to be studied, verified, and understood.

You can't (or at least shouldn't) base public policy on reports that haven't yet been corroborated by data and experimental evidence. And being validated after-the-fact doesn't (or at least shouldn't) reflect poorly on decisions made before we had hard data of this virus spreading in a novel fashion.

[clairity]

masks also give people who suspect they are sick, but are not sure, a license to go out in public, potentially spreading infection. instead, let's have assurance of basic care and necessities (pandemic welfare) for anyone even suspected of being sick or with elevated risk, and those folks would happily stay home.

masks are a good backup to appropriate distancing, but not a good primary or always-on mitigation, because of their many failure modes, not the least of which is the enormous variety of human behavior.

[vkou]

No, they don't.

More specifically, people who need to go out in public, because they need to:

1. Work for a living, and don't get sick days.

2. Can't get/afford <whatever it is they need delivered to them>.

3. Think COVID is a hoax.

4. Don't give a shit.

Are going to do that, regardless of whether or not they have masks.

The only people changing their behaviour because masks exist are employers, who think it is safe to sardine-can people in their workspaces, because everyone's wearing masks. (Never mind that so many people are wearing them incorrectly...)

[clairity]

> "(Never mind that so many people are wearing them incorrectly...)"

at least we agree on one thing! i'm not nearly as cynical (or certain) about other people's motivations/behavior however.

[rsynnott]

That worked in the US, but the US is... having a bit of a moment right now. Most democratic countries just don't have a single figure who can do no wrong in the eyes of half (well, 40%, really) of the country; if nothing else, they're not executive presidencies. And even in the US this wasn't historically normal.

[thu2111]

You could of course describe it the other way around.

The population starts out hating mask wearing - don't see many people volunteering for that in America before 2020. And then it was labelled as "caring" and "protecting others" and despite vast piles of evidence indicating it achieves nothing, half the country is immediately influenced into hating non-mask-wearing.

[stouset]

I think you misspoke. Masks have a clear, demonstrable, and scientifically-validated benefit. Not for the wearer, but for those who come in contact with the wearer.

[dionian]

I'm pro-mask personally... but the experts told us not to worry about masks as early as 3 months ago. I was pro-mask back then too. My point is, "the science" is not always so clear.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/health/2020/07/03/us-surgeon-...

[stouset]

And the reason for that is a something they've owned up to and apologized for.

3 months ago was ages given the recency of this catastrophe. And what we learned is that while masks don't help the wearer, they do help everyone around the wearer. Most of the medical profession wasn't operating from the current understanding we have about symptomless spread. As that became a dramatically more clear concern here, the scientific establishment quickly pivoted to pushing mask-wearking hard.

Isn't that exactly the kind of behavior you'd like to see?

[chrisco255]

Do you have the data on asymptomatic transmission? Because I've seen conflicting reports on that.

[rsynnott]

There's some question on asymptomatic transmission. That's important from an epidemiological point of view, but irrelevant to you as an individual deciding whether to wear a mask, because at any given time it is generally impossible to know whether you're asymptomatic, _presymptomatic_, or negative. And presymptomatic infection is definitely common.

[thu2111]

I think you have been misled. The sudden benefits of masks is a fiction invented out of whole cloth just weeks ago.

Here's what the US CDC was saying about masks before COVID:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza

The idea that anything about this topic is clear or demonstrable is ridiculous. Masks are an ideological issue by the left, which is why my entirely reasonable post has been so aggressively downvoted.