[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.