[blub]

Maybe the population wouldn't have to reserve N95 masks for medical personnel if:

* the production hadn't been outsourced to China which then decided to ban exports while also accepting the PPE donations of other countries

* the government would have noticed that there's a pandemic brewing, and instead of saying "nothing to see here" would have ramped up PPE production or at least procured PPE from the market.

* failing all of the above, at least instituted an export stop so that the remaining PPE wouldn't have been bought from under their noses.

But yes, when one fails so utterly, one has to end up begging the people to work against their own interests with predictable results.

And yes, Fauci and the surgeon general lied. Nothing ambiguous about it, even if they were trying to save PPE for medical personnel.

[DanBC]

Can you show me the peer reviewed studies that you think Fauci etc showed have used to recommend mask wearing in the general population?

We had lots of studies around mask wearing, and most of them really struggled to show any kind of benefit.

[blub]

Whether they work for the general population is maybe a concern for Fauci, the government and the odd HN commenter. The message was that they don't work to protect individuals from the virus, hence they should not be bought by normal people.

That's obviously false. And an individual will be first and foremost concerned about their own safety, not if they can single-handedly stop the pandemic.

[DanBC]

> That's obviously false.

It's not obviously false, because there were studies available at the time that showed masks did not work to protect individuals, especially members of the public.

But, again, I'd be interested to read any studies you have that were 1) available at the time and 2) showed benefit of wearing masks.

[blub]

I've linked this somewhere else: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25479729. This references studies from the SARS times and for flu. N95/FFP2 masks are pretty well established, they were used by front line workers in all the pandemics in the last decades.

That's why most Western countries were stockpiling them - as protection in case of a flu pandemic.