[bloopernova]

The various health authorities told people not to use masks at first because:

Hospitals were in danger of running out of protective equipment.

The public was panic buying anything and everything. Remember empty grocery store shelves? Price gouging people who were hoarding all the hand sanitizer?

When those circumstances changed, so did the advice.

There's no one on earth who gets everything right first time, and thus never needs to change their mind. Not one single person.

Why do you value an opinion or advice that never changes?

[hartator]

> The various health authorities told people not to use masks at first because: Hospitals were in danger of running out of protective equipment.

We pay the CDC. Not the reverse. And we don’t pay them to give us socially engineered advices depending of the politics or economics of the day. We have other federal organizations to screw up that part of our life already. And it always ends up badly when you don’t tell the truth to people. Never in history we never came to conclusions “What a relieve we lie to the people.”

[sampo]

> The various health authorities told people not to use masks at first because:

> Hospitals were in danger of running out of protective equipment.

They said: "We need the masks for hospitals. Please don't use masks, because they don't work for you, they only work for us in the hospitals".

Why would anyone take from that that masks don't work? How/why did people believe that? They literally say that masks work. This is one of the greatest mysteries for me.

Could you maybe also pull this off in some other context, too? "We want the good stuff. But it doesn't work, so please don't buy it. Leave it for us"? Could it be made to work?

[bloopernova]

I don't remember it that way. I remember being told to make your own or buy cloth masks, and leave the N95 masks for the hospitals.

But this is too contentious an issue. I shouldn't have commented.

[tomp]

So basically you're saying "they lied but it's OK because it was a well-intentioned lie".

That's what's making people lose trust in institutions.

[mynameisash]

> So basically you're saying "they lied but it's OK because it was a well-intentioned lie".

That's not at all what GP said. Try re-reading it:

>> health authorities told people not to use masks at first because ... Hospitals were in danger of running out of protective equipment.

That is in no way lying.

[jldugger]

I don't recall them saying 'hospitals need them more,' but rather 'masks have no proven effect' while people inside the CDC later admitted the concern was the first bit. I'm pretty sure that's a lie; while maybe they can argue about foment size effects etc. meant it technically wasn't a lie, I think we can all agree the public heard none of that nuance.

[sampo]

> That is in no way lying.

This opinion piece in New York Times says there was lying going on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...

https://archive.is/XrRBQ

[0xy]

The CDC did not say "don't buy masks because healthcare professionals need them". The CDC falsely claimed they were not effective.

This false narrative persists even today.

How many thousands died because they were told by an authority masks don't work?

Your point of view seems to suggest that the ends justify the means. I ask you how many deaths are an acceptable amount of collateral damage to protect the health system's access to masks. 1,000? 5,000? 50,000?

[wrycoder]

It persists, because procedure/surgical masks do virtually nothing to stop SARS2. [0] I won't even mention cloth masks.

In sum, of the 14 RCTs that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless—whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone—or actually counterproductive. Of the three studies that provided statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis that was not contradicted within the same study, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than hand hygiene alone, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than nothing, and one found that cloth masks were less effective than surgical masks.

N95 are better, but those are not generally available to civilians.

[0] https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-e...

[CoryG89]

Umm, perhaps I'm mistaken, but I'm fairly certain that, at least in the US, it's always been fairly easy to obtain N95 masks, up until the pandemic. I realized I had a box of them lying around which my ex-girlfriend had purchased for painting.

[wrycoder]

Yeah, so did I. I use them for sanding and sweeping.

But early in 2020, they disappeared off the shelves. Amazon, in particular, only sold them to medical professionals. Same thing, if you went directly to 3M.

I was able to buy a few more at about ten times the usual price.

A few are available at reasonable prices now, but it's still very limited. When I wear a mask, it's an N95. You can dry them out and reuse them - SARS2 is very fragile.