[warlog]

You mean the US surgeon general Jerome Adams announcing by twitter that masks weren't effective, and later deleting [0]?

0.https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus...

[consumer451]

Here is my take on masks. Of course they work, to varying degrees. I don’t need a government official to tell me that.

My take on official gov statements is that they cannot always be taken a face value. It would be naive to do so, especially in a time of crisis. If I recall correctly, this was at a time when masks were in very short supply and I took this as misinformation to keep medical providers from having to re-use masks.

However, there were all kinds of missteps during the pandemic and keeping the public “calm” seemed to be a major priority for the previous administration.[0] This could have been part of that. But I readily admit that this is all speculation.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/17/white-house-abandoned-plan-t...

[nyokodo]

> this was at a time when masks were in very short supply and I took this as misinformation to keep medical providers from having to re-use masks.

Which has to be one of the biggest ever public health blunders. Now people are thinking “what are they lying about now?” They have severely harmed their credibility in everything now and made it 1000X harder to combat misinformation. No one can read and understand enough data about everything to avoid having to rely on experts a lot and our public health experts either made a huge PR blunder by mouthing off publicly when they didn’t have enough data or they’re liars about their initial opposition to masks or their subsequent support for them. Neither scenario helps the public to believe them about vaccines etc. In a civilized age they would all resign in disgrace.

[jefurii]

It's one thing to make a mistake, but the stupid thing is to refuse to change even after you know it's a mistake.