Surgical masks (and other cloth masks) make a small but significant difference in transmission. At the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't understand whether that difference was lost in the increased need to interact with one's face while wearing a mask (and we now know that SARS-CoV-2 becomes inactivated quite quickly on surfaces, like our hands).
N95s and higher rated masks/filters have always been very good for virtually eliminating transmission, but are also much harder to fit properly. Most Nurses/Doctors need to have them fit tested, which is not viable for the general population. Elastomeric half-mask respirators offer the protection of N95s (or better!) but are much easier to fit safely, and I'm actually not sure why more people don't use these or why these weren't recommended.
In my humble opinion, I think the biggest failing of scientific institutions is more that our uncertainty wasn't conveyed to the public. I'd like to know how uncertain our scientific community is regarding some policies when they're discussed in the public.
This is wrong and way too charitable. They were worried that hospitals would run out of masks, and that was why the Surgeon General lied [0], and said masks weren't necessary. Fauci and everyone else did the same thing.
It's unfortunate that so much trust was wasted on this, but revising history that we all lived through isn't helping.
you’re getting hung up on technical details, when behavior dominates how effective masks are in practice. it’s like crowing about a 500hp engine in your car that you use to haul the kids to soccer practice. it just doesn’t matter.
if the message were inverted—wear masks at home, around friends, and in social situations rather than in public—perhaps masks might have made a bit of a difference. but that wasn’t the message, and as a result masks haven’t made much difference at all (other than the ulterior purpose of instilling fear and control). most of the effect attributed to masking was a misattribution away from simple distancing.
This is obviously false, they did know that it was better to wear a mask. Most of the population of the world was already wearing masks or being told to do so if possible. Doctors and other health professionals wear masks.
National policy should not be made on the basis of 'some people kindof have this pet theory that you might infect yourself if you touch your ear'. I don't know of a single study that says you increase your chance of respiratory virus transmission from touching the sides and back of your head.
> In fact the U.S. surgeon general recently urged the public to “STOP BUYING MASKS!” “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus...The CDC said last month it doesn’t recommend people use face masks...
> “The virus is not spreading in the general community,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a Jan. 30 briefing. “We don’t routinely recommend the use of face masks by the public to prevent respiratory illness. And we certainly are not recommending that at this time for this new virus.”
> “There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said at a media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.
It really wasn't false at the time; there's a bunch of uncertainty around it for this virus. For quite a long time, people really did believe SARS-CoV-2 could transmit through surfaces easily. We now know that to be incorrect.
People may or may not have believed a lot of things, but if you are asserting that they didn't know that respiratory viruses primarily spread via the respiratory system you must be joking?
If you can show me even a single document dated from before Fall-2019 that expresses a concern that untrained users of n95 masks may INCREASE their chances of infection by coronaviruses, cold viruses, flu virus (basically anything other than Ebola or other hemorrhagic fevers) somehow, then I will happily agree that this was an area of debate and perhaps competent (but incorrect) advice to avoid mask usage.
However, if no such evidence exists, you should agree with me that the evidence points to incompetent and/or intentionally misleading guidance.
N95s and higher rated masks/filters have always been very good for virtually eliminating transmission, but are also much harder to fit properly. Most Nurses/Doctors need to have them fit tested, which is not viable for the general population. Elastomeric half-mask respirators offer the protection of N95s (or better!) but are much easier to fit safely, and I'm actually not sure why more people don't use these or why these weren't recommended.
In my humble opinion, I think the biggest failing of scientific institutions is more that our uncertainty wasn't conveyed to the public. I'd like to know how uncertain our scientific community is regarding some policies when they're discussed in the public.