Yeah but the effect is a diminished trust in experts. Which is why noble lies are toxic. Like, nobody who said that masks can't help has grounds to complain about accusations of "fake news" ever again.

People's decisions today are so influenced by media that fake news become acceptable (like white lies).

Media has to act as the Catholic Church did in ancient times. It has to make up some stories to control people's behavior.

Toilet paper is an example of this: you talk about a shortage, and people will buy more. They don't believe it's really necessary, but since they know other people are buying and the media is talking about it, even smart people understand demand will increase and stocks will fall, so they buy more.

Same with masks: if you tell people "they work, but don't buy them" it will have the exact opposite effect.

In China and other Eastern countries, this is dealt with by causing fear in people: "if I buy a lot of masks and the state finds out, I'll be in trouble".

We don't have that tool in free Western countries. So media manipulation becomes the only effective tool for behavior control.

When manufacturing consent is broken because the lies are so obvious.

The split of "they don't do anything" and "hospitals need them" made no sense to Americans so they ignored both messages.

Yeah, but if everyone started wearing masks back in early February in New York City there wouldn't be overloaded hospitals in Queens today on March 25th, now would there.

There weren't masks to wear.

In the tweet linked, they explain that in the Czech Republic there's been a social movement around making your own masks, giving them out, etc.

It's here in the US, too, but on a much reduced scale. My wife made some masks to hand out, getting the idea from her cousin who was putting her children who are not in school to work making masks for donation.

True, but that itself is a symptom of bigger problems. The problem isn't which people should or shouldn't have masks. The problem is a lack of supply chain capacity and inventory, and the SNS should have 6 billion masks and 100k ventilators.

Lying to people doesn't help public health or fix the problems of the federal government failing to act. The AARC told HHS to get their act together about the SNS on ventilators, but the govt didn't.

You could easily build your own masks out of stuff at home which would be better than nothing.