Even more concerning are the number of doctors I've seen blatantly lying about the effectiveness of masks. Most people aren't idiots - if the masks help protect medical professionals from Covid-19, they can also help non-medical professionals.
The proper message would have been: masks can be effective, even a bandana can likely help prevent disease transmission. But it's important for Americans to save N95 masks for medical professionals until they're widely available. Given that it's highly likely that wearing any mask helps prevent the spread of the virus by keeping the mask wearer from transmitting it to others, this is what they should have done.
Why not? This is a classic trolley problem and throwing the switch is absolutely the correct answer.
... probably.
Going forward, misinformation gives every anti-vaxxer, skeptic, conspiracy theorist, and snake oil peddling bullshitter more ammunition with which to displace effective medical treatment going forward. Even the well meaning general populace becomes skeptical. You know what this results in?
Dead kids. Covid parties.
Trust in government is already so fucking slow people are throwing covid parties. And now you're suggesting that undermining that trust even more is the obvious answer?
For members of the public walking around a mask provides at best marginal benefit, and that's only if the wearer complies with a strict regime of donning and doffing protocols, and if it's combined with a full set of other PPE (disposable gowns, gloves, eye shields) and frequent handwashing.
As soon as you drop any of those you're not just making the mask a bit less effective, you're probably increasing the risk over not wearing a mask at all.
There are a few routes of transmission -
fecal oral; fomites to hand and then to eyes, nose, or mouth; and droplets landing on your eyes or being breathed in.
It's likely that in members of the public the main route is touching an infected surface and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Masks only help with breathing in droplets, and they only help if they're worn correctly. Incorrect mask wearing increases risk because masks feel weird and cause people to touch their face more often, and because masks give permission to people to go outside and mingle in crowds.
There's not much research around whether members of the public can wear PPE correctly, but there's plenty of research around PPE and healthcare professionals. We know that qualified registered healthcare professionals who know the consequences of not wearing PPE correctly still struggle to do it all correctly.
> Most people aren't idiots - if the masks help protect medical professionals from Covid-19, they can also help non-medical professionals.
The difference is that healthcare professionals spend all day in close contact with symptomatic people and are more likely to come into contact with blood or fecal matter or sputum, and are more likely to be doing aerosol-generating procedures, so the baseline risk is much higher, so that marginal benefit turns into an actual benefit. But importantly they're not just wearing masks. They're wearing gowns and gloves and eye protection and they have access to water and soap and alcohol hand gels and infection control teams to train them on how to wear it correctly.
Here's what HCPs are wearing. Are you honestly suggesting this for members of the public? https://twitter.com/QEGateshead/status/1244208756600307712
Here's a simple graphic for donning: https://twitter.com/agtruesdell/status/1245470479059767297?s...
Here's a thread talking about donning, wearing, and doffing PPE. https://twitter.com/halletjulie/status/1245409318775767042?s...
This is not the CDC / WHO / etc lying, this is them talking about the science as they understand it. https://twitter.com/shinybluedress/status/124277978004452147...
> even a bandana can likely help prevent disease transmission
You're basing this on a small study carried out in a lab using research bacteria (not viruses) carried in a calibrated spray, that didn't include "people breathing through the mask". You've massively overstated those results.
It's pretty fucking obvious that if you have Covid-19, and are expelling infected droplets into the air, almost any kind of mask will help reduce those droplets. I mean, wait for the double-blinded mask study (n=200) if you want. You may end up waiting for quite a while. Meanwhile, overall transmission rates in Asian mask-wearing countries are lower than Western transmission rates, despite taking many of the same precautions other than masks.
The point with masks, even rudimentary ones, is that they help prevent the wearer from transmitting respiratory disease.
And there's a point during a pandemic when you drop the Nature/Science level of evidence when you're talking about a relatively low-risk intervention like wearing a bandana.
In the words of the author of one the studies you disdain: "In normal times we'd say that if it wasn't shown statistically significant or the effective in real-world studies, we don't recommend it," he said. "But in the middle of a pandemic, we're desperate. The thinking is that even if it cuts down transmission a little bit, it's worth trying."
BTW, the author of the study I'm talking about here studied transmission of viral infections (influenza and coronaviruses) with an n of 111, not bacterial infections: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2 But there are multiple studies from the past decade that indicate that masks help prevent spread of respiratory viruses.
Finally, you harshly criticize my comment for lack of evidence, and yet you pull this one out: "It's likely that in members of the public the main route is touching an infected surface and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth." We have no idea if that's true or not at this point.
And here's another statement you pulled out of nowhere: "As soon as you drop any of those you're not just making the mask a bit less effective, you're probably increasing the risk over not wearing a mask at all."
You seem to have started from a position of defending the CDC, and then from there gone on cherry pick evidence or pull statements out of thin air.
There are people I know working at the CDC that I respect a great deal. But this PR campaign to lie to the American people to preserve mask stocks was a bad, bad idea.
> We know that qualified registered healthcare professionals who know the consequences of not wearing PPE correctly still struggle to do it all correctly.
No significant difference between fitted and non-fitted N-95 masks: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21477136
And no, I wasn't even talking about wearing hospital-level PPE. I was talking about masks, and even mentioned bandanas, for crying out loud. But keep on spearing that red herring.
And here yet again, obviously N95 masks can help prevent transmission of respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-19. We know this to be true.
> This is not the CDC / WHO / etc lying, this is them talking about the science as they understand it.
You linked to some random ICU nurse, who makes some great points but has nothing to do with the CDC or WHO. But I agree that frontline health workers should absolutely have precedence to N-95 masks and other PPE.
> You're basing this on a small study carried out in a lab using research bacteria (not viruses) carried in a calibrated spray, that didn't include "people breathing through the mask".
Finally, you have no idea what I'm basing this on. Actually, it's common sense here that if you're infected, even as an asymptomatic carrier, wearing a bandana can reduce spread of droplets.
I would argue no, not a net positive at all. To start, nearly everyone now distrusts the CDC (and WHO) to deliver accurate information.
> CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.
> CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.
I think the same people who were inclined to distrust health organizations probably continue to do so, and the folks who were inclined to trust health organizations probably continue to do so as well.
Lies undermine all of this. Lies undermine the means by which they accomplish their mission.
> the folks who were inclined to trust health organizations probably continue to do so as well
One point of ancedata: not all of us.
This implies that trusting public health organizations is some kind of personal preference? Or that health organizations are inherent liars? Not sure what you're getting at.
Let's adjust the statement a bit to parse out its meaning, and make it not about health organizations, but about lying organizations.
"I think the same people who were inclined to distrust [lying] organizations probably continue to do so, and the folks who were inclined to trust [lying] organizations probably continue to do so as well."
That's a true statement that I can get behind.
Think a moment. The sick people need the doctors and nurses alive. Stripping the supply of PPE for medical professionals is lose-lose for everyone. Even if only all of the high-risk non-medical-workers bought effective masks, it would obliterate the supply available to nurses and doctors.
Lie once, lie always. Honesty is imperative for a public trust.
Now, what do you think the crazy anti-vaxxers will say, next time they're told to trust the CDC, and other public bodies, and that vaccination is safe, and makes sense?
When a vaccine is created, perhaps, for this virus?
Now it is easier to convince others that the truth is concealed. That lies abound.
Any medical official should lose their license, for spreading quackery.