It may take some time, but I think people will be held accountable. I think there should be prosecutions if it can be shown any of them knowingly lied, because in that case they would have intentionally caused deaths through the spreading of disinformation. Incredible that experts had to combat deadly disinformation or misinformation from the CDC, WHO, and US Surgeon General. It's as sickening as COVID-19 itself. We're really still living in the Dark Ages.

"Research shows that during disasters, people can show strikingly altruistic behavior, but interventions by authorities can backfire if they fuel mistrust or treat the public as an adversary rather than people who will step up if treated with respect. Given that even homemade masks may work better than no masks, wearing them might be something to direct people to do while they stay at home more, as we all should."

Is that true? I don't want to be inflammatory here but as far as I've seen there isn't much research to show that laypeople's use of masks is effective and there have even been some possible mechanisms suggested that could even make it worse than wearing no mask.

And furthermore I don't think that just because healthcare workers are recommended to wear masks that makes it "obvious" that they would be effective for laypeople too. Healthcare workers have full sets of PPE and also strict procedures and facilities for using them/putting them on/taking them off/etc that could potentially nullify the usefulness of that PPE if not followed.

If there really is research to show otherwise then I would be very curious to see it. Most of what I've seen so far specifically focuses on their use by healthcare workers.

EDIT: One promising datapoint for the pro-mask camp is that infection rates do seem to be slowing down in the Czech republic since making mask-wearing mandatory there. For a while there didn't seem to be any change but looking at the data again today, there does seem to be a decrease.

[1] see this video https://news.sky.com/video/coronavirus-medical-officer-cough...

Meanwhile, if someone were to say "it's obvious that wearing nitrile gloves and properly disposing of them reduces the chance of viruses coming into contact with your bare hands", true, this is not 100% obvious. There are potential failure modes here, there could be some unknown unknowns. But in general, this seems pretty obvious. We've been using gloves for these purposes for millennia. We have no reason to think they're ineffective at preventing harmful particles from touching your bare hands.

The same is true of a face mask. If a virus is likely to infect you by entering your nose or mouth, then covering your nose and mouth is likely to reduce the chance of infection from the virus. This has again been known for millennia. It's the reason why Asian countries have been wearing face masks since the start of the COVID-19 news. It's why every national and global health organization is now advising that people should start wearing masks. And it's evidence that the Surgeon General of the United States very likely knowingly lied to the US public, possibly causing unnecessary deaths.

I think this is a little bit unfair of an analogy because the question is not really "does it reduce virus particles from coming into contact with your bare hands", the question is really "does it reduce your chances of getting/spreading the virus" which is not so straightforward.

> If a virus is likely to infect you by entering your nose or mouth, then covering your nose and mouth is likely to reduce the chance of infection from the virus.

That mechanism does seem obvious but what if the reduction is only a few percentage points or something? Consider how the virus particles could potentially pass right through many coverings, and they do nothing for your eyes or other bodily openings. It could be totally counteracted by, for example, having virus particles trapped in a moist space in front of your face for hours at a time. I have no idea if that's true but I'm just trying to say, there are plausible mechanisms that could negate the effectiveness of masks outside healthcare settings.

> It's the reason why Asian countries have been wearing face masks since the start of the COVID-19 news.

Asian countries have acquired a culture of wearing face masks based around beliefs, not data. That is not a demonstration of face masks being effective, unless you are trying to say that since implementing such a culture we've seen a reduction in viral infections there. That would indeed be a good argument for masks.

And keep in mind that mask-wearing in Asian countries didn't begin with COVID-19. It has been popular since the SARS outbreak at least.

In other words, the CDC's guidelines were not totally irrational advice.

Yes it is. Are you more likely to subsequently touch other things with your exterior appendages or your face?

I'm still waiting for you to provide some proof that the t-shirt stretched over your face blocks anything at all.

Pick one. Exterior appendages, or face?

This is such obvious cope. Let's see you spit through a T-shirt. C'mon man, you should feel embarrassed posting this.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6744a3.htm?s_cid=mm... https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/nioshtic-2/20044567.html

2 of those things aren't diseases. And none of them are contagious. They also did fuck-all for H1N1 epidemic which infected 60 million in the US and claimed five times as many lives here as C19 has so far.