The US Surgeon General, on March 28th, was on Twitter insisting that wearing masks was contraindicated unless you're coughing or sneezing, or taking care of someone with a confirmed infection. [0]

He tagged the WHO and CDC, because he was following their advice.

This wasn't deliberately calculated to kill tens of thousands of people and destroy the economy through harsh lockdowns when people started getting really sick. It just... happened to have that effect.

[0]: https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12440202923658158...

> This wasn't deliberately calculated to kill tens of thousands of people

I haven't seen any data on how much more effective masks are (and which masks) than social distancing. As a sibling pointed out, they might give people a sense of immunity, they might cause people to touch their faces more, etc.

In the Bay Area, they became mandatory-ish after new cases peaked. The only reasons to mandate them at that point is to either get people used to wearing them early or because it makes you feel like you're doing something.

Taiwan is where we should be looking for inspiration, with South Korea a close second. Taiwan has been manufacturing 20 million masks a day for their citizens, and has been able to contain the pandemic without shutting down their society.

Granted that they have a water border, and were early and aggressive about contact tracing and so on. But the burden is on those who have wacky theories about moral hazard, or who wish to argue from the authority of the WHO, to demonstrate why their specious violation of common sense should apply.

As for the Bay Area, well, they're not the first government to close the barn door after the horses escape. What would things look like if they hadn't listened to the CDC and WHO for as long as they did?

We'll never know, but more like Taiwan is a reasonable guess.

To be clear, I'm certainly not against people wearing face coverings but I'm skeptical it does much good.

You can't propagate a droplet to your face by touching a surface and then your mask, if it never lands on that surface to begin with.

I'd really like to do away with this misconception: masks are primarily to prevent transmission, and only secondarily (and it's a distant second) to prevent infection.

Like I said, I used to think it was a good idea, and now I've seen lots of people using the masks.

I wouldn't call CDC botching tests "obstruction," but it was probably the most significant failure at the federal level.

What does that mean?

People have been pointing out for years that the FDA's approach is excessively conservative, but the typical response is that they're doing it to save lives, even though there is a point past which being too conservative actually costs lives by keeping life-saving things off the market. This was a prominent example of that actually happening.

I am shocked!

That should be comprehensive with 100% coverage testing. Due to the asymptomatic nature of the disease, it was widespread before we knew it was here. There was no way to know who should be tested. We needed every single person tested on day 1, and then isolate the infected, to truly get in front of this thing. Anything else would be like trying to stop a hurricane by blowing a box fan against it.