It is a novel disease, but it is close to SARS-CoV-1 from the 2003 outbreak. There is a lot of long-term research on the quality of life indicators. One paper listed 20% of hospitalized with full disability due to chronic fatigue syndrome 5 years after hospitalization.
Young people with viral pneumonia and mechanical ventilation still walked slower than 60+ seniors (very little restoration of lung capacity).
> a large percentage of those who get it will experience life-long adverse effects
Mental health also influences QOLI. From SARS, MERS, HIV, and other severe viral infections, we know that this can have severe impact on mental health (many from SARS-CoV-1 and MERS suffer from PTSD and depression if not degenerative bone necrosis == constant muscle pain).
People report trouble smelling or speaking months after COVID. There are support groups popping up for people with persistent problems, chronic fatigue and sleep problems being one that seems to linger for months.
Early research from Italy:
> Patients were assessed a mean of 60.3 (SD, 13.6) days after onset of the first COVID-19 symptom; at the time of the evaluation, only 18 (12.6%) were completely free of any COVID-19–related symptom, while 32% had 1 or 2 symptoms and 55% had 3 or more. None of the patients had fever or any signs or symptoms of acute illness. Worsened quality of life was observed among 44.1% of patients. [...] a high proportion of individuals still reported fatigue (53.1%), dyspnea (43.4%), joint pain, (27.3%) and chest pain (21.7%).
https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-causes-heart-damage-hea...
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns-about-l...
News has a motivation to sensationalize, i.e. only time will tell if this was a lot of panic over nothing or if 20% of the people who caught COVID will drop dead over the next 10 years.
There also was a very robust debate at the time about whether masks worked or not, and which types of masks worked, hence why lots of researchers immediately started to study these issues.
I'm not saying there wasn't incorrect information out there, but it wasn't nearly as binary as you are making it out to be.
https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...
I'll quote it for you: (but read it in its entirety if you want the whole thing, it's only one Tweet)
> They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus...
There is no nuance in that statement (I did not capitalize the 'NOT'. It comes capitalized already).
I would add to your list that contact-based transmission, in contrast the the obsession over surface sanitizing procedures, is not a meaningful transmission risk. Derek Thompson called it "hygiene theater", similar to the post-9/11 security theater.
> 1. Masks don't work! -> Nope, they do.
I thought that originally the WHO said that masks are not proven to work, not that they don't work at all. Now masks are proven to work.
> 2. You need training to make masks work! -> Nope, you don't.
> 3. If you don't wear your mask perfectly, you're going to get the disease. The outcome is binary. -> Doesn't look that way.
I don't remember these guidances from the WHO or CDC. Can you provide a source?
https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...
I will quote it here:
> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
> They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
And of course, Fauci told everyone not to wear masks. But that doesn't matter. This is the Surgeon General saying "They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching Coronavirus". That is a categorical statement.
My theory is that when people think that the guidance has radically shifted throughout the COVID-19 epidemic, it's because they are getting their information from non-authoritative sources. But like your example, sometimes the "authoritative sources" are super wrong.
Dr Fauci did eventually admit that the guidance on masks was not optimal:
> "We have to admit it, that that mixed message in the beginning, even though it was well meant to allow masks to be available for health workers, that was detrimental in getting the message across," Fauci said in an interview with Mary Louise Kelly of NPR's All Things Considered. "No doubt about it."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/01/8862991...
What about your points 2 and 3?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI
That is Dr Fauci himself on 60 minutes in early March saying that Americans should not be wearing masks. I guess he changed his mind. People want to say, "Yes he changed his mind due to new evidence." Ok what evidence? I want to see it. And it better be from just before they changed their views and not after they changed their views.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777170 (claims that training is required or you're going to get rekt, read thread)
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22776396 (while doesn't claim a no-threshold model, the threshold is a hundred viral particles)
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22735235
3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22734656
4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22734923
5: https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1243171683067777024?s=20 (the WHO saying not to wear a mask, by the way)
6: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22530340
7: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22610180
8: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22595955
9: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22559272
If you are just looking for random people on the Internet being wrong, then yes, there are lots of examples of that!
The N95 masks weren't, and aren't, in the sense he meant. People have said over and over, the way the masks we're wearing now are effective is in protecting others from us, should we be infected.
I used to accept that the "party line" changed, but now I think it's just a misunderstanding.
1. Masks don't work! -> Nope, they do.
2. You need training to make masks work! -> Nope, you don't.
3. If you don't wear your mask perfectly, you're going to get the disease. The outcome is binary. -> Doesn't look that way.
There are a few still in line to be determined, supposedly:
* This disease is novel in ways that no other disease is. So a large percentage of those who get it will experience life-long adverse effects causing substantial loss of QALYs. -> I don't think so, but we'll see. Sure, a few people here and there will have life-long breathing issues but nearly everyone will have practically identical QoL as they did before.
* Single group activities are the biggest determiners of whether there will be an increase in cases in America. -> I don't think so. I think it'll be whether we have large scale openings. i.e. protests are not as big a deal as letting people go to restaurants (the latter will dwarf the former)
* Outdoor activities are spreading the disease at a substantial rate in America. -> I don't think so. It's not the beach-goers. It's the guys mostly indoors.
We'll see. Ultimately, thinking in Bayesian terms, this virus is less likely to be novel in multiple ways than it is likely to be novel in one way. So far, that looks to have been a good assumption. Let's see what else it holds up on. There was always a lot of "We don't know enough. This could be the end of civilization" going around and I think we always knew enough. We did and we continue to.