Yes, it was a big factor. The WHO was discouraging mask use for months after the pandemic started, even though we knew that the original SARS was airborne and we knew that masks were effective against other coronaviruses. They were pushing the line that there was "no evidence", when what they really mean was "there isn't overwhelming and conclusive evidence, and I am not inclined towards Bayesian reasoning in public because it presents too much career risk and I'm a total coward".

I remember researching mask effectiveness when it was spreading around China but hadn't made it out anywhere else (that we knew about) and everyone thought it was just going to be another SARS.

I personally couldn't find a single English article that said mask were anything besides a placebo for the person wearing them if they wanted protection from others. That instinctively made no sense that a barrier in front of your mouth and nose provided zero protection and I'm glad I didn't trust the lack of study in the west as evidence of ineffectiveness and kept trying to secure masks for myself and my family before the lock downs hit.

You searched poorly, PubMed was quite full of medium quality evidence for their use, back from 2008. Even against influenza which is notoriously widespread and harder to control.

Evidence against was at most due to low adherence. Which means so much as masks don't work if you don't wear them, and they're annoying enough for general public. Quite obvious.

Face shields are somewhat less tested, and likely much less effective based on theoretical data, as they don't form an effective barrier.

I recall almost from the beginning that they said wear clothe masks even if made from an old tee shirt so that medical personal could have the limited PPE, NO ONE said "don't wear a mask because it does nothing" . Clearly that never happened, not ever, except in various "the virus is a hoax" online platforms. Some initial people said 6 ft distance was enough if not wearing a mask. I have been following this as close as anyone since the beginning aside from medical professionals.

> NO ONE said "don't wear a mask because it does nothing" .

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted in February 2020, "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!"

https://www.axios.com/surgeon-general-reversal-face-mask-d38...

> people genuinely begin the pandemic by believing officials and then after a few weeks start to disbelieve officials?

(Anecdote)

At the start of the pandemic, I took it all very seriously. We were in the fog of war and didn't know how serious it was, so we assumed it was very dangerous. We did our best to avoid people and do our part to "stop the spread" or "flatten the curve".

At the beginning of June, I started to get more bold with things. Wife and kids still avoided stores, but I would go for more than just the weekly groceries.

Sometime in July / August we started seeing some of our friends again.

September / October we started going to stores as a family again. Also started going to church again.

At this point, our habits are changed to the point that we just don't really go anywhere, but we don't avoid anything for "safety" reasons. We wear our masks in stores, etc. because most have signs on the doors asking us to and we try to be polite about it.

At this point I think I can count 20+ people of all ages that I know personally who have had Coronavirus. I don't have a terribly big social circle. In the words of my best friend, whose family had it over Christmas, "I wouldn't recommend going out and catching it on purpose, but you get through it just fine"

Which is to say, I think we know much more about the virus now than we did then, and the risk profile is very low for people without serious pre-existing health conditions or the very old.

And hell, my grandma's nursing home had an outbreak. I think they had maybe 6 or 7 people die out of the 60 or so people who caught it. That's a tragedy, but the bigger tragedy is that they were prevented from seeing family for ten months now and had to suffer alone, many of them degrading significantly from the lack of interaction. Thankfully they are getting the vaccine and should be allowed to open up soon.

This is a ridiculous post. It’s not about _you_, it’s about vulnerable people who you were willingly becoming a vector of infection for.

Your friend who recommended “not to go out and get it, but it isn’t that bad” doesn’t know if they gave it to a vulnerable person.

It’s never been just about you or how you and your circle will handle it.

> Your friend who recommended “not to go out and get it, but it isn’t that bad” doesn’t know if they gave it to a vulnerable person.

Yes, I'm sure the 20 days they were collectively quarantined was completely reckless and putting people in danger.

Edit:

Also, his wife caught it at work. Where she was being, you know, essential.

You completely missed the point. The point is that your approach is self-centered and focused on how you will react to the virus. It’s never been about you, it’s about being a vector of transmission. The more risk you take, the more chance you pass it to someone who can’t handle catching it.

You will likely never see the consequences of that, but you could have transmitted the virus to someone who died.

It’s not a lot to ask for people to refrain from social gatherings and unnecessary activities in order to protect their fellow humans. Do no harm and all that you know...

This is the rational approach to take. At the beginning it was an unknown, and I was more cautious than anyone I knew. I was gathering supplies and locking down in January. There were videos of people in China having seizures in the middle of the road (whatever happened to those videos, by the way?). The correct response was to be overly cautious until we had more data.

We have more data now. If you're under 70 the chances of you dying, if you don't already have a massively serious disease are statistically almost irrelevant. It's a standard coronavirus like the common cold, that's 2-3 times deadlier than the flu, and predominately only deadly to the very elderly. People are wise now that their claims of how scary it is is provably wrong and are now turning to the much more ambiguous claim about "don't you know that X% have long lasting problems afterwards?". Hogwash. The only thing they have to back that up is that they heard someone else say it. They'll never link to data that says that, because there isn't any.

We have the data now. What I gave is the data. It comes straight from the CDC, not your emotional facebook friend. Any rational human being, who proports to "follow the science", should act in accordance to the data. The data doesn't care about your feelings. The data doesn't care what people on Twitter tell you you should think. We have the data now.

It's to the point where the parent comment and my comment will be downvoted to oblivion because we encourage people to follow the data. Downvoted and censored by people claiming they "follow the science". For pointing out the science. This is not a good situation for us to find ourselves in.

> We have the data now

Yeah, we have the data that 447,000 Americans have been killed by Covid. That is data.

Honestly, death comes to us all. My dad died five years ago this week. Death is tragic, but the world keeps moving.

The main thing I've concluded based on people's reaction to the death tolls is that much of our population has not come to terms with their mortality and hate being reminded of it.

This is strange logic... since we all are going to die anyway, we shouldn't worry about causes of preventable death?

So i guess we don't need drunk driving laws... only about 10,000 people a year die in the US from drunk drivers, they were going to die anyway. The world keeps on moving.

No reason to work on curing cancer. Dead someday anyway.

Yes, death comes to us all. That has no bearing on whether we should work to prevent death.

I just looked up the CDC data and it says ~0.7% of the US population dies each year. Out of ~330 million people, that's 2.4 million people each year.

So assuming that 400k figure is excess mortality, that means 17% more people died last year than normal.

That is tragic, but the way it gets talked about, you would think we were at 10x or more.

>That is tragic, but the way it gets talked about, you would think we were at 10x or more.

Then again, we've invaded foreign countries and sacrificed our civil liberties ("war on terror") for way less deaths than that.

> Then again, we've invaded foreign countries and sacrificed our civil liberties ("war on terror") for way less deaths than that.

Makes you wonder why we are always so quick to trade away our freedoms...

I’ve been wondering if we’ll see a drop in deaths in the future too. A lot of the deaths are people that wouldn’t live much longer anyway. If 2 years from now the death rate is 17% lower we only lost an average 2 life-years of the 17% population, which is tragic, but is it more tragic for the other 99.3% of people to lose 1 life year because of that?

For one thing, we lost 447,000 so far WITH all of the quarantining and shut downs... that number would have been WAY higher if we had done nothing. The hospitals would have been completely overwhelmed, and many who survived would have died.

Also, we did not ‘lose’ a year of life.

17% more people dying every year is a huge increase. Why do you feel the need to downplay it?