In a nutshell, they did recommend not to wear masks for a short time during the beginning of the pandemic but at least the experts I've heard always provided the right justification - to prevent shortage.
You are downplaying it - they were actively taking a stance against them in the US and June was already quite late into the pandemic.
The WHO themselves were advising people NOT to wear a mask and that it might be even more dangerous to wear one than not to wear it months into the pandemic.. They also only revised this in June.
However, many people fail to correctly interpret official statements, especially those made by WHO at the time. You only ever officially recommend something in evidence-based medicine if there is evidence of its beneficial effects, never out of a gut feeling. They should have said "we are using masks because we believe they work but we're short of them and so you shouldn't buy them" and instead said "there is no evidence that wearing masks is beneficial and it could even be dangerous" to prevent shortage. The WHO's statement lacked transparency but if they had stated that everybody should wear masks in March 2020, the effects would have been disastrous for health authorities all over the world. National health authorities did the very same at the time, and I used to point out that a "King's Lie" like this, no matter how noble the motives, will likely backfire - as evidenced by your statements.
Still, if you listened closely, no expert I know of has ever said in any interview that masks don't help. That's all I wanted to point out.
Either way - my point was that people here can and do often outperform 'decisions made by experts', no matter the reason why that's the case.
> The WHO's statement lacked transparency but if they had stated that everybody should wear masks in March 2020, the effects would have been disastrous for health authorities all over the world
Even if that's what was happening, the way they did it - saying they are ineffective rather than, say vaguely saying they dont advise them - has fueled an anti-mask movement still alive today. It's very hard to believe that it was a good decision overall on top of being straight-up wrong.
Oh it did eh? Weird because that same "irrational" government is responsible for getting us vaccinated before almost any other country. The so called rational EU seems to be having a lot of issues right now.
Maybe lay off the Trump propaganda and look at how the US handled the vaccine rollout correctly. I've been vaccinated for over a month and my family has been as well. None of my EU friends have even been scheduled yet. Our economy is opening back up and yours is not, maybe ignoring what we did isn't such a great idea?
To protect yourself. The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus. Why does everyone complaining about the masks thing miss that?
And as others have already said, the lack of PPE across the world would have made recommending masks for everyone highly irresponsible.
This might just be availability bias, but most of the people I see complaining about mask use also respond badly to other calls to lessen their negative impact on their family/neighbors/tribe/comrades/countrymen/fellow humans.
This was a mistake. If authorities were going to be lying about masks anyway, the message should have been that they protect the wearer. People care more about themselves than they do about strangers.
Who said they ( as if all authorities across the world are a singular entity) are lying about it?
Dr. Fauci is a wrong expert? I love how when the narrative doesn't fit then suddenly the expert becomes the 'wrong-expert' even though the entire time everyone gets beat over the head with lIsteN to scIeNce & eXperts.
You're just subjectively choosing which people you agree with like anyone else but telling yourself they're the correct experts so you know the supposedly undeniable truth.
We are talking about science, I thought. Phrases like "obviously good," really are not in the scientific spirit.
Professionals also said that double-masking is even more obviously, obviously good. But that obvious obviousness was, quite obviously, wrong. [0]
[0] https://dossier.substack.com/p/the-cdcs-double-mask-mannequi...
Are people already forgetting how masks were actively disrecommended by 'professionals' at the start of the pandemic while plenty here and in other places were similarly saying that masks are obviously good?