Masks reduce the spread of respiratory diseases in hospitals. People have known this for more than a century. Many tests have confirmed it for many different diseases. Masks also work outside of hospitals. Sars-cov-2 spreads like other common respiratory diseases. Therefore, masks reduce the spread of sars-cov-2.

We see this in data. Washington [0], Vermont [1], and Maine [2] all got mask mandates last summer. These states have had half the number of cases [3] as other northern-US states which waited many more months before requiring their citizens to wear masks in public indoor spaces.

[0] https://www.governor.wa.gov/news-media/inslee-announces-stat...

[1] https://vtdigger.org/2020/07/24/scott-orders-mask-mandate/

[2] https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/health/coronavi...

[3] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areasRegional=uswa&area...

I'm not talking about what happened after.. I'm talking about WHO literally not recommending to wear masks unless you're sick or caring for someone sick.

Back then, people who were wearking masks were marked as "stupid conspiracy theorists" and fearmongerers. Then, suddenly the mask mandates came in, and people not wearing the masks were "stupid conspiracy theorists".

example still online: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...

> "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said at a media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.

> But we had just that... we had scientists and doctors telling us just last year (at the beginning of "the plague") that masks are useless for healthy people, and that they even present a higher risk to wearers, because they touch the mask and their face more. > And then, one random saturday (in my country atleast), masks became mandatory, along with gloves to enter the stores. Some media outlets have even removed the previous newsstories (not edit and say "whoops, now we know better", but remove completely), and everybody acts as if that didn't happen.

sigh

There are nuances for that. First, there weren't enough masks and other PPE for medical personnel; second, there was already hoarding going on. Making masks mandatory at the beginning would have been disastrous and likely resulted in the deaths of many medical personnel, who were among the main limits of how many cases a country can take.

Then, you're missing a big difference between the initial "don't use masks" and later "everyone should mask up" guidances. The initial one was that you shouldn't wear a mask to protect yourself because untrained people were unlikely to wear them properly and would just touch themselves too much, thus wasting the precious resource. And of course, there was little certainty about how the virus spread and when ( do you spread it only when you have symptoms? do you spread it only if you have a positive test? )

The later one was due to knowing much better how the virus propagates, we can now conclude that wearing a mask stops people from spreading it, so everybody should wear a mask to stop community spread. There's a huge difference between wearing a mask to protect yourself from getting infected, and to stop unknowing sick people from spreading the virus via the main way it spreads. And of course, when that came about, there were just about enough masks in most countries to actually be able to do that.

Yes, it should have been handled better. Is it normal for such guidance to evolve considering the many known and unknown unknowns ? Absofuckinglutely. Would you have prefered for the guidance to stay the same for fear of looking stupid and wasting countless more lives?

> Same with trump + wuhan lab theory... at first it was a bannable offence on facebook to promote such idea... and now after trump, there are serious inquiries if that really happened, and we're allowed to discuss this again.

Again, nuance! What was bannable was claiming that China developed the virus on purpose. The lighter versions, like accidental lab leak, weren't banned ( that i recall; if you have a source stating otherwise i'd gladly retract that statement). In any case, any such discussion in the beginning seemed, to me at least, as deflections and excuses. We suck at handling a pandemic compared to just about anyone, but it's not our fault, China made this! What does it matter where the virus came from when people are dying left and right from it? Now that things are calmer, we can discuss and investigate.

There is still zero proof on the matter, and i doubt there ever will be ( as if the CCP would admit a lab leak in China caused a pandemic with such proportions and consequences).

> Wuhan Institute of Virology has collaborated with the Galveston National Laboratory in the United States, the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie in France, and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada.

> In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the institute published successful research on a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.

I want to believe they had a good excuse for doing so.

I want to believe they created rigorous safety protocols that reduce the risks as much as possible.

Then they chose to do it in the most populous city in Central China (population 11 million) which is so stupid I doubt they had a good enough reason and certainly didn't bother with safety all that much.

After such stupidity one doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

[0] - List of laboratory biosecurity incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

No, they literally said there is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-mas...

Yes, there was a shortage, but "no evidence ... any potential benefit" means something different.

About facebook:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-...

> Facebook is keen to ensure that a change in one rule doesn’t lead to a free-for-all for Covid misinformation. On the same day that it lifted the ban on lab-leak theories, it tightened up restrictions on users who “repeatedly share misinformation on Facebook”.

Guardian says it they also banned the "lab-leak" theories... (not to mention the second part of the quote).

Those are just two examples. Vaccine passports were also a "conspiracy theory". AstraZeneca was also marked as "perfectly safe" (and not "probably safe"), until they started ditching it everywhere.

And I'm not complaining about science changing after more data is revealed/processed (that is a normal part of science), I'm complaining about people getting banned one day for saying something, and then that something being accepted as reality the next day, and companies like facebook removing the bannable offence and saying "we will ban more people" in the same sentance.

Some media outlets have even removed the [erroneous] previous newsstories (not edit and say "whoops, now we know better", but remove completely), and everybody acts as if that didn't happen.

Well, yes. We've always been at war with Eastasia.