They could have simply told people "masks are good, but please leave them to health worker", i.e. appeal to people's better side. Instead they chose to take people for idiots and lie to them, and lo and behold, people don't like being lied to and taken for idiots.

This was not just in the US, exact same thing happened in most of Europe.

Yeah, exactly. Altruistic instincts are much better than is often assumed.

Given what that qanonsense manages to turn the least controversial things into political football, and doesn't care for whether or not there are any facts backing their position, it wouldn't have mattered. Republicans would have just started complaining about it in March, instead of whichever later date the CDC changed their guidance.

The first rule of politics is to never let a good crisis go to waste. The second rule of politics is to always piss on whatever your opponents are doing, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

They had an opportunity to get everyone to act unanimously, avoiding that issue, and they squandered it.

Great point about Qanon and facts not being necessary. The fact we keep having the same argument on HN about masks is proof that it doesn’t really matter what Fauci did back then. It’s just weak justification for current bad behavior.

If they were more decisive they could have avoided it becoming a partisan issue in the first place. There was nothing foreordained about it being an issue at all. Even if I’m wrong about that, they did harm to the people who listened to their advice.

There weren’t enough masks for health care workers at the time and we were facing a possible meltdown of the entire health care industry (and societal meltdown). Advising people not to hoard masks, and instead leave them for health care workers, was probably the right move. Even if our government said “go get masked up” nothing would’ve changed, as proper masks were out of stock for months.

I’m not saying the deception was necessary, just illustrating it’s not black and white. It would’ve become a partisan issue regardless with Trump doing his performative masculinity routine and refusing to wear them.

But the deception is specifically what I'm objecting to. Yes, it would have been quite reasonable to say "healthcare workers need the masks -- please leave them for them." By doing a public volte-face, the medical authorities opened the door to questioning of their advice and the "macho posturing" that you're talking about. I'm not convinced that it would have played out the same if they hadn't made such a foolish decision.