The fact that people keep citing this ridiculous claim is evidence of why this "contradiction" was necessary. People are too selfish and panicky to respond rationally to "although masks are useful, we need current masks for healthcare workers, so please don't go buy any". That message is 4 times as long as the attention span of the average American. As such, it got consolidated into the much more brief (but not strictly accurate) "you don't need to wear masks" until such time as the supply chain could cope.
This was a rational and intentional decision, not a contradiction.
It was a shortsighted error that will forever cost them credibility. Not worth it. They should have just contacted the handful of major retailers that could have delivered N95 masks into the hands of most Americans and asked (or even ordered) them to pull the stock. That's it. Problem solved.
All they did in the end was demonstrate that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth and that's not what you want if you're trying to manage a pandemic or any public health crisis. Outright lying because they didn't want to risk treating the American public like adults was such a massive failure I don't think they will ever recover fully from it.
But we should still ban people who say otherwise? The first "otherwise" (nutjob conspiracy theorists telling you to wear a mask, no matter what fauci says) or the second "otherwise" (nutjob conspiracy theorists saying that masks are useless)? Which ones should we ban then?
I mean... doing what a youtubeing prepper nutjob said and did, has proven to be safer for you, than following what Fauci (and other local equivalents) say... or you'd atleast have masks, disinfectant and a basement full of toiletpaper and MREs at home, while those listening to Fauci wouldn't.
How can we "trust the science", when "the science" has clearly lied to us? What else is "science" lying about right now?
When the pandemic happened, and I had multiple P100 masks from asbestos removal, I felt pretty comfortable.
....Until I tried to wear them in everyday life. It is even worse than being at a construction site, wearing one of those monstrosities all day
Well I'm glad they're lying to my face for good reason
This was a rational and intentional decision to lie, not a contradiction.
Which is exactly what you would expect to happen as we get new data on anything new. The fact that people were excepting the medical community to have prophetic knowledge about a novel virus barely a month after it had been confirmed speaks more to the American public's poor understanding of the scientific process.
Side note, but just a reminder that Fauci NEVER said "masks don't work", as much as this gets repeated on social media. He said that they prevent infected people from spreading it to others and did not recommend that everyone wear them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI
And when further data came out about asymptomatic transmission, the recommendations changed.
Side note 2: "hug a chinese" and "vaccinated people don't spread COVID" were both from politicians, not the medical or scientific communities. I found plenty of blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels from actual epidemiologists and virologists (such as "this week in virology") who did not say such things. Unfortunately Americans don't really care enough to distinguish between "science communicated by politicians" and "science communicated by scientists". After 2020 and watching as people working in relevant fields - like the podcast above, or "your local epidemiologist" - just got straight-up ignored by COVID deniers, I'm not even sure most of the public even knows how to look up "communication by scientists"...
I don't expect them to know everything. I do expect them to acknowledge when they don't know everything, rather than bouncing from one end of unwarranted certainty to the other.
I mean sure... but a CDC director is a "scientific" authority, not just some local redneck mayor of a hick town
https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-s...
( > CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky is interviewed )
> our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data.
When and where was this the message? I'm not doubting you, I just got most of my covid info from going to blogs then reading the abstracts of papers they linked to, and I remember the efficacy being in the 80% to 90% range for the initial strain. Even smallpox vaccines only had around 95% efficacy. There's no good reason for a journalist to report that any vaccine is 100% effective.
> "This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Biden said in the full interview. "The unvaccinated. Not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated. That’s the problem. Everybody talks about freedom and not to have a shot or have a test. Well guess what? How about patriotism? How about making sure that you’re vaccinated, *so you do not spread the disease to anyone else."* (*emphasis mine*)
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...
> The vaccines that we have against COVID are incredibly effective vaccines. And people have seen the results from the clinical trials of, you know, anywhere in the 80 percent range, 90 percent range of efficacy. But that doesn't mean that 100 percent of people, 100 percent of the time are going to be protected against disease. There is no vaccine that provides that level of protection for any disease. So we do expect in any vaccine program that there will be rare, but there will be cases of disease among people who were fully vaccinated and certainly among some people who were partially vaccinated. This doesn't mean that the vaccines aren't working. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the vaccines. What it does mean is that not everybody who receives vaccines has 100 percent protection
To me, that means that chances of not getting covid are 80-90%, so out of 100 vaccinated people, only 10-20 will get covid... which was a "good enough" risk reduction for me.
also
https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-s... (interview with CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky )
> And we have -- we can kind of almost see the end. We`re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data.
From "hug a chinese" to "masks don't help" one day, and "mandatory masks" the next.
I'm not that old or fat to be in any risk groups, so I got vaccinated to protect my (old) parents... and back then it was "get vaccinated and you won't get it, not spread it" (plus herd immunity), and not long after: "yes, you can get it, you can spread it, but chances of death are marginally lower"
Then one discusson on /r/conspiracy about something unrelated, and bam, banned from most of the from page subreddits.