Nobody that listened to public health experts ever "hated" masks. But initially, they didn't rush out to buy masks because the advice was to prioritise isolating the infected, social distancing for everyone else and clean hands to avoid [overestimated risk of] contact transmission, and not to rely on masks to protect you from infected people because there was no evidence they would offer that protection (the only masks they had reasonable confidence might work were far too limited in supply to stop it on a population level)
The recommendation changed (pretty quickly, based on stronger evidence of aerosol transmission and asymptomatic transmission and COVID being sufficiently widespread to make altogether avoiding contagious people unrealistic) to suggesting that although social distancing was recommended because cloth masks alone were insufficiently effective at preventing infection, masks were better than nothing and so on a population scale wearing them in public places would slow infection rates. At this point - even though I'd already had the infection - I started wearing a mask to the supermarket because apart from it being logical, it was also required to enter. It wasn't much of an imposition, and subsequent evidence largely supports the reduced transmission risk.
I think the question works better in reverse. When was it you switched from being angry at the CDC for telling you not to bother with the masks because they couldn't altogether prevent infection so you were better off avoiding people with COVID altogether to being angry at the CDC for recommending masks in public places to somewhat reduce risk of infection? What was the scientific evidence that lead you to change your mind?
In Asia they were using masks from the start, just like they did with the original SARS.
But with this second SARS doctors/WHO were saying that surgical masks had no effect and that Asians don't know what they're doing.
Then, masks not only had no effect, they were bad for you.
Then, all of a sudden masks were good. Cloth masks were good too. And you had doctors showing you how to make masks out of t-shirts.
Then masks were so good you had to wear them by force.
Then cloth masks had no effect. Then surgical masks had no effect. Only N95 and above were good.
It was absolute roller coaster, and with every turn (excused with “the science has changed”) doctors were hammering a nail into the coffin of public acceptance of science.
This is not only backwards, it is hilariously so: Aerosol transmission was only partially accepted a year or more after the mask push. People still resist it even now. The whole reason masks were supposed to work was the assumption that it was entirely droplet transmission.
The people who believed it was aerosol spread that first year were the ones against masking, because the virus is too small to be stopped by cloth masks.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Not all aerosol particles are the same size, and particles don't have to be smaller than holes they pass through for a grid of fibre to obstruct a significant proportion of them. The change in guidance wasn't a conclusion masks were a panacea, they were a reflection that even a small degree of protection was better than no protection in a situation where existing measures weren't slowing its spread fast enough.
The people who were against masking on principle by and large didn't care what degree it reduced it by, because they just didn't want to be told to wear masks.
That said, I absolutely agree 'normal' people were pushed to the limit in a way that made them look for anything that made sense of what was happening around them.
Back in the day that kind of crazy was relegated to the dark corners of the Internet and you had to explicitly seek it out.
Nowadays social media apps that claim to make it easier to connect with your family/friends will happily push these in front of you, knowing that getting you deep into that rabbit hole is likely to net them more "engagement".
The net result is that naive but well-meaning people who originally just wanted to keep in touch with friends/family got sucked deep into this bullshit.
And you attack conspiracy theorists who turned out to be right about a number of aspects of the pandemic?
So your comment applies to the establishment voices who straight up lied to the public and some people like yourself seemed to believe the liars. Lol!
You are reading too much into things just to confirm your viewpoints you have barely grazed.
I always wonder what people mean when they talk about "the news" or "the media". I don't watch any of the 24/7 cable stuff (I last had cable in 1999), but I get the impression its what actually drives the perception of whatever this unitary entity is believed to be thinking/scheming at any moment. So I'm somewhat blind/deaf to a lot of this zeitgeist, though I understand that like any media, they long ago cracked the code that negative engagement is more profitable, and so yes, scaremongering is part of the job, and so I tend to avoid it.
That said, I knew people who died from Covid, the latest just a few weeks ago. When my parents, who aren't young anymore got it, I was pretty fearful for them.
It's not "dogma" to "sterilize" some fringe idiocies, just implying that is often pretty much helping that sewer just fester under our noses.
I remember reading about how Lenin dealt with opposition. He never argued with them on public, as it could damage his image and undermine his dogma. Instead, he ferociously attacked the opponent himself: demonized him, called him names, and later got rid of him.
I've heard similar comparisons to dictators from flat-earthers, that tells me a lot. I get the impression you wish you'd be oppressed, demonized, instead of ridiculed. But the latter is all it deserves, a laugh in the face and the door shut.