Right. Which is why we saw a great many "virologists" (who are not "maskologists", btw, so I'm not sure where we get this idea that they "work on masks" [1]) blindly assert that it didn't matter what kind of mask you wear, then for a long time defended the silly notion of a 6-foot rule (remember "ballistic droplets"? I do!), then said, "OK, cloth masks probably don't do much, but 'swiss-cheese model!'", and so on and so forth. Literally anything than just be intellectually honest about what the data says.
This entire debate has been insipid, and OP is correct: a great many people who should have known better shifted their brains into neutral and allowed slogans to drive the conversation. The entire point of the linked article is that the CDC has historically used crap studies to make causative arguments that wouldn't work in any other scientific debate.
[1] ...and let's not forget people like Jeremy Howard (philosophy major; Kaggle guy) and Zeynep Tufecki (librarian) somehow get cited as 'mask experts' and publish total gibberish in PNAS and other high-profile journals, despite having zero relevant experience. Expertise is a slippery concept when the speaker makes an argument you like!
IMO this was never about masking. This was about a minority of cluster-B types having a public meltdown at the ideologically intolerable fact that collective responsibility is a real thing.
There is no ambiguity about "Masks work." It simply means masking is better than nothing.
There's nuance in the type of mask, and masking practices, and other fine details. But the principle is straightforward.
And unless you're seriously going to try to argue that dentists and surgeons have been wasting their time and money on PPE for all this time, the effects are clear.
I saw some police walk up to a small elderly and otherwise inoffensive woman and kick her off a tram because she wasn't masked up. It is better than a Jew Badge, but I think people can have a legitimate concern that the same authoritarian mindset was behind both mandates. Drawing the line at police telling people they have to start dressing differently as a show of public support for a cause is an extremely reasonable position.
Especially since as far as I've seen there is still no evidence it achieved anything beyond just offering up a "hey, wear a mask" as advice and encouraging voluntary behaviour. This study makes it look like even the evidence for voluntary masking is up for question.
Whoa there...you skipped a big step. "Collective responsibility" requires that the thing you're all doing is shown to be responsible. If the thing doesn't have any effect, then you're just engaged in theater. Or worse, maybe the thing has negative consequences. Because that's certainly possible, and not something you can just hand-wave away.
You don't get to skip the test of effectiveness, blindly assume that whatever you're mandating is automatically good, and dismiss anyone who dares to question your assumptions as "irresponsible".
Instead of just running the damned experiments, it's tribal warfare and insults, and clinging desperately to crappy data.
> And unless you're seriously going to try to argue that dentists and surgeons have been wasting their time and money on PPE for all this time, the effects are clear.
Huge conceptual leap from "dentists and surgeons wearing fitted, fresh PPE in a sterile environment" to "people on the street wearing unwashed cloth rags" (aka "a bit of cloth on your face"), so I'd probably start there.
The parent is also certainly on to something with the Cluster B's and those pesky "ideologically intolerable fact[s]", I'm just not sure it's so one-sided.
The entire thing was ideology first, science second, to the point of science worship. Many people with a reasonable grasp on science were labeled as heretics simply for asking questions or talking about anything that suggested masks/vaccines weren't 100.00% effective with 0.00% downside. Remember Faucisexuals? Yikes.
As someone said, we need to stop "believing" in science (or not) and start "understanding" it.
Exactly. That's why you're masked right now.
Oh you're not? Well then please tell me why not, and you'll have the answer to your own question
The earliest piece of advice was "please don't go out and buy all the masks because the hospitals need them (and the common ones won't protect you anyway because the virus is too small - you'll need an N95, which are expensive and also needed in hospitals)"
A little later, the advice was "on second thought, if we all cover our mouths and noses, we'll probably slow the spread by virtue of not coughing and sneezing all over everything. Save the N95s for the doctors, and cover your face with I-dont-care-what".
The opprobrium cited the earlier advice, with a "wait, you said these were useless, now we have to wear them?"
Instead of addressing this most simple point of confusion, it jumped to "MASKS WORK! SHUT UP AND PUT YOUR MASK ON, IDIOT!"
By the time production ramped up and we had N95s to go around, the conversation was already stupid beyond repair.
Again, it was never The Science™, but the piss-poor communication of it - and by people who should have known better.
It's interesting that you stop here, and not go further to the next level of relevant knowledgeableness, which is that the virologists and materials engineers who work on masks know something the tradespeople don't, which is a) that viruses rarely travel around as single viral particles and b) that this is why we make surgical and N95 masks electrostatically charged. (https://www.wired.com/story/the-physics-of-the-n95-face-mask...)
(For a clear example of why a) matters, try peeing through your pants. The water molecules are, after all, far too small to be blocked!)
> A clear explanation of the different modes of operation, and framing it as a polite thing to do (akin to covering your mouth/nose when you cough or sneeze), probably would have been sufficient.
This was very widely attempted.