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Comment by bumby | Hacker News Reader

>CDC opposed mask wearing specifically because people would interpret it as a less-effective security blanket.

At the very least, they did a poor job of communicating this in the public sphere. The sound bites many Americans got was to not wear masks, which is quite different than "wearing masks is not a suitable substitute for social distancing". For better or worse, most Americans probably aren't going to search out CDC publications as their primary source for detailed information.

He has indicated PPE was part of the rationale:

"I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs,"

To be fair, he's been in a very difficult situation and I can only imagine the number of verbal miscues I would have made if placed in a similar scenario.

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>At the very least, they did a poor job of communicating this in the public sphere. The sound bites many Americans got was to not wear masks, which is quite different than "wearing masks is not a suitable substitute for social distancing".

CDC isn't to blame for this. At this point there was a TON of political interference and bureaucratic restrictions on what they were allowed to say, and they were reined in very early. There were lots of entire careers and stuff some people call "my life's work" held in the lurch there.

A very good point. It was what I was dancing around in my statement about Fauci being in a difficult situation.

I may be being too critical, but I think certain professions of public trust need to be held to higher standards in this regard. Meaning, while I can commiserate with the idea that careers hang in the balance, they owe it to the public to be honest. It's why certain roles are "professions" and not "jobs" (there is generally a professed oath to serve the public good). This is where I would hold them deficient in their communication and, unfortunately, a threat to a career isn't sufficient to avoid one's professed ethics. Misspeaking is one thing, misleading is another.

How many public appearances has Dr. Fauci made since January? So much shade being thrown in this thread for a few missteps during a complicated situation. Meanwhile the President of the United States, with access to the world’s best intelligence and expert recommendations on the subject, denied the severity of the pandemic for months after it became an international crisis. He did it for his own perceived political benefit.

I've tried to give the benefit of the doubt in my higher comments about how difficult the situation was/is.

What I don't think is excusable is lying to the public as a public health official. The PPE part seems to show "We can't trust the public, so we should lie to them." It's an ends-justify-the-means position, which is a dangerous mindset in someone who influences public policy.

If it were just "a few missteps" that's one thing. Making the wrong call under uncertainty in a dynamically changing situation is excusable. Having the (lack of) ethics to think the appropriate response is to lie to the public is much less so.

> I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs

I don't trust Fauci because of this. He lied, he doesn't see it that way, he he doesn't seem to acknowledge how it undermined trust.

I also don't like his approach. It's very preachy. That's not what we need right now. We need someone saying "please stay home, but we know some of you are going to see loved ones for the holidays, so we added testing capacity and locations so it's super easy to get tested."

We can’t just spin up testing capability, though. Normalizing violations of social distancing, then claiming that we will have a safety net for all the people who will hear that and think “oh, staying home? That’s for other people to do” when we can’t actually support everyone doing that is not helpful at all.

> We can’t just spin up testing capability, though.

Back in March and April, I'd agree. It's December now, so there's no excuses for this. There's also no excuses for the problems with the vaccine rollout.

Fauci would LOVE to add testing capacity. You're blaming Fauci for Team Trump's self-serving undermining of Fauci's work.

We have immense testing capacity in the U.S. where's the lack?

Try to book one in the coming pre-Christmas week or look at lines for drive-thru testing.

I can get a test at about 50 locations within 20 miles of me on Monday. Just checked.

I have not looked at the lines you are talking of recently but I've never seen people unserved.

We have plenty of testing capacity and we are doing a LOT of testing.

Maybe it's better now. At least before Thanksgiving, it was bad:

https://abc7.com/coronavirus-testing-covid-dodger-stadium-ap...

Just went past drive through free testing today and baseball field. Was busy. But everyone getting served.

Please tell me you've seen this yourself and not just read nonsense news about it.

Getting tested prior to gatherings isn't enough to stop the spread.

You need tests and periods of isolation, with the periods of isolation being the more important component (that many people don't have much ability to choose right now).

What happens a lot is that people get tested, think they are safe, then after becoming infectious spend a bunch of time with people.

So advertising expanded testing isn't really a viable public health message.

I need to see a citation for that. My gut tells be that if people had mostly accurate at-home tests they took ~daily, it would actually reduce spread massively, especially when it can be asymptomatic.

I'm sure that would have impact, but it isn't what you described above, you described advertising more locations and capacity to make people feel better about visits and gatherings.

I also expect that compliance wouldn't be all that high for at home testing (people skipping tests, deciding they still feel good enough, etc). It doesn't mean we shouldn't try to establish that access for people that would use it well though.

Also, there's a difference between working to increase testing so that more people do get tested before a holiday and making that the center of your message. They need to be careful to not mislead or give the impression that they are misleading, but they could limit the messaging to a statement about working to expand testing.

The real solution would have been to tell people to wear masks and invoke the Defense Production Act with 3M and other manufacturers so that medical-grade masks were directed to the right place. People were screaming at the administration to do this at the time (Jan/Feb).

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