Comment by Reuzel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Reuzel | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Here is a public health official (Surgeon General of the United States) saying quite as much as OP was saying:

Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our community at risk!

> There is little doubt they know what they're doing. The bigger question is whether it's in your best interest.

They knew what they were doing. But they did not know what they were doing. By not being honest and showing leadership, by politicizing science into scientism, by covering their asses for not buying enough PPE for the medics and soldiers, they heavily reduced trust in public institutions, and had to deal with the PR backlash of reversing an official stance mid-Pandemic, while whining about lab-leak "disinformation". Definitely not in our best interest.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210720/ex-surgeon-general-...

Same general was made aware by email (FOIA released) two weeks before taking to Twitter to complain about people wearing masks in an airplane, and that the real risk is the flu. Probably did not read it. The ones who did, got sidetracked by Trump, and warned their friends to wear masks and avoid cities, days before even notifying the public of the "potential" for community spread... but let's not assume evil, where no-skin-in-the-game suffices (who ever got real consequences for wrong or dumb stuff on pandemics, before 2020? You could grow solely through Powerpoints and grants and Nature articles.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm aware public health officials flipped the script on masks.

Can you find ANY example of a public health official publicly stating how effective cloth masks are? Not that they ARE effective, but HOW effective? As in how much disease spread is prevented from wearing cloth masks.

I believe you will not be able to find any record of a public health official making a claim like "Wearing cloth masks reduces COVID spread by approximately X%."

My hypothesis for why you won't find this is because the % is extremely low, in the < 5% range.

I don't think a public health official averaged out all the research on masks and came up with a percentage. A lot of public policy was binary: masks prevent spread, but COVID can also spread through eyes and ears. We do not want general public to think they are fully protected with masks, and they will never understand nuance, only clear directions. So, do not wear masks, they are not effective for you. Ivermectin, Vitamin D, and HCQ are 100% ineffective, so get your shot.

You should test your hypothesis. Masks clearly help spread. But these are better at preventing spread to others, than for preventing catching COVID. So a larger percentage of people has to wear masks for it to be effective. I protect you, you protect me. There is a ton of research from before the pandemic (if you allow me to extrapolate influenza to a novel coronavirus with common sense, not wait on the randomized trial to finish), and now also a lot of reviews and aggregations of mask effectiveness.

I agree there is a lot of research pre-pandemic on the effectiveness of various types of masks in preventing the spread of virus. The consensus before the pandemic was that the spread prevention was so low that it could not justifiably be recommended for the purpose of preventing spread of virus.

If you believe that wasn't/isn't the scientific consensus, then I welcome you again to find any public health official willing to state on the record how much viral transmission they believe masks are preventing. I'll expand the challenge to include heads of top tier medical universities. And I'll even accept a range, like "between x and y%." You will not find such a thing.

>The consensus before the pandemic was that the spread prevention was so low that it could not justifiably be recommended for the purpose of preventing spread of virus

Source? Mask wearing was quite prevalent in Japan and some asian countries.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-0948_article

>Despite common use of cloth masks in many countries in Asia, existing infection control guidelines do not mention their use (13).

>Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups. This finding suggests that risk for infection was higher for those wearing cloth masks.

>If you believe that wasn't/isn't the scientific consensus, then I welcome you again to find any public health official willing to state on the record how much viral transmission they believe masks are preventing. I'll expand the challenge to include heads of top tier medical universities. And I'll even accept a range, like "between x and y%." You will not find such a thing.

From https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/your-mask-cuts-own-...

>A range of new research on face coverings shows that the risk of infection to the wearer is decreased by 65 percent, said Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital.

I 100% accept this example. Thank you, I stand corrected.

> The consensus before the pandemic was that the spread prevention was so low that it could not justifiably be recommended for the purpose of preventing spread of virus.

Heh. This was the CYA they put out. Maybe it pays to publish only in the authoritative media channels if that's only what a large percentage of people read.

This was the public health consensus they themselves agreed on. Anyone who was in that room justifying not having people wear masks, has not rode in public transit in the last 20 years. Wear a mask and try spitting on the floor or picking your nose.

Scientific consensus was that masks clearly work to combat pathogen spread, and that's why they are in use in hospitals for at least 100 years. There even was scientific research on SARS-COV-1, comparing how many nurses got sick under different PPE policies, and how mask usage affected their recovery / long-SARS decline.

For a while, it was possible to define the (government) status of a person by the level of their PPE recommended to them. I think they ran their global pandemic surveillance systems searching for their own names and "N95 mask" and did not like the communities they were being discussed at. But not 100% certain of course.

I bet you won't find more than a few, if any, public health officials left willing to draw attention to their failures, or have been fired/retired in 2020 after spending their lives in pandemic control. Though it must hurt to leave with such a legacy, I can live with that. If you still need them to decide whether your kid should wear a mask at school or not, I sincerely feel for you. Information gathering and judging what is true absolutely sucked the past years, and it would have been nice if at least authority could have been trusted, more than, say, 4chan.

This was the CDC's position pre-pandemic. Their studies showed wearing cloth masks was worse than no mask.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-0948_article

>Despite common use of cloth masks in many countries in Asia, existing infection control guidelines do not mention their use (13).

>Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups. This finding suggests that risk for infection was higher for those wearing cloth masks.

> wearing cloth masks was worse than no mask.

Self-infection when taking it off, right?

The contempt for the general public from these people bordered on the perverse. How can they sleep at night? "We acted with the best information available at the time, and followed the scientific consensus to make our policy". Not even close to the truth, but maybe it helps a bit.

The hypothesis in the article was that the cloth captures droplets/water vapor that is carrying virus. And then it's captured there for you to continually suck it out of the cloth when breathing. Without a mask it would've drifted away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com