> the incorrect claim that “back then Big Tech’s fact-checkers were still describing claims about SARS-CoV-2 being airborne and face masks preventing infection as ‘misleading’”.
This is a not an incorrect claim, it is a correct claim.
This is a not an incorrect claim, it is a correct claim.
What was unknown was how long the virus could remain viable after the droplets landed on surfaces. If it is a long time, then mishandling a soiled mask could easily undo any benefit of wearing it. This is the same reason people were washing their groceries and mail. We now know that is spreads very poorly this way, so we wear masks and we don’t wash our groceries anymore.
Western governments and experts and the WHO instead took a "lalalala I can't see this" and to this day many still deny airborne transmission and advocate droplet and fomite precautions.
There was not in fact any great mystery about aerosol spread unless you were positively convinced it was impossible. The early tech fact checking was based on this denial, rather than a good faith uncertainty.
Zeynep Tufecki wrote a good article about how airborne spread was resisted: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airbo...
The screw-up the title refers to is that the medical definition of the droplet/aerosol threshold has been wrong for most of a century, and the source only just tracked down in late 2020/early 2021.
Also buried in there is an interesting tidbit that experts resist aerosol spread in general because it's too similar to the long-discredited miasma theory, so each virus has had to individually be proven in a lab to have aerosol spread before it's acceptable to say so.
If the virus spread primarily by aerosols then cloth and surgical masks would have little preventative value. But we know that they do have preventative value.
The reality as understood today is a mix of droplet sizes. Larger droplets carry more load and hence more risk but work over a smaller radius. But smaller droplets can carry enough load to infect; especially since later variants seem more infectious (i.e. require a smaller load to gain a foothold).
A 50-60% reduction has substantial effects! There's been a lot of "perfect is the enemy of the good, and the good is useless" in this pandemic, but we know that 100% of people do not get instantly infected when exposed, so dropping levels by half will have a substantial impact, especially if the infected source wears such a mask too
It's a big leap from a single data point.
The more damning issue is that the assumption that it wasn't airborne in the first place wasn't really well founded.
I would make that more specifically as referring to the Western public health establishment, especially the CDC and WHO. Actual scientists were comfortable saying recognition was overdue fairly early on, reaching the point in July 2020 where a large group published an open letter:
It all comes back to the victory of germ theory over miasma theory. Germ theory is accurate but people got overzealous. Not all germs need be fomites.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/health/coronavirus-airbor...
https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
We knew very early on that droplets were likely and that masks could block many droplets. The question was whether the mask would itself become a major vector in the process.
Aren't you talking about the growth in conspiracy nuts fabricating all sorts of conspiracy theories and assorted loony claims, such as the infamous "covid is caused by 5G" idiot fest, which were flooding covid-related forums?
Are we now expected to turn a blind eye to all the sadly avoidable deaths that conspiracy nuts and antivaxxers with their bullshit claims brought upon the world in the last couple of years? I mean, countless people ended up queuing veterinarian supply stores to gargle on horse dewormer thanks to these morons. Depicting these loonies as innocent truth-seekers that just asked questions and fought conspiracies is intellectually dishonest.
I think you are jumping waaay past the assertion you are replying to.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en
It’s a really stupid policy because the ‘truth’ depends on who your local health authorities are, they can easily contradict.
And that’s of course just an example the dumb anti science stance of forbidding disagreement with the ‘scientific’ status quo, it really puts YouTube in the position of the church silencing Galileo. The church was as sure they were right as are those local authorities.
http://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://support.g...
Part of why I asked for specific examples is that a common problem you'll see in alternative health circles is where someone will say something which isn't completely wrong in the middle of a bunch of blather which is, and then when they're moderated they'll claim that the former was the reason and a bunch of people will hear that claim without the full original context.
My claim is that it is getting too deep.