"Common sense" and "intuition" is what let people look at the early stages of an exponential curve and say "this won't be a big deal". These things are no substitute for expertise.
And I don't recall anyone saying face masks were useless when worn by people who were already ill.
But isn’t it also common sense that, if it’s already in high transmission then you wearing your mask isn’t going to budge the dial.
Thing is, at those times, responsibility needs to shift back to the individual to take care of themselves.
Most people judged they didn’t need substantial protection (else they’d have worn better masks, well fitted, always).
We sometimes look at human behaviour and find it superficially irrational. But this is an example where rationality simply doesn’t conform to what some would wish it to.
It’s still rational. And I would also argue it is common sense.
There's no evidence for this to be the case. If we are going to go into "It is common sense to do X" then why stop at "it is a common sense, wear a mask" and not include "It is common sense, if you have co-morbidity then it is you job to self-isolate and let the others to continue to function"
We have plenty of science, hundreds if not thousands of years’ of scientific evidence, that solid objects stop particles. A mask in front of the face when there is an unknown disease is simply common sense, basic physics to be more precise. To say that you need hindsight to make this judgment is ludicrous. The only (legitimate) reason you would not want to encourage mask wearing is if there was some way the mask could actually make you more likely to catch the virus somehow, which there was no evidence of.
Wearing a mask during a pandemic is just common sense, it is not that complicated to understand. Why do we need leaders to tell us this basic stuff?
people should take a bit more responsibility for their own safety. We aren’t all children to be told every single common thing to follow. Especially after quarter million deaths!!!
Masks aren't useless, which is pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about the physics of an airborne pathogen for a few minutes.
Research demonstrates the same thing.
Why would anyone spend billions and billions on field hospitals when there's an easily available vaccine that prevents all of this? No one expected the uptake to be so bad. I mean even T**p is telling people to get their boosters.
It doesn’t help that almost every news outlet in the US, including medical professionals, said masks are useless if you aren’t sick. I followed that advice unfortunately.
that's why health officials were telling us not to use masks, not just because supply is short and they need them for health workers but probably more so because:
- viral load is important and that's far too complicated for people to understand, just talk about it in binary sick/not sick.
- having better protection incentivizes people taking more risk, better not do that
- people might not comprehend that masks are imperfect and can fail, better just to tell them they don't work.
health is important, and the way you learn about things is by talking about them. treating it like a special scary topic that only experts should be able to talk about not only leads to disinformation, it leads to lack of trust.
My view on experts crapping on masks at the beginning is that they believed the virus was only spread with close contact and touching surfaces. And I'm sure a few of them just wanted to avoid the public buying up all the available mask to protect themselves leaving fewer for medical/science workers.
Except they were right. With the recent admission that the virus is airborne it is obvious that 99% of masks used by the public were useless, as all health officials first stated before mandating them. Same as social distancing, disinfecting surfaces... All unnecessary theatre
And just the "if you have COVID stay at home for 10 days and do NOTHING, unless you start feeling very unwell" is pretty bad advice anyway, I will always prefer to have any existing working treatment for other virus than nothing
So everyone else be hold accountable, not doctors trying to do the best
A lot of people only want to think about it on their individual level, instead of realizing that every measure like masks, even lower quality masks, slows the spread on average and prevents the waves of infections from being as sharp or as massive, which really matters in terms of hospital capacity and general economic disruption caused by simultaneous sickenings. But it's probably preaching to the choir at this point about large segments of society being essentially selfish and myopic.
Compare that to East Asia, where wearing a mask during Flu season was a common thing to prevent your own disease to spread to others long before Covid was known (I've seen sources claiming they started doing so after the Spanish Flu).
Of course, we cannot expect us Westerners to have that level of compassion and common sense.
With a new and developing situation like COVID, where the unknowns are more than the knowns, being more safe may mean being less evidence-first, and being evidence-first may mean being less safe. The advice was against wearing masks for so long because even though wearing masks was the cautious thing to do, it was not what the evidence suggested. If we wanted to go by evidence alone, there probably would be an advisory even today saying "there is no evidence masks work. I guess you can wear it as a fashion statement, but we have no evidence it would help with preventing the spread. You definitely shouldn't force shoppers, workers, travellers, etc. wear one, because evidence does not show it is required or even helpful."
I find this need for certainty to be the most embarrassing part of this whole pandemic. What kind of person really cares how effective they are? They cost next to nothing, they’re comfortable and convenient. If they save one life, that’s worth wearing a mask.
Again to echo the person you’re replying to, the fact we still have to have this conversation is embarrassing.
At the time, there was no guidelines to use the mask. Actually, people still thought that masks would be worse than not using at the time. This was at the beginning of the pandemic.
This has to be an emotional decision as well, I am not a doctor, I have to follow my gut before there is data to analyze.
The thinking before the pandemic was that there was almost no protection in wearing the mask for yourself which has been shown to be incorrect. The best thing to stop infection is still for everyone to wear a mask.
I also thought this was already general consensus. I.e. that face masks are used to prevent you from spreading disease, if you are infected but without symptoms.
I agree, I still cannot make up my mind about masks..
What's so hard about masks? That's one area that experts seem pretty consistent on, and what they say makes sense. It is slightly complicated but not contradictory.
Wearing a mask doesn't do that much to prevent you from getting sick. But it does a lot to prevent you from getting others sick.
If there is a limited supply of masks, the best people to give them to are people are at high likelihood of being sick and come face to face with lots of people who get sick easily. Which is to say medical staff.
If there were masks to go around, we'd want everyone wearing them as a precaution. So that you're not getting people sick even if you don't yet know that you are sick.
Some countries, like Taiwan, already make enough masks that they can actually do that. The USA does not. In time we should fix that.
Can you find anyone whose expertise is generally respected who says something that disagrees with what I just said?
And I don't recall anyone saying face masks were useless when worn by people who were already ill.
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