Best interaction with an antimasker:
Them: masks don’t work
Me: We’ll I’m going to wear one anyway
Them: Well then you’re just traping the germs against your face
Me: so you’re saying they block germs?
They even stated the correct reason to wear a mask: to trap the germs against my face, so others don’t get infected
It’s like they don’t compute the idea behind it, it stops at me me me
My favorite reply to them is that it’s America and I can do whatever I want, I’ll call them snowflakes too whenever appropriate. They get pissed when you insinuate they’re anti American lul.
Well, it’s only fair, seeing as they ARE anti-American.
i’ve just recently seen the same with pro 2a people. It was on a video about inclusive gun safety training, because the 2a is quite literally, for everyone. SO many people in the comments were saying something along the lines of “well if we trained them, then they might kill us”
Yeah no shit. What do you think they thought of you prior to this moment huh? Just utter fucking ignorance for anything more than a mere shred of intellectual thought being put into whatever they say. Not to mention that this is borderline authoritarian policy by nature but that’s the other funny part.
Didn’t gun control ramp up when the Black Panthers started exercising their rights to bear arms? Funny thing is the Panthers seem much more like a “well-regulated militia” than this Wild West, permitless carry, anything goes BS.
exactly. gun control only started when minorities started exercising their right to bear arms. The right don’t want gun control laws until the groups they are trying to oppress start exercising their second amendment rights.
i mean, that’s also perfectly legal under 2A, 90% of the time gun control is related to regulation in regards to owning, rather than the ability to the own it period. Which is another argument all together tbh.
I wouldnt know much about the specifics of that group though, only that it has to do with civil rights from memory lol.
John Stewart’s latest show did a great job pointing this out. “Pro-constitution” redco- hats supporting a dictatorship and ignoring the fundamentals of the constitution.
I think they actually do understand but don’t have enough empathy with other people to see it as their responsibility to protect other people from their viruses.
Not that someone as perfect as them would ever sick enough to potentially infect others…
This. So much of this. I can’t even convince family members to not go and socialize with dozens of others while they are sick! Five years ago, I would have bet my life’s savings and every appendage I have that I would get the correct answer if I asked someone whether illnesses spread through contact with or being near a sick person.
Someone once told me that the box in which masks came in says “doesn’t protect from viruses”, as if it was hidden-in-plain-sight proof that masks don’t work.
Yeah, they don’t protect the user from viruses, they protect other people. The box is technically correct, Patricia, there is no conspiracy here.
… Which masks? N95 will totally filter viruses, no?
They will, but you have to follow some protocols, like not having beard where the masks is supposed to seal around your face, not using it more than ~3 times (iirc), not trying to clean it (just let it rest for some days on a clean surface) and etc.
Basically always seal testing.
Also, iirc the N stands for not oil resistant, so any oil staining ruins it. I’d guess that includes sneezing on it.
Not to mention skin is chock full of oils
It is humorous that these people think that they have some secret knowledge that only they know and they feel so much power because of it. Except that the information they know is incorrect and they just end up looking like an idiot.
Not in their own minds, and that is all that matters. Also not to their church members, sadly:-(.
Perception is reality and they cannot perceive a reality in which they aren’t always correct.
I mean, I would not say that it is reality, just that they act like it is - except even that much is not true, b/c when they get REALLY sick, they finally show up at a hospital begging to be saved. So even they know, deep down, where the medicine is at. Cognitive dissonance is a horrific, terrible thing:-(.
Or, more likely, they’re selfish jerks who don’t care about anyone else. “The greater good? What’s that?”
Claims are not evaluated, in the loyalist worldview. They’re not arguments. They’re slogans. You shuffle your cards and say whatever might justify the ingroup being fundamentally superior to the outgroup. Because of course, it is impossible for someone to simply be wrong. That would require evaluating claims. No: truth is dictated by people above you. They must be right and smart and handsome, or they wouldn’t be above you. Any challenge, any criticism, any disagreement, is a personal attack. You are calling someone lesser.
And I say “you” because these people think this is all we’re doing. They think that’s all there is. It’s reality as a team sport.
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While it is fun to tweak their titties with this, it will make zero difference on their position because their position wasn’t arrived at by rational thought.
Their actual position is that they don’t give a fuck about anyone other than themself. Everything they claim to believe is just a rationalization they think will sound good to someone else. All they care about is what they can convince others.
While there is some nuance between people, you pretty spot on.
Weaponized magical thinking.
My favorite interactions was going into Walmart.
It was mid/early spring, right as things were starting to lockdown. I wasn’t wearing a jacket cuz it was glorious out.
Some old boomer lady started harassing me over not wearing a jacket and blah blah blah.
She wouldn’t shut up, and was blocking me from walking in, so I faked a sneeze. The look of horror on her face as she fled.
(And I’m pretty sure that was also the fastest time in and out of a Walmart…)
You are truly evil… and this story was glorious, thanks for sharing it!:-P
Why did she have a problem with you not wearing a jacket? What am I missing here?
it was in the 40’s f (4-10 c) and it was still winter. Spring in MN, that’s T-shirt weather. but boomer’s just can’t not treat middle-aged men like children.
Please stop you’re going to break them! 😂
You’re assuming these people believe we even send things to space. I had a serious ass conversation recently with my father’s roommate. Typical conspiracy theorist ding dong. Full on flat earther and everything. I asked him how he thinks GPS works if the earth was flat. He admitted he didn’t know but then when I started to explain how it works by pinging satellites we put up in space he cut me off and said space isn’t real. Like legitimately thinks space isn’t real. He on a separate occasion also complained that we didn’t need to wear masks during covid because we apparently make our own viruses in our bodies and viruses don’t spread between people.
These people don’t even understand how logic works. Let alone that people could be smarter than they are.
Well, if you reject all knowledge you cannot obtain through direct observation, you can kinda start to understand how they ended up where they are.
They’re intimidated by the scientific method.
Many of them are religious and believe plenty of things they didn’t directly observe. It’s more that they have been trained through religious thinking that if someone confidently claims something it must be more true than someone who honestly admits that “it is the best we can know right now and we will update our understanding as we obtain more evidence.” These people need the answer now and that answer can’t change because changing your opinion based on new evidence is seen as weakness and opinions should be handed down from on high and never change.
There’s always been crazy and stupid people. And then we gave them the internet to connect and to have a voice. Now they feed of each other’s crazynies and believe they run the world.
Only way to fight this is education. Give people the ability to see through crazy. You’re not born with common sense. It’s taught and learned.
Not a solution but it is fun to put a flat-earther with a hollow-earther and say Earth is a ball. Then you grab some popcorn.
We should just start jettisoning these people into space
Tbh, it’s really your fault for choosing to interact with this person more than once.
yeah, god forbid you try to break down the echo chamber existing between parties for the benefit of public good.
Fuck you, be a good robot for the party and STICK ONLY WITH THE PEOPLE I DEMAND YOU TO STAY WITH.
I just want affordable healthcare
Unfortunately, the answer to that doesn’t lie in science but in politics.
But I took a course in college Called political Science. So what about that mister science man?
Socializing your health care might destroy you guys, since there’s so many fatties, smokers, guns and people who ignore doctors. Sounds expensive.
Except that it is a proven fact that public health care costs less per capita than private, so actually it sounds less expensive. The people lobbying to keep it private are the only ones who stand to lose and their brainwashed army of sycophants can’t understand anything beyond the points they’ve been trained to parrot.
So I would love public healthcare but what’s the reason that public is cheaper
This came off snarkier than I intended I’m just curious
what’s the reason that public is cheaper
The number of middlemen is removed and their profit motive is removed from the equation.
Huh that makes sense
I blame the obesity epidemic on the weak ass FDA and nutrition labeling. A ‘serving’ is whatever the hell they feel like making it - I’ve seen 1/3 of a cookie, a single tick tack (rounded down to 0g sugar), and every other arbitrary amount so actually comparing products takes so much time that most dont bother. Combine this with the fact that 90% of restaurants dont even bother giving you any information at all so you have to cook or go to specific big chains to actually track calories. Also it’s a safe assumption that everything at a restaurant is packed full of carbs, cheese, and oils for max calorie density.
Smokers?! Have you ever been to France? It’s like a trip back in time to 80s America, with a smoker on every street corner and an ash tray on every cafe patio table.
Ask the military industrial complex. Too much good applicable science and tech comes from space exploration.
Not really.
The NASA budget has been slashed for decades on a row and is currently a tiny amount compared to what it was before. That they still manage to do what they do is half a miracle in on itself.
It’s so bad that a 3 percent of the military budget given to NASA would double it’s budget instantly.
With that in mind, I would put this on the military industrial complex
My point was that spending on NASA isn’t why we don’t have health care.
What is the thesis of this meme, that people are just stupid and there is no underlying problem or system that can be improved?
Science is often communicated to the public via either companies, politics, or the media. Which al have their own interests and issues in representing “scientific facts”. To give some examples of the “science” people have been exposed to: These new pain killers are perfectly save and absolutely not addictive. Making health care accessible is actually bad for the economy and will be more expensive in the end. Or the numerous articles on outlier papers published in the media that conclude that it’s actually healthy to [insert obviously unhealthy habit here (sponsored by some industry group)].
Science has a communication problem, and the communication conduits have a huge credibility problem. The results of which made an already bad pandemic even worse.
Holy shit, a reasonable comment that doesn’t just assume the other half of the country are idiots.
People don’t know what to believe and are skeptical for good reason (some historical, some present). Time and time again we’ve seen our institutions fails us. We see blatant corruption that the elites don’t even bother to hide (e.g. corporate capture). And we see freedoms eroded in times of crisis (e.g. Patriot Act). I’m not saying we should be conspiratorial about doctors or science. But reasonable people on both sides of the aisle see what’s happening to our institutions and this has knock on effects.
Science is often communicated to the public via either companies, politics, or the media. Which al have their own interests and issues in representing “scientific facts”.
Science is communicated using whatever means has an audience.
Science is also communicated much more precisely and accurately in scientific journals, but those generally aren’t easily accessible to the wider public.
Do you have a suggestion to how we might solve those 2 overlapping problems?
The thesis is that you should listen to experts when you don’t know what you’re talking about. No one is saying experts are never wrong, but they’re more likely to be right than just some guy. There’s a whole lot of ‘just some guys’ who claim to appreciate science until it tells them something they don’t want to hear. That’s what the meme is against.
Okay, what about when there is a lack of consensus? When you have scientists who, for example, argue that the virus came from the Wuhan lab whereas the narrative being told is that that’s crazy. This is the problem I have with people in this thread assuming that everyone who isn’t immediately on board is dumb, delusional, conspiratorial, etc. We’re not talking about flat Earth theory here; it’s not that simple.
Your perspective has opened my eyes to a new way of approaching. Looking forward to exploring this further. imazing crack windows download
Poindexter… not hard slang to get correct. Dumbasses.
Fuck of Pondexter
Giga 🤓
I mean a lot of them also don’t believe we landed unmanned units on mars, or humans on the moon, for that matter, so…
It’s funny, I’ve heard plenty of morons talk about flat earth, but I’ve never seen anyone say anything about Mars.
Mars is obviously a star, since it is in the sky and glows.
Don’t give them any ideas.
Some of those dumb fucks think that it’s just Earth that’s flat, but other planets are round – probably because it’s so bleeding obvious they are when you look at them through a telescope. Somehow that logic doesn’t apply to the Earth though
Step on Mars but not on snek.
But surely you must understand how someone, having failed all of their classes and then dropped out of school altogether, understands complex matters better than the people who are brilliant, have international acclaim, and devoted like 5 decades of their lives to study that same thing?
Or you know, at least watched this 11-minute video?
And if you do, can you explain it to me? :-P So far all I have is “Might Makes Right”, but somehow that seems to be lacking something…
🤓
Elon musk is college educated and successful, please trust everything he says.
Well, I was going to argue against that, but then I remembered that he is rich - which I guess is the same thing as smart? - so… okay! :-P
My point was that being educated doesn’t necessarily make you smart or correct either. Being uneducated doesn’t necessarily make you stupid. I know plenty of well educated people who I wouldn’t ask for advice from. Basically: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
Getting a higher education is one thing, call me when he has published multiple peer-reviewed studies in any field and I just might take his opinions in said field to heart.
Yes this is very true. IQ is not the same as EQ, and neither are quite the same as “wisdom”. The latter comes from evaluated experiences - as in, if you fail to learn from your own mistakes then you will simply get dumber as you age, whereas if you seek out knowledge & learning & evaluate the mistakes of others, then the trajectory of your life will make you SMARTER as you age (up to a point ofc).
Truthfully, the only way to spot a counterfeit is to know the real thing so extremely well that nobody can pull a fast one on you.
Speaking of, don’t forget: GWB (the 2nd Bush president) only graduated Yale b/c his father donated a massive amount of $$$$ to the school - his grades (that he had sealed but at some point got leaked) reveal that he flunked out on his own merits. So even “educated” does not mean “educated” if you catch my drift.
As far as a “guarantee” though… nothing is every truly guaranteed, so that might be asking too much. Still, it’s a good reminder to look at someone’s character - did someone get rich merely b/c of accidents, or b/c they truly deserved it. Though, do any of the recently rich truly deserve it? Bezos who won’t let workers pee (even pregnant mothers), Musk for taking a truly fantastic idea and turning into something that literally kills people, and Zuckerberg who… (shudder), just not even going to go there.
The oligarchs have not decided that Mars can be made into a culture war issue… yet.
They are on their way with how Musk and the other Silicon Valley idiots are going
They failed because they’re obviously smarter than science and not the other way around.
Also, are we not going to discuss the conspiracy theory that many of the people espousing this ideology were mysteriously killed!? And their families too! In fact, anyone even so much as near them had a chance to be affected, possibly some still here but with permanent brain damage!
Sounds pretty sus if you ask me…
It probably didn’t help that at the beginning they said the cloth didn’t help, then changed the messaging later on.
IIRC, that initial “don’t use surgical masks” statement was because hospitals were already facing shortages, and a rush on the supply would have caused massive widespread longstanding shortages. Basically, the hospitals needed disposable masks, so the CDC told people not to use disposable masks.
But it was also in that brief time period between surgical masks and reusable cloth masks. So the messaging was basically just “don’t use
disposablemasks” because the “disposable” part was implied because it’s all that was commonly available on the market. Plus cloth masks hadn’t been studied yet. So when cloth masks were proven to work and the CDC started recommending them, the naysayers fell back to that initial messaging from when the cloth masks were unavailable and unproven.that initial “don’t use surgical masks” statement was because hospitals were already facing shortages, and a rush on the supply would have caused massive widespread longstanding shortages. Basically, the hospitals needed disposable masks, so the CDC told people not to use disposable masks.
That makes it worse that they said/implied masks won’t protect you, not better. If CDC public health statements are driven by an intention to manipulate public behavior rather than disseminating the best available info about what is true, that means that those statements are unreliable and can’t be trusted, regardless of the good they are hoping to do by trading their long term credibility for temporarily adjusting purchasing habits.
Just because there was an explanation doesn’t magically make it acceptable to lie out your ass and give a HUGE boost to conspiracy nuts while one fucking helms the white house…
The messaging could have been clearer but I’ll spell it out for the dumb.
Phase 1:
Don’t panic buy medical supplies expecting them to protect you. We don’t have enough, and frontline healthcare workers need them to protect themselves and others, you don’t know how to wear them and they probably don’t fit you properly.
Phase 2:
We still don’t really have enough medical grade masks but just fyi: any sort of mouth covering will reduce the risk of a contagious person sneezing into the mouth of a vulnerable person. If you have to go out, please wear something over your face. Cotton is better than nothing.
Phase 3:
A tight fitting mask really is best, it limits a contagious person’s generation of aerosolized clouds of viruses, and limits a vulnerable person’s exposure to clouds of aerosolized viruses.
The problem with messages 1 and 2 is that too many people will not give a shit about other people, and will also assume they can put a mask on correctly. If your goal is to prevent panic buying and hoarding long enough to build an adequate stockpile for medical workers, you probably want to avoid anything that makes those supplies sound superior and valuable.
If I were crafting such a message, I’d say something like this:
"At this time we aren’t recommending the use of disposable masks by the general public. For now, those who will be wearing a mask should wear one that’s made of tight knit, layered cloth, with a fit that fully encloses the nose and mouth. Cloth masks can be cleaned and reused, and will be easier for most people to wear properly, especially when worn for extended periods of time.
These guidelines reflect our current understanding and will be updated as we learn more."
The way I recall it seeing thing unfold and not really following the political stuff at the time:
CDC said that cloth masks don’t stop viruses. You need a medical mask for that, but please don’t use those because hospitals need them. That was all true.
In other countries, notably South Korea, almost everyone wore masks, and the numbers showed their effectiveness.
So CDC realized that indeed, if everyone wears one, it greatly reduces transmission of the virus. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be efficient.
And yet social distancing was “obvious” because scientists said it u til they admitted they pretty much just made that distance up.
That’s why there’s an Appeal from Authority fallacy… But you just keep on trusting what ever they say with out questioning it.
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You do realize that social distancing does have a body of work around it and was used to mitigate the 1918 pandemic…
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They “made up” the arbitrary distance of 6 feet, not the entire concept of distance making it harder for germs to spread… What the hell failure of logic is that?! Some viruses can stay potent in air much better than others and they weren’t CONFIDANT that 6 feet would be adequate or overkill. It was an educated guess for COVID specifically, not an ass pulling.
It wasnt an educated guess it was just around 2 meters and felt good. I am not saying worked or not, but there was no science behind the number.
“no science behind the number.”
i uhm. Are you aware of this thing, a very little, minor thing, called dispersion? Dilution? etc…
Yes, but that number was not related to what might work or not , it was just a number they liked based on no science.
There is a vast difference between doing something that is proven to be generally helpful before you know if it is specifically helpful, and making up an idea.
The fact you cannot understand that vast gulf of difference is frankly hilarious.
They had no idea if it would work or not and had no reason to believe either way. Do you believe in checking hypothesis?
Do you think they didn’t or don’t continue with the new variants as budgets allow? Your ignorance is made more pathetic by your obstinance.
99% of medicine is throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
Social distancing was an easy way to make it less likely to spread based on similar viruses. Until they had more verifiable ways it was a quick and cheap answer to a complex problem. Sometimes those are necessary, especially when millions of lives are on the line.
No, no that is not medicine.
Go take a biochem class and educate yourself on how fucking stupid that comment sounded. You’re basically saying modern chemisty is equivalent to ancient alchemy, which … is hilariously moronic.
It’s not all of medical science, no. We know a great deal. But that only pertains to general study, and not specific cases. We don’t know shit about someone, medically, until we do tests. Even then, we can’t do an in-depth dissection of them (because that would be wildly inhumane) so we can mostly only go off surface level information. Even for more in-depth information, say with x-rays and MRIs or blood tests, it still only general knowledge. Each person is unique, and has unique characteristics. So we need to take what information we have and try and match it to previous cases to determine what it could be.
Sometimes it’s really easy. “You have a cold, go drink some water and get some rest”. Sometimes it’s not, they have some obscure neurological disorder that only affects .0000001% of the population (at a guess).
A CT scan and blood draw on an individual is absolutely not in any way, “still only general knowledge.”
The fact you even say such a thing belies your utter lack of understanding of medical diagnosis.
So you don’t think masks work?
white hoods covering the whole head are ruined too
Fauci is to blame. The path of evil is paved in good intention.
The fucker told everyone that they didn’t need masks.
What he was intending to do was make sure doctors and emergency personnel had masks. instead, it became an inflection point or publicly dividing the nation.
Fauci is a human being who gave advice, then changed his mind when more information became available. He did not invent the virus.
Let’s be real, the misinfosphere would’ve have found something else to misguide the morons. He didn’t even say “you don’t need masks”, he said “don’t buy all the masks, stay inside”
I think the much deeper reason is, that stupid people can’t fathom that knowledge can change. They can’t understand that scientists legitimately didn’t know better, despite their best efforts. They can’t accept, that scientists come to other conclusions based on new data, instead they assume some ulterior motive.
It didn’t change. Why are you taking nonsense.
Fauci openly admits he lied. He knew they protected people and he didn’t essential workers aren’t people. Best to save the life boats for the important people.
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-directive-coronavirus
Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected
Dr. Fauci
Seems a totally reasonable response when we had folks hoarding and scalping toilet paper. Stay home was always better advice than go out masked, esp at the beginning.
It must have been nice to have that privilege to stay home.
And folks who could not were folks who needed masks - not sure why this is so hard.
Also - that’s your goto? Shaming folks for doing what was recommended when they could? How did we even get here from pretending Fauci was doing anything other than dispensing what was believed to be the best advice available at the time.
What a ridiculous response. Please just move along. I know I am.
Yes, but the point is, a government official GASLIT THE PUBLIC, which gave a HUGE validation boost to the conspiracy nuts.
He directly aided morons in spreading their moronery, which is the exact opposite purpose of his entire fucking job. IMO he was criminally neglegent.
Comprehension of the underlying reasons for a particular set of events or advice isn’t really a conspiracy nut’s bread and butter. That’s why they’re idiots and professionals aren’t to blame. Keeping the healer alive is a pretty basic strategy and Fauci was right to do it.
His one job is to not give public health measures a bad image, and he did the exact opposite by gaslighting. It’s amazing how people are defending being gaslighted. Pathetic.
Your understanding of gaslighting isn’t quite right.
He started with gaslighting. Then he EVENTUALLY corrected himself in poorly phrased ways that were far too easy to clipchimp his message ib to oblivion.
I do not care how much anyone respects him or doctors. I don’t care what word you think would apply. His job was a communicator, and he failed miserably.
In a March 8, 2020, interview, Fauci stated that “right now in the United States, people [who are not infected] should not be walking around with masks”, but “if you want to do it, that’s fine”. In the same interview, Fauci said that buying masks “could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need” them: “When you think masks, you should think of healthcare providers needing them”
Yikes. Apparently he did gaslight people in the time between stating his position and then explaining it.
What really happened was bad actors circulated edited clips of this video, out of context, around Facebook and other social media sites. Lots of folks, apparently you included, ate it up and have been happy customers at the propaganda buffet ever since.
Except the public official didn’t gaslight anyone who actually paid attention to what he said. Fauci made the right call asking people to prioritize social distancing over masks in the initial phases of the pandemic so that medical personnel would have enough.
He didn’t say “you don’t need masks”
He didn’t say “masks don’t work”
He didn’t say “don’t wear masks at all”Furthermore, the WHO also advised against wearing masks initially, for the same reasons. They were actually more against the efficacy of masks, but backtracked that opinion after more data came out.
Like what is this take? Really? The only people who have a hate boner for Fauci coincidentally don’t know a fucking thing he said, and are going to believe what makes their fee fees hurt less anyway.
He was handed a deadly pandemic while dealing with the most corrupt and incompetent leadership our country has ever seen. He did alright. If only Obama was still in office at the time.
Right, because dishonest actors exist, his job as a public health policy communicator was directly subverted by himself for making such an increadibly unwise blunder of giving them ammunition.
His job is to not give public health measures a bad image, and he failed completely.
Just because professionals made a mistake does NOT magically absolve them of the blundering mistake.
I mean, I’ll reiterate this- he made the right call. At the very first stage of the pandemic, shortage of medical supplies was a big deal. Gloves, respirators, masks, everything.
Medical providers need to have those things to do their jobs. Otherwise, they get sick. And when the doctors are sick, you start to have real problems.
Faci’s only downfall was existing in a world filled to the brim with dipshits, in a country being led by a dipshit that encouraged the worst of the dipshits.
He told people, “the doctors need the masks”, which was 100% true- then the fucking president refused to wear one. Blaming Fauci for the army of dipshits following trump is disingenuous, he was the only person in that administration that ever spoke any kind of factual information.
You can declare he made the right call all you want, but it well never evaporate the fact that it caused many, many idiots to not wear masks throughout the entire time people were paying attention to covid.
The ENTIRE DIFFICULT PART of communication is not being easily misconstrued. He hedged his words so poorly and clipchimped himself to hell. That is utterly irresponsible out of a professional communicator. That’s his job, and he failed.
Those idiots would have never worn masks in the first place regardless what Fauci said.
It’s such a bad idea to prioritize medical personnel having masks. There’s no way they would become high-risk vectors with the multitude of sick people they handle daily. /s
This is also misinformation. Fauci, et al, were going based on the current NIH guidance at the time, taken from the original SARS virus, which was that improper mask use was potentially more dangerous due to the risk of cross contamination. In this case there was actually strong evidence that a significant number of cases in healthcare settings were coming from contaminated PPE.
At the time, it was thought that it was primarily surface contact which spread the virus, or at least that this was a major source of spread. Now imagine that your average idiot with one improperly fitted mask was told to use masks. They would touch contamination surfaces, touch their mask, and then bring that mask into their car and their house, contaminating those surfaces as well. Given what we knew at the time, this was considered a very serious risk.
Once we understood that airborne spread was a bigger threat, they updated the science. If they are guilty of anything, it was failing to properly explain the nuance of the above reasoning, though in their defense, there was a giant orange idiot taking up most of the oxygen in the room.
Well, then there was the intent to let it run its course, as it was only hitting blue states at that time… it was a bit of a cluster…
Exactly. The surgeon general tweeted out, “STOP WEARING MASKS” and CNN was publishing articles with all the anti-masker claims, including that they don’t work and could increase your risk of getting it instead, and people just pretend like it never happened and the anti-maskers came out of thin air.
It wasn’t just an idiotic ploy to deliberately spread misinfo to trick people into leaving masks for doctors, it was also about the government trying to cover their own ass for having sold off their emergency stockpiles for fast cash.
Reluctance against masks was not unique to the USA
Do you recall the people hoarding and trying to profit off of toilet paper, alcohol sanitizer, Clorox wipes? 
The worst part is it was very clearly worded. People had to purposely, disingenuously misinterpret it. So of course they did.
Lot of over lap with anti-maskers and young earth flat earthers.
Well it doesnt help that studies post covid restrictions found many of said restrictions where ineffective. Masks tho we have good evidance they work at least.
Masks are more effective in protecting others if you are sick, rather than protecting yourself if others are sick. We should have the attitude that protecting others is good.
Masks are more effective in protecting others if you are sick, rather than protecting yourself if others are sick.
This was 100% not the messaging that was told to the public in the beginning.
I think they dumb down messaging too much. But then again, with what we know now, it’s not like the public is behaving responsibly. But thats not a messaging problem.
We should have the attitude that protecting others is good.
This flies in the face of North American “exceptional/radical individualism”.
Asian societies are largely collective. You do what you can to serve others, putting the needs of the community ahead of your own, and this leads to tighter-knit, stronger, and more resilient communities.
North American society is based on “muh rights” individualism, where the person is most important, and society needs to serve their needs, and not the other way around. This leads to weak, ephemeral, almost non-existent communities that are there only in name, or by a fluke of geography that makes completely random people cluster together without ever making serious or deep social connections.
Of the two, the former might end up being stifling to creatives and neuroatypicals, but the latter cannot survive any significant challenge without a significantly negative impact on the “community”.
The 2 party political system flies in the face of basic individualism.
They still do reduce transmission to yourself but yeah, the big win is in not spreading it yourself.
My favorite metaphor for the subject: If you’re wearing pants, it’s really hard to piss on other people.
As always, it’s better to recommend more strict restrictions when you don’t know if they’re effective and there’s an impact on public health. Hindsight is 20/20
If you’re going to lock the country down then you need to support small businesses too. Imagine spending long nights building a business only to see it disappear under COVID restrictions. And then you learn that the restrictions weren’t necessary.
I don’t know about other countries, but the on and off lockdowns in some countries proved to be ineffective. Many experts said it’s better to do lockdown in one go than it being staggered and having different levels of restrictions. But on the one hand, the totalitarian zero-COVID restriction like had happened in China is just as ineffictive.
Yep, the lockdown waves probably weren’t ideal for preventing viral spread, but we now know they were at least better than doing nothing.
Hopefully we learn for next time
