There is a distinct difference between science being fallible, and being told that Life Preserver Jackets won’t save you - while you’re on a sinking ship - and every medical professional around you goes to extreme lengths to acquire as many life preservers as possible.
They at no-point-in-time believed masks were pointless.
I get it. I really do. Doesn’t make it right.
Just in case:
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
We had a very limited supply of masks in the country. Remember, we had people volunteering to stitch cloth masks or 3D printed “straps” for face shields…to donate to doctors and nurses who couldn’t get enough masks to stay safe. Breweries and distilleries were re-tooling to make hand sanitizer.
Meanwhile we were already at the start of the supply chain itself collapsing.
We were at a point where Trump was hijacking intercepting shipments of masks to scalp redistribute them to the highest bidder hospitals that needed them more.
Now, if they had said that day “everyone needs to wear a mask in public”, that would have completely toppled the supply for hospitals, and I’d say it’s significantly more critical for frontline workers to have them than people who were able to hunker down and wait until Easter when the whole thing blows over (womp womp).
You know that any other messaging would’ve caused a rush on face masks and frontline workers, and probably made the whole thing worse.
In retrospect it’s easy to say that they should have been transparent about the messaging. But in retrospect, we also know that most people are selfish assholes.
You don’t get to play the Prisoners Dilemma, publicly betray the other as your opening gambit, and then foam at the mouth that everyone is refusing to cooperate for the next 3 years.
There is no point in arguing this.
You can believe the ends justify the means however you want.
I watched people very-close-to-me die from COVID in front of me as an essential worker. I was told a mask would not save my life. I was a pig for the slaughter.
Science can be infallible. People aren’t. I will never trust the CDC again.
Smart people understand that science is fallible. As more information becomes available, science can be corrected.
Covid denialism came out of mishandling that. People believing that since science wasn’t infallible, it can’t be trusted.
It’s a problem with the state of education in this country. Same reason why people don’t believe in gravity because “it’s just a theory”.
There is a distinct difference between science being fallible, and being told that Life Preserver Jackets won’t save you - while you’re on a sinking ship - and every medical professional around you goes to extreme lengths to acquire as many life preservers as possible.
They at no-point-in-time believed masks were pointless.
I get it. I really do. Doesn’t make it right.
Just in case:
I don’t agree with it, but I get it.
We had a very limited supply of masks in the country. Remember, we had people volunteering to stitch cloth masks or 3D printed “straps” for face shields…to donate to doctors and nurses who couldn’t get enough masks to stay safe. Breweries and distilleries were re-tooling to make hand sanitizer.
Meanwhile we were already at the start of the supply chain itself collapsing.
We were at a point where Trump was
hijackingintercepting shipments of masks toscalpredistribute them tothe highest bidderhospitals that needed them more.Now, if they had said that day “everyone needs to wear a mask in public”, that would have completely toppled the supply for hospitals, and I’d say it’s significantly more critical for frontline workers to have them than people who were able to hunker down and wait until Easter when the whole thing blows over (womp womp).
You know that any other messaging would’ve caused a rush on face masks and frontline workers, and probably made the whole thing worse.
In retrospect it’s easy to say that they should have been transparent about the messaging. But in retrospect, we also know that most people are selfish assholes.
You don’t get to play the Prisoners Dilemma, publicly betray the other as your opening gambit, and then foam at the mouth that everyone is refusing to cooperate for the next 3 years.
There is no point in arguing this.
You can believe the ends justify the means however you want.
I watched people very-close-to-me die from COVID in front of me as an essential worker. I was told a mask would not save my life. I was a pig for the slaughter.
Science can be infallible. People aren’t. I will never trust the CDC again.