«he effectiveness of mask-wearing against the coronavirus pandemic is huge.»
Andrew Cuomo’s taking a belated but well-deserved beating over his health department’s insane initial policy of returning infected nursing-home residents to their facilities, where they spread the disease, instead of quarantining them elsewhere. That’s one of the first major recriminations for terrible decision-making by federal and state leaders early on that could have prevented many deaths in hindsight, but it won’t be the last.
Now that the smoke from the first wave has cleared and people are assessing how we might have done better, may I suggest the refusal in February and March by the CDC and surgeon general to enthusiastically promote mask-wearing as another fatal error with momentous consequences?
I mean, they didn’t just refuse to promote it. They actively advised against it.
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 communities at risk! https://t.co/UxZRwxxKL9
U. S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) February 29, 2020
The excuse will be that the feds were worried about supply chains and wanted to make sure the public wasn’t hoarding masks that doctors and nurses needed. But that point could have been communicated without misleading Americans about the potential efficacy of masks. If the feds had told everyone on March 1, “Urgent advisory: Cover your nose and mouth with any breathable cloth you have on hand whenever you interact with people outside the home,” what would the case load in the U. S. look like today?
Coronavirus may have been novel but the practice of using masks to limit transmission of infectious diseases wasn’t. Why didn’t they push harder for it?
We’re about to embark on a real-time experiment on whether masks work as most of the country reopens and most people take to wearing masks when they’re out shopping.
