[spinlock]

I only watch the pbs news hour and remember Fauchi talking about masks at this time. He never claimed they didn’t work and always pointed out it was about preserving the supply.

I suspect other news outlets didn’t give their viewers the full story. But, I’ll never know because I can’t stand most of the news.

[saghm]

From a quick search of news at the time, it does seem like it was a bit more nuanced than I remembered, but probably still confusing enough for the average person that they wouldn't really know what was best. I found this PBS article from the end of March 2020 (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/should-you-wear-mask-in-...), which showed a spectrum of recommendations:

> “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS!” Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote in a February 29 tweet. “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.”

> Earlier in the day, Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, had told CNN that once there are enough masks, there might be “some very serious consideration” about broadening the mask recommendations.

> For now, the advice posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: “If you are NOT sick: You do not need to wear a face mask unless you are caring for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a face mask).”

The first quote makes it clear that the concern is about the supply for healthcare, but saying "they are not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus" probably did not make it easier to convince people to wear masks a couple months later; regardless of the technical meaning behind it, I think most people would read that and boil it down to just remembering "masks don't help" without the context behind it. On the other hand, while the final quote doesn't go as far as saying they don't help, it doesn't give the context about the priority in conserving masks for healthcare facilities, so it seems likely some people would find it confusing later when the recommendation changed without context for why. Ideally, people would be getting information from a variety of sources, see some form of all three quotes above and understand the whole picture, but it seems like a losing strategy to rely on this; it seems like having more cohesive messaging around this would have been more effective, but that's hard to do even in a vaccuum, let alone in a high pressure situation with a bunch of people who probably never had had to collaborate this heavily before.

[spinlock]

> “In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite,” he added, noting risks from an improperly fitted mask or touching the face while taking it off or putting it on.

it's hard to remember what our state of mind was back then. Hillary Clinton wrote a book in 2015 as she was preparing to run for president. She dedicated a chapter to PPE and was very interested in funding research into helping doctors get PPE on and off more safely. Those were the learnings taken from the Ebola outbreak where taking off your PPE improperly could get you infected.

We know know that Covid isn't really transmitted by touching your face so much as from the arousals that we breath. But, back then, people were still in the Ebola mindset of "don't touch your face."