US Politics |OT|

[the-pi-guy]

BFR said:

The CDC lost a lot of its credibility with its handling of Covid.

In the beginning, they said don't wear masks, save them for healthcare workers. Then they said, yes, wear a mask, but only a cloth or surgical one.

When Covid was over, they admitted that only wearing an N95 mask would protect you from it.

Even if your claims here are accurate, I always think this kind of reasoning is... silly.

If someone claims to have all the answers to something day 1, that's problematic. That to me, would suggest that person was probably lying.

In the real world, it takes time to figure out how effective something is, it takes time to figure out anything. Some stuff that we thought we knew about Covid day 1 was wrong by day 30. This is particularly the case, when the virus was changing. It's basically expected that a procedure that was effective day 1, might not be effective 365. 

I always see this kind of reasoning, where people change their mind about something, must mean they're not credible. But that's exactly what I would expect out of someone who was trying to do the work to be informed and credible. 

The world is complicated and always changing.

With that said, on your claims, I can't find anything about the CDC saying only N95 masks work. What do you mean by "only a cloth or surgical mask"? 

The first one, I'm aware of the claim. I don't think it's as problematic as people make it. I'm going to steal Sundin's response here:

sundin13 said:

In the beginning there wasn't enough supply so they advised providing them to those who were in the most need. Then, when supply caught up to demand, they recommended everybody use masks when appropriate.

Saving masks for "healthcare workers" who are on the front line, suggests that they believe masks worked, but that they didn't believe there were enough for everyone to wear one at the time.