>There was a bit of an initial, politically influenced confusion in the US at the beginning up until about June
You are downplaying it - they were actively taking a stance against them in the US and June was already quite late into the pandemic.
The WHO themselves were advising people NOT to wear a mask and that it might be even more dangerous to wear one than not to wear it months into the pandemic.. They also only revised this in June.
First, we'll have to ignore the US because the government interference and rampant irrationality there caused hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Regarding the EU: I feel a certain irony, because I was among those who complained that experts give the wrong advice for noble reasons (partly due to good information from HN, btw), called it a "King's Lie" and was heavily downvoted for it on various social media. So I'll be the first to admit that some officials were not as clear about it as they should have been.
However, many people fail to correctly interpret official statements, especially those made by WHO at the time. You only ever officially recommend something in evidence-based medicine if there is evidence of its beneficial effects, never out of a gut feeling. They should have said "we are using masks because we believe they work but we're short of them and so you shouldn't buy them" and instead said "there is no evidence that wearing masks is beneficial and it could even be dangerous" to prevent shortage. The WHO's statement lacked transparency but if they had stated that everybody should wear masks in March 2020, the effects would have been disastrous for health authorities all over the world. National health authorities did the very same at the time, and I used to point out that a "King's Lie" like this, no matter how noble the motives, will likely backfire - as evidenced by your statements.
Still, if you listened closely, no expert I know of has ever said in any interview that masks don't help. That's all I wanted to point out.
As far as I can tell people are just looking for excuses. It might very well be the case that whoever wrote that WHO statement actually believed it.
Either way - my point was that people here can and do often outperform 'decisions made by experts', no matter the reason why that's the case.
> The WHO's statement lacked transparency but if they had stated that everybody should wear masks in March 2020, the effects would have been disastrous for health authorities all over the world
Even if that's what was happening, the way they did it - saying they are ineffective rather than, say vaguely saying they dont advise them - has fueled an anti-mask movement still alive today. It's very hard to believe that it was a good decision overall on top of being straight-up wrong.
"First, we'll have to ignore the US because the government interference and rampant irrationality there caused hundreds of thousands of lives lost. "
Oh it did eh? Weird because that same "irrational" government is responsible for getting us vaccinated before almost any other country. The so called rational EU seems to be having a lot of issues right now.
Maybe lay off the Trump propaganda and look at how the US handled the vaccine rollout correctly. I've been vaccinated for over a month and my family has been as well. None of my EU friends have even been scheduled yet. Our economy is opening back up and yours is not, maybe ignoring what we did isn't such a great idea?
> The WHO themselves were advising people NOT to wear a mask and that it might be even more dangerous to wear one than not to wear it months into the pandemic.. They also only revised this in June
To protect yourself. The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus. Why does everyone complaining about the masks thing miss that?
And as others have already said, the lack of PPE across the world would have made recommending masks for everyone highly irresponsible.
> To protect yourself. The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus. Why does everyone complaining about the masks thing miss that?
This might just be availability bias, but most of the people I see complaining about mask use also respond badly to other calls to lessen their negative impact on their family/neighbors/tribe/comrades/countrymen/fellow humans.
> The revised and current advice is to wear masks to protect the others and avoid propagating the virus.
This was a mistake. If authorities were going to be lying about masks anyway, the message should have been that they protect the wearer. People care more about themselves than they do about strangers.
You are downplaying it - they were actively taking a stance against them in the US and June was already quite late into the pandemic.
The WHO themselves were advising people NOT to wear a mask and that it might be even more dangerous to wear one than not to wear it months into the pandemic.. They also only revised this in June.
https://twitter.com/whowpro/status/1243171683067777024