Up through roughly April-May 2020, many, if not most, epidemiologists and virologists believed that masks would not help the situation: they thought respiratory viruses were spread through large droplets produced by symptomatic individuals and that physical separation, sanitation, and behavior would work as well as trying to convince people to were useful masks consistently and correctly.
After that time, reports began to appear showing coronavirus could be spread asymptomatically, by normal breathing and speech, in an aerosol form that could stay airborne for long times. Under those situations, masks are the only solution.
The "ensure that enough protective equipment was available for frontline health workers" thing was mostly a response to "but it couldn't hurt" thinking.
"Then there is the infamous mask issue. Epidemiologists have taken a lot of heat on this question in particular. Until well into March 2020, I was skeptical about the benefit of everyone wearing face masks. That skepticism was based on previous scientific research as well as hypotheses about how covid was transmitted that turned out to be wrong. Mask-wearing has been a common practice in Asia for decades, to protect against air pollution and to prevent transmitting infection to others when sick. Mask-wearing for protection against catching an infection became widespread in Asia following the 2003 SARS outbreak, but scientific evidence on the effectiveness of this strategy was limited.
"Before the coronavirus pandemic, most research on face masks for respiratory diseases came from two types of studies: clinical settings with very sick patients, and community settings during normal flu seasons. In clinical settings, it was clear that well-fitting, high-quality face masks, such as the N95 variety, were important protective equipment for doctors and nurses against viruses that can be transmitted via droplets or smaller aerosol particles. But these studies also suggested careful training was required to ensure that masks didn’t get contaminated when surface transmission was possible, as is the case with SARS. Community-level evidence about mask-wearing was much less compelling. Most studies showed little to no benefit to mask-wearing in the case of the flu, for instance. Studies that have suggested a benefit of mask-wearing were generally those in which people with symptoms wore masks — so that was the advice I embraced for the coronavirus, too.
"I also, like many other epidemiologists, overestimated how readily the novel coronavirus would spread on surfaces — and this affected our view of masks. Early data showed that, like SARS, the coronavirus could persist on surfaces for hours to days, and so I was initially concerned that face masks, especially ill-fitting, homemade or carelessly worn coverings could become contaminated with transmissible virus. In fact, I worried that this might mean wearing face masks could be worse than not wearing them. This was wrong. Surface transmission, it emerged, is not that big a problem for covid, but transmission through air via aerosols is a big source of transmission. And so it turns out that face masks do work in this case.
"I changed my mind on masks in March 2020, as testing capacity increased and it became clear how common asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection were (since aerosols were the likely vector). I wish that I and others had caught on sooner — and better testing early on might have caused an earlier revision of views — but there was no bad faith involved."
In March 2020 the official recommendations coming from Hong Kong, China or Korea were the complete opposite to what the US, UK, Germany or the WHO were recommending.
While the former were pragmatic and -very importantly- had enough masks, the latter were actively discouraging people from using any kind of masks and especially the quality masks such as FFP3 (or even FFP2) which are designed to protect among other things against respiratory viruses.
Asian countries had mask stockpiles and could manufacture them, had the experience of SARS and were apparently quite content with the scientific evidence, limited as it was. Naturally, if one can't tell a pandemic from their own ass, doesn't have local mask production capacity and donated a huge chunk of their masks the limitations of the scientific evidence become very critical indeed.
Let's take a moment to remember how US and European politicians and medical professionals were confidently claiming at the beginning of 2020 that the virus would not reach the West and how there's nothing to worry about.
I highly doubt this explaination. Masks have been known for a very long time to be a good way to prevent the transmission of an airborne disease, especially like Covid, which involves generally a lot of coughing.
"...to be a good way to prevent the transmission of an airborne disease, especially like Covid, which involves generally a lot of coughing."
But that's the point! COVID can be spread by asymptomatic individuals! No coughing! And it's spread by aerosol particles, not large droplets that would be stopped by the gauze masks from 1919. Or if you stay a few feet away from other people and washed your hands before you touched your face.
I've posted links before from pre-2019 about the effectiveness of masks and the difficulties in getting people to wear them consistently and correctly. I've posted links before to papers from May and June, 2020, discussing asymptomatic transmission. This (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/04/20/epidemiolo...) is an article by an actual, honest-to-gosh epidemiologist saying, "I changed my mind on masks in March 2020, as testing capacity increased and it became clear how common asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection were (since aerosols were the likely vector)."
You can doubt anything you want. You can believe Dr. Murray is lying. You can believe I'm lying. You can believe everyone is lying to you. But you are going to have a difficult time convincing rational people with no better evidence than your opinion.
Up through roughly April-May 2020, many, if not most, epidemiologists and virologists believed that masks would not help the situation: they thought respiratory viruses were spread through large droplets produced by symptomatic individuals and that physical separation, sanitation, and behavior would work as well as trying to convince people to were useful masks consistently and correctly.
After that time, reports began to appear showing coronavirus could be spread asymptomatically, by normal breathing and speech, in an aerosol form that could stay airborne for long times. Under those situations, masks are the only solution.
The "ensure that enough protective equipment was available for frontline health workers" thing was mostly a response to "but it couldn't hurt" thinking.
"Then there is the infamous mask issue. Epidemiologists have taken a lot of heat on this question in particular. Until well into March 2020, I was skeptical about the benefit of everyone wearing face masks. That skepticism was based on previous scientific research as well as hypotheses about how covid was transmitted that turned out to be wrong. Mask-wearing has been a common practice in Asia for decades, to protect against air pollution and to prevent transmitting infection to others when sick. Mask-wearing for protection against catching an infection became widespread in Asia following the 2003 SARS outbreak, but scientific evidence on the effectiveness of this strategy was limited.
"Before the coronavirus pandemic, most research on face masks for respiratory diseases came from two types of studies: clinical settings with very sick patients, and community settings during normal flu seasons. In clinical settings, it was clear that well-fitting, high-quality face masks, such as the N95 variety, were important protective equipment for doctors and nurses against viruses that can be transmitted via droplets or smaller aerosol particles. But these studies also suggested careful training was required to ensure that masks didn’t get contaminated when surface transmission was possible, as is the case with SARS. Community-level evidence about mask-wearing was much less compelling. Most studies showed little to no benefit to mask-wearing in the case of the flu, for instance. Studies that have suggested a benefit of mask-wearing were generally those in which people with symptoms wore masks — so that was the advice I embraced for the coronavirus, too.
"I also, like many other epidemiologists, overestimated how readily the novel coronavirus would spread on surfaces — and this affected our view of masks. Early data showed that, like SARS, the coronavirus could persist on surfaces for hours to days, and so I was initially concerned that face masks, especially ill-fitting, homemade or carelessly worn coverings could become contaminated with transmissible virus. In fact, I worried that this might mean wearing face masks could be worse than not wearing them. This was wrong. Surface transmission, it emerged, is not that big a problem for covid, but transmission through air via aerosols is a big source of transmission. And so it turns out that face masks do work in this case.
"I changed my mind on masks in March 2020, as testing capacity increased and it became clear how common asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection were (since aerosols were the likely vector). I wish that I and others had caught on sooner — and better testing early on might have caused an earlier revision of views — but there was no bad faith involved."
"I’m an epidemiologist. Here’s what I got wrong about covid."(https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/04/20/epidemiolo...)