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What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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I see it as a failure of politics. It’s been a while now, but IIRC in the US as well people were told that they shouldn’t wear N95, just like we in Europe were told not to wear FFP2. That they are hard to use and best left to professionals. That having a beard makes them useless. Now there was a decent idea behind it, stocks were low and uncertain, and healthcare professionals needed respirators first. But then production ramped up, and they were everywhere, and suddenly those masks are great and everyone should wear them.
That kind of political messaging has to produce conflict.
Yes. I just wish they had been honest. Yes they are effective but please minimize use of certain classes of masks and leave for those that really need them until stocks catch up.
The whole messaging sucked. You had to know something to read between the lines. Not a problem for me but I am sure was confusing for others. Then you had those that wanted to make it confusing.
I kind of understand. "Efficiency" is a relative measure. If there's a shortage of masks, it is not efficient enough to prioritize ordinary people. Later when there is an abundance of masks, they are more efficient than not wearing masks.
In expert discussions everybody understands that. The problem is that when this gets out of experts' hands the context gets lost and there will be a hundred different messaging problems and we non-experts see chaos.
There is also who wins and who losses and who has access and who does not and why. Not easy questions and not easy for people to hear even if it is sane. Add to that access is often just because and has nothing to do with fairness.
Add to that the medical community has basically burnt any good will they had from the public by crazy pricing and poor access combined with mediocre results. Not saying every medical partipant caused that but they all get lumped together.
You realize masks are generally sold by manufacturers, and not what would traditionally be referred to as the medical community. Blaming doctors and nurses for masks being expensive or hard to get seems a little ridiculous. "How dare the medical community, represented by...Home Depot...charge so much for N95 masks!"
It is not about masks. It is about crazy prices throughout the industry. Lack of both quality and price transparency. Lack of competition.
And blaming the medical community for that is as silly as blaming them for the toilet paper shortage.
They are absolutely part of the problem. Expecting crazy compensation, not knowing the cost of their treatments and being transparent and cost effective, managing medical school requirements and enrollment to create a shortage rather then surplus of practitioners, creating crazy cost schedules, building crazy expensive facilities. Medical people manage much of this system and are directly involved in a lot of this. Are they the only ones... no. But they are not without blame.