Dr. Lucky Tran :verified:
Asian countries have handled COVID better because they acted on lessons from previous outbreaks such as SARS, and did the hard work to do key things such as normalize mask wearing.
Western countries are recklessly doing the opposite and making us more vulnerable to future pandemics by increasing stigmatization of masks and banning them.
EVERYTHING'S COMPUTER
@shonin @luckytran It's so ironic how eager those people are to listen to the government when it tells them to stop wearing masks.
shonin
@luckytran Could the real problem be that great numbers of Westerners see masking as submissive behavior, a social dynamic that cannot *not* be capitalized upon by those with commerce-driven and/or and power-seeking interests?
Hilary
Yeah... up to a point.
But pre-covid there was also a WRONG dogma which was widely accepted by western public health professionals.
It was assumed that airborne transmission doesn't happen (instead it's all by contact, so "wash your hands"). Pre-covid, this was the mainstream view among westerm infectious disease specialists, but it's WRONG.
The error came from confusing two particle size thresholds: 5 µm to enter the lung directiy, and 100 µm to remain airborne.
Hilary
I'd always assumed that germ theory meant germs. Which could spread by contagion, or via aerosol (equivalent to miasma).
Early in the covid pandemic I was just perplexed. Thinking... have these "experts" never done housework? Never dusted stuff? How can they possibly believe that particles larger than 5 µm can't stay airborne?
I was right and they were wrong.
But that whole "wash your hands" and "no you don't need to wear a mask" error came from that.
Hilary
It confused the hell out of me, because my expertise is in sexual transmission so at first I thought I should defer to public health colleagues with more experience in respiratory infection.
Plus, I was aware of historical contagion/miasma debates about the nature of infection, but had understood them to be superseded by germ theory. Pre-covid, I had not realised how much germ theory was interpreted as... contagion.
Rich Felker
@regordane @luckytran There was evidence they were wrong over 100 years ago. This was willful not ignorance.
Rich Felker
@luckytran Even in (at least some) Asian countries where they used to be normalized, masks have become somewhat stigmatized. There are folks who wear near useless surgical masks now instead of KN95 so as not to remind ppl of COVID...
mekka okereke :verified:
Trump already admitted that they knew it was both deadly and airborne as early as Feb 2020, but that they didn't want to "create a panic."
And hospitals in China were already writing guides for doctors in other countries in early 2020, saying that if you only use surgical masks, that your hospital staff will get Covid and possibly die, but if you treat it as airborne, and make sure to use N95s, masks, full PPE, and do all intubation in negative pressure rooms, and airborne infection isolation rooms (AIIRs), that you can eliminate patient to staff transmission. They said "treat it as airborne."
The US hospitals that took this advice to heart, and that could get sufficient PPE to follow it, were the ones that had the best results with staff safety.👍🏿
Hilary
I agree that the evidence already existed.
But not that there was willful ignorance. Stupid mistakes are more common than evil.
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