tyrael459 t1_j0nkrsa wrote on December 18, 2022 at 12:54 AM

Reply to comment by Matt-33-205 in Philadelphia School District To Require Masks For 10 Days After Winter Break by ZebZ

I agree with you on the Trump thing, but I also think you should follow your own advice about blanket statements.

The CDC is full of people who are working damn hard to do their best at providing good guidance to save the most lives. At the start of the pandemic, they were using the little knowledge available to do what they thought best.

It’s easy to criticize after the fact. They were definitely too draconian with some stuff. The 6-foot thing for an airborne virus is obviously ridiculous. Schools should have reopened sooner. And their messaging over vaccines was way too hopeful and allowed people to twist it as vaccine=never going to catch Covid, which anyone with an ounce of intellect could’ve guessed wasn’t going to be the case even with a highly effective vaccine.

But high-quality masks do work IF you wear them properly and consistently. Do kids do that? Nope.

But we all need to stop taking these far positions on everything, especially those of us who can be big enough to admit that very few issues are so cut and dry.

Anyway, you seem intelligent, so it just kinda sucked to see you throwing unequivocal shade on an organization that largely does some amazing stuff alongside some mistakes, with guidance evolving as more information is learned.

Matt-33-205 t1_j0o2vqd wrote on December 18, 2022 at 3:22 AM

I understand what you're saying, you make some valid points. However, it was the CDC who initially said the vaccine would prevent both contracting the virus and spreading the virus, I saw multiple videos in which Rochelle walensky and Tony fauci said this directly. Fauci also said early on that masks would be virtually useless in preventing the spread, then he said everyone should wear a mask, then he said people should wear 2 masks. The science didn't change, the messaging did. There are definitely good people at the CDC, but leadership is clearly hyper political and intermingled with big Pharma.

I'd like to think the CDC was just incompetent, but their manipulation of data and highly inconsistent messenging is very concerning. It needs to be investigated.

I'm not hyper partisan at all. I listen to reasonable intelligent people with an open mind. If you had to put me in a box, I'd call myself a libertarian. I think Trump is a buffoon, I also think Joe Biden is a buffoon and is often incoherent. It's stunning to me that these two men both became president of the United States.

tyrael459 t1_j0pkg5b wrote on December 18, 2022 at 1:44 PM

I agree on the messaging of the vaccine. I don’t know if it was some people being overly optimistic or if it was intentionally misleading in hopes of getting more people to take the vaccine immediately. I do think there was an honest thought in the scientific community that if enough of the population could be vaccinated in a very tight window, perhaps we had a shot at slowing or even stopping Covid. But realities of the world and vaccine distribution should have made those people publicly acknowledge that such a feat was basically impossible. They should have been very honest up front what the vaccine was most likely to do: Keep you out of the hospital, and giving people most at risk a better chance at weathering bouts of the illness.

If they would have pitched it much like the flu shot, (which it really is, just for Covid) I think people would more more understanding of the situation we find ourselves in and we’d be seeing less of the absolutely bonkers conspiracy theories from the fringes.

Personally, I don’t want my tax dollars going towards beating a dead horse like Fauci over and over again through investigations and hearings for the next 2 years. His missteps with masks were avoidable and unfortunate. As anyone in the medical field will tell you about masks, bottom line: Yea, a high-quality mask like an n95 or kn95 will help you IF you wear it properly and consistently, especially if everyone in the room does the same. But reality doesn’t usually result in situations like that. People wear them under their nose, they take them off to scratch, they touch them with their hands constantly, etc. Basically makes the whole point null. And cloth masks don’t do much.

Should’ve just leveled with that stuff from the start. Our leaders here and across the world bungled the response and messaging, and in doing so they created fertile ground for conspiracies and gullible people to question science and medicine anew.