alt Hacker News+1 the public health apparatuses' actual statements were impressively correct even if you don't account for the underlying uncertainty at the time.
Where public health officials "failed" was not having a megaphone loud enough to drown out the game of telephone that most people (as these comment threads consistently show) were actually hearing information through.
Simplest example: People will say that public health officials told them "masks don't work." But no! Only one person did, and that was USSG Jerome Adams (who wasn't credible nor a major player to begin with). What public health officials said was "we do not know if masks work," which is a more nuanced but completely accurate statement.
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Masks might work but you have to take them off at some point to change them. Or blow your nose, from all of those dead skin cells.
> : People will say that public health officials told them "masks don't work." But no! Only one person did
I think Fauci might have had a statement early.
But tbh every other scientist said the opposite, every doctor said the opposite.
If I am not wrong he later admitted that he said it to gain time for the goverment to adquire enough for basic needs like hospitals.
And that is the kind of error that erodes public trust and it was bad advice shared because the american public cannot be trusted to prioritise medical professionals being stocked and because the american gov was unprepared.
But one bad statement, in march of 2020, done for the wrong reasons due to an unprepared goverment voted in by selfish people who cannot be trusted to help others does not deny that the UK had great advice the entire time, so did China, and Spain and Italy and most of the other initial hotbeds. They said "we dont have enough n95 for everyone, please social distance until they are availeble" instead of "masks are not needed".
Despite that, he was the face of a pandemic plan in a goverment alergic to facts and led by a dude who recommended injecting bleach so in that situation, he did as much as you can and is still paying for it.