> But that wasn't people waking past each other in the street, that was people working with each other in poorly ventilated spaces.
Yes, this is my point. There were tons of people (most people?) who didn't/couldn't live their lives without coming into contact with other people's spread, and these people were not recommended to wear masks either.
This was particularly true in the beginning of the pandemic, when the non-scientifically-literate and non-digital-natives had yet to adapt to which behaviors were safe[1]. Masks were a simple, common-sense, zero-cost recommendation which predictably ended up being sound.
> Public health officials during the early stages fully expected all the other recommendations they were making to be taken up: proper lockdowns, vigorous test and trace with good quality supported isolation.
If you don't see this as gross incompetence, I don't know what to tell you. Assuming perfect compliance with specific measures and throwing defense in depth out of the window is shockingly stupid from multiple perspectives: scientifically, epistemically,
> it's odd to focus on the mask advice and not the late lockdowns.
I don't know anyone who defends locking down late. I know plenty of people who defend the severe and constant failures of our public health authorities. It's a much more interesting topic with much more profound implications. What's particularly fascinating about it is the _manner_ in which people defend these failures: Talk to a dozen people, and you'll get 13 highly-confident, mutually-contradictory and individually weak excuses. It strongly suggests to me that there's some weird psychological underpinning to this behavior, and that the expressed excuses are just window dressing.
(To be clear, I don't intend this as a jab against you, but as a phenomenon that's interesting in the aggregate. Your comments in particular are more thoughtful than most I come across on this topic)
[1] In the very early, high-uncertainty days of the pandemic, I had a (highly-educated and successful) uncle in his late 70s tell me not to get takeout and to wipe it down thoroughly if I did, right before saying that he only ever left the house to go to the _grocery store_. I tried telling him he had it precisely backwards (yes, this was clear from the evidence even that early), but his model stuck in his mind like a superstition and fear is a strong deterrent to changing one's mind.
Yes, this is my point. There were tons of people (most people?) who didn't/couldn't live their lives without coming into contact with other people's spread, and these people were not recommended to wear masks either.
This was particularly true in the beginning of the pandemic, when the non-scientifically-literate and non-digital-natives had yet to adapt to which behaviors were safe[1]. Masks were a simple, common-sense, zero-cost recommendation which predictably ended up being sound.
> Public health officials during the early stages fully expected all the other recommendations they were making to be taken up: proper lockdowns, vigorous test and trace with good quality supported isolation.
If you don't see this as gross incompetence, I don't know what to tell you. Assuming perfect compliance with specific measures and throwing defense in depth out of the window is shockingly stupid from multiple perspectives: scientifically, epistemically,
> it's odd to focus on the mask advice and not the late lockdowns.
I don't know anyone who defends locking down late. I know plenty of people who defend the severe and constant failures of our public health authorities. It's a much more interesting topic with much more profound implications. What's particularly fascinating about it is the _manner_ in which people defend these failures: Talk to a dozen people, and you'll get 13 highly-confident, mutually-contradictory and individually weak excuses. It strongly suggests to me that there's some weird psychological underpinning to this behavior, and that the expressed excuses are just window dressing.
(To be clear, I don't intend this as a jab against you, but as a phenomenon that's interesting in the aggregate. Your comments in particular are more thoughtful than most I come across on this topic)
[1] In the very early, high-uncertainty days of the pandemic, I had a (highly-educated and successful) uncle in his late 70s tell me not to get takeout and to wipe it down thoroughly if I did, right before saying that he only ever left the house to go to the _grocery store_. I tried telling him he had it precisely backwards (yes, this was clear from the evidence even that early), but his model stuck in his mind like a superstition and fear is a strong deterrent to changing one's mind.