@maxterdexter:
Did you remember why? Because it was better to stay at home and leave the masks to the front line care, now that the demand of masks has stabilized and people are going out the recommendation change.
The reason we were given was that the masks would get infected and start infecting people in the area including the wearer. Social distancing was pushed but even that is a bit of a farce: we're really supposed to stay at least 13 feet away from each other instead of the 6 that most countries are pushing (weirdly the WHO only recommends 3 feet, yet another piece of bad advice).
If the WHO wanted to convince people to say home they could have done the right thing and classified it as a pandemic in February.
@maxterdexter:
This isnāt gospel forbidden to change to its own self destruction, this is science and medicine and sociology and economy facing an unprecedented situation, Iād rather have honesty from the WHO, but Iām not reading the 15 papers that are now obsolete about the disease to have the full picture.
The thing that really drives me crazy about the masks is that our situation isn't unprecedented at all. There are pandemics every hundred years or so, and during the last one mask use was heavily encouraged and at times mandated. Eastern countries who fared much better than us like South Korea, Japan and even doctors in China were horrified at the lack of mask use in the west.
@maxterdexter:
Also, regular mask are only good to prevent being infectious, not to prevent getting infected, the slight difference was hammered in the message, but also got forgotten I guess.
Yeah, the problem is that message isn't true. We haven't been able to prove that wearing a cloth or surgical mask is an effective way to reduce your risk of becoming infected, but we similarly haven't been able to prove that wearing an N95 mask works. However, there's lab evidence that strongly suggests that the masks work, and most doctors and medical workers have been wearing masks of various types since March because of that evidence.
Anyone who makes a definitive statement that the masks are not useful as a preventative measure is either misinformed or lying.
Edit: looks like I was right, the WHO withdrew the false claim about asymptomatic carriers.
I'm not happy seeing the way the WHO is now the target of George Soros-esque conspiracy theories but I'm also really upset to see that as a medical information resource they've become pretty useless at a critical moment, and they keep spreading false information.
There's no excuse for this, hundreds could die because of this one mistake alone.