COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)

Saint_Ward said

I think my earlier answer addressed what you're discussing.

In addition to what I said in that post, I see it more as him prioritizing who needs to be in a mask. His point was that healthy people wearing them wrong, or handling masks wrong, could more likely get themselves infected, by having a stronger sense of security than they would. One protection doesn't eliminate the needs to be cautious in other areas. i.e. hand washing still needs to be a major thing.

I think the "suspected to have covid" is the trickier part, since people can spread it without showing symptoms. So, everyone is possibly suspected. That's why you see a bigger push for masks in shared spaces. Less for personal protection, more for community protection.

And again, I believe more data on the aerolizing of the virus has come out pushing this further.

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From my own point of view, I guess I just never took him seriously when he wouldn't recommend that the general public wear masks. I mean, it just never made sense to me that they could somehow help stop health care workers from getting sick, but not the general public. And, logically, if an N95 masks helps healthcare workers, then a less effective mask will still help to a lesser extent for the general public. And, it seemed clear to me from the context that he was just trying to make sure that as many masks as possible were available for healthcare workers. Ideally they should be wearing N95 masks, but early on (and maybe even now) they were having issues getting those and were being forced to wear whatever masks they could find.

I also looked to Asian cultures that have been wearing masks for years to stop from spreading disease to others and it was hard to take any statements to the contrary without skepticism. Especially when you read between the lines of what Fauci was saying.