When the pandemic began to spread in 2020, American healthcare authorities advised the public to maintain their distance from one another by two meters — but not to wear masks.
In retrospect, part of the reasoning behind this advice was that high-quality N95 respirators were scarce and were absolute necessities for physicians in the ICU (especially when they intubate patients and get sprayed by virus).
However, the advice applied to ALL masks, not just N95s.
Also, it was then assumed that the virus was transmitted by heavy droplets that land on people.
Only much later in the USA did the official policy recognize airborne transmission, with virus wafting through the air like fine smoke into the lungs of others in a closed indoor setting.
But there is a mystery here.
Cheap, common surgical masks are designed specifically to inhibit the projection of infectious heavy particles onto patients during surgery.
Because they flap open on the side, they are not very good at restricting the flow of airborne pathogens.
Of course, if they are sealed tightly with a mask brace or an overlying snug cloth masks, then they can be very effective in blocking aerosols.
But if the assumption early in the pandemic was that Covid was spread by droplet transmission, then why not encourage simple surgical masks?
That is, even assuming that the droplet transmission theory was correct, simple surgical masks or even cloth masks would have made a difference.
So, even by the reasoning at the time (which, again, was based on the false droplet transmission theory), the advice made no sense in a very obvious way.
It seems like no one has mentioned or even thought about this blatant and simple contradiction.
