Quote:
Originally Posted by HoosierinFL
Partly the issue was that in the beginning they had no idea there was symptom-free transmission, meaning people could be positive with the virus, not experience symptoms, and still transmit this virus.
The advise originally was "if you are sick, quarantine yourself and wear a mask if you have to go out" which was before they discovered symptomless transmission.
Oh and you're wrong about the history of masks. Up until the early 1900s, doctors did not wear masks nor did they wash their hands, and were offended when it was suggested that they should do both.
The closest things to masks before then were those weird bird masks they wore during the plague, but that was just based on the "bad air" myth (the masks contained perfumes and incense thought to cleanse the air) and the plague was bloodborne anyway (fleas) so those didn't work at all.
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Maniac beat me to it, but when the shut downs and social distancing measures were put in place we were told that ~80% of people who contract COVID would either be asymptomatic or have minor cold like symptoms. We were also told that people who were asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic were contagious which was a big reason as to why we had to social distance. But maybe you were referring to Jan-Feb timeframe.
Thanks for clarifying on the masks. Technically the technology was there, but sounds like it wasn't be utilized. At any rate masks still have been in use for over a century and were used during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Our medical experts had plenty of data on social distancing from 1918 that they used. You would think there would have been data on the effects of mask usage as well.