A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks
I think the masks issue was a bit different. In the past, medicine was practiced without adhering to the scientific method. This is luckily no longer the case. However, medicine has not fully embraced the scientific method but some strange "evidence-based" variant.During the early stages of the pandemic, high ranking officials suggested we should not use masks because it was not yet "proven" the virus was transmitted via aerosols. And this was a catastrophic decision.We always need to reason under uncertainty. The correct interpretation of the scientific method would have led to the conclusion that COVID was likely to be transmitted via aerosols (e.g. due to sequence similarity with other coronaviruses, which are known to be transmitted via aerosols) and imposing mandatory masks (because this is a very innocuous intervention).