I don't just mean "lay people", I mean the relatively well-educated HN crowd and even some medical professionals misunderstood what was said. Across the entire group, literally every part of what was publicly said by government agencies was misinterpreted in some way and turned into an argument.
For example, the "We don't recommend the general public wear masks at this time" was consistently misinterpreted to mean "Masks don't work", which is not what was said at all. The more nuanced and complex statement has too many parts to it, and just like Dan Luu said, the second you have an AND or an OR, (or IF, THEN, BUT, etc...) people will just blank and see some random subset of the logical statement.
The full nuanced statement was: "The CURRENT scientific evidence that is available does not support (OR deny!) that mask wearing by (specifically) the general public is (cost) effective enough to legally mandate. ALSO, at THIS TIME there is insufficient supply of masks, AND UNTIL supply can be increased the masks should be prioritised for health workers (that are trained to wear them properly)."
(This of course implies that once evidence is available to support the efficacy of public mask wearing AND the supply problems are solved, the recommendation may change.)
Something like 50% of the people listening to that misunderstood it. And then when the recommendation changed, they lost their minds. "I don't even know what to believe any more! They keep saying different things!" was a common response.
People got especially confused by the "current scientific evidence does not support", because to them that sounds like "scientists say it doesn't work". That's not what that says at all, it's just a statement to say that not enough studies have been done at all to say anything one way or another confidently.
This kind of precise speech as heard from scientists is ironically less effective than simpler but technically incorrect statements!
For developers: One issue I've had with Agile techniques is that that same people that just can't wrap their heads around government agencies changing their recommendations to fit the changing scenarios of an unfolding event like a pandemic also work in large enterprises and are unable to comprehend a plan changing. Ever. Not even once. Everything has to be known ahead, forever, and be set in stone and never change in any way. It's "just too confusing", a sentence I've heard verbatim more than once.
Anthony Fauci literally said that "there's no reason for the general public to be walking around with a mask". On television. I'll link to this version, since hilariously, facebook has "fact checked" it:
https://www.facebook.com/DeannaForCongress/videos/3682499312...
(note that I have no idea who "Deanna for Congress" is. This is the first version of the video I could find -- linked from a reuters article also claiming to "fact check" it [1] -- because google has gone out of its way to bury the video.)
It's pretty darned ironic that this is your preferred example of people "not understanding" messaging. If you search for this, you will find hundreds of other articles "fact-checking" this, even though he said it, it's not debatable, and the various walk-backs and fact-checks and whatnot simply make the issue look ridiculously farcical.
Just to underscore the point here, the Reuters "fact check" admits he said it (since, to be fair, he said it), and the only "fact checking" involved is that the official government position has changed. It wasn't taken out of context. It wasn't a misquote. It wasn't "misinterpreted". He said masks don't work other than blocking "the occasional droplet", and that there's no reason for the public to wear them. This was March 2020.
While it's true (and obvious to anyone) that the government position has changed, it doesn't change the "fact" of what was said in the past. And yet, people persist in trying to do this absurd stuff.
Let's be honest with ourselves: if this leads to doubt amongst the public, is this the fault of a dense public not understanding sophisticated, super-nuanced messaging, or simply that the messaging was muddled and has wavered over time, and that some parties are engaged in blatant attempts to re-write the factual record?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...
"there's no reason for the general public to be walking around with a mask".
Nothing in that statement says that masks don't work. It also doesn't say there will never be a reason for the general public to walk around wearing masks. It is in the present tense and a single sentence.
In a shortage, you want the masks focused where the infections are coming in, the hospitals. The virus was not widespread at that point, so you are wasting resources by spreading your mask supply so thin.
His statement seems like an acceptable balance of simplicity and the truth. I also remember him couching it with "at this time" though I don't know if that was a common thing he said.