Masks Work. So What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis? (scientificamerican.com) 501
A Harvard professor on the history of science looks at our response to the pandemic, criticizing "a report that gave the false impression that masking didn't help." From Scientific American:
The group's report was published by Cochrane, an organization that collects databases and periodically issues "systematic" reviews of scientific evidence relevant to health care. This year it published a paper addressing the efficacy of physical interventions to slow the spread of respiratory illness such as COVID... The review of studies of masking concluded that the "results were inconclusive..." [and] it was "uncertain whether wearing [surgical] masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses." Still, the authors were also uncertain about that uncertainty, stating that their confidence in their conclusion was "low to moderate." You can see why the average person could be confused... The Cochrane finding was not that masking didn't work but that scientists lacked sufficient evidence of sufficient quality to conclude that they worked...
Cochrane has made this mistake before. In 2016 a flurry of media reports declared that flossing your teeth was a waste of time... The answer demonstrates a third issue with the Cochrane approach: how it defines evidence. The organization states that its reviews "identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria." The problem is what those eligibility criteria are. Cochrane Reviews base their findings on randomized controlled trials (RCTs), often called the "gold standard" of scientific evidence. But many questions can't be answered well with RCTs, and some can't be answered at all...
In fact, there is strong evidence that masks do work to prevent the spread of respiratory illness. It just doesn't come from RCTs. It comes from Kansas. In July 2020 the governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring masks in public places. Just a few weeks earlier, however, the legislature had passed a bill authorizing counties to opt out of any statewide provision. In the months that followed, COVID rates decreased in all 24 counties with mask mandates and continued to increase in 81 other counties that opted out of them... Cochrane ignored this epidemiological evidence because it didn't meet its rigid standard.
I have called this approach "methodological fetishism," when scientists fixate on a preferred methodology and dismiss studies that don't follow it. Sadly, it's not unique to Cochrane. By dogmatically insisting on a particular definition of rigor, scientists in the past have landed on wrong answers more than once.
Vox also points out that while Cochrane's review included 78 studies, "only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic... Instead, most of them looked at flu transmission in normal conditions, and many of them were about other interventions like hand-washing.
"Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular. Furthermore, neither of those studies looked directly at whether people wear masks, but instead at whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks by researchers."
Cochrane has made this mistake before. In 2016 a flurry of media reports declared that flossing your teeth was a waste of time... The answer demonstrates a third issue with the Cochrane approach: how it defines evidence. The organization states that its reviews "identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria." The problem is what those eligibility criteria are. Cochrane Reviews base their findings on randomized controlled trials (RCTs), often called the "gold standard" of scientific evidence. But many questions can't be answered well with RCTs, and some can't be answered at all...
In fact, there is strong evidence that masks do work to prevent the spread of respiratory illness. It just doesn't come from RCTs. It comes from Kansas. In July 2020 the governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring masks in public places. Just a few weeks earlier, however, the legislature had passed a bill authorizing counties to opt out of any statewide provision. In the months that followed, COVID rates decreased in all 24 counties with mask mandates and continued to increase in 81 other counties that opted out of them... Cochrane ignored this epidemiological evidence because it didn't meet its rigid standard.
I have called this approach "methodological fetishism," when scientists fixate on a preferred methodology and dismiss studies that don't follow it. Sadly, it's not unique to Cochrane. By dogmatically insisting on a particular definition of rigor, scientists in the past have landed on wrong answers more than once.
Vox also points out that while Cochrane's review included 78 studies, "only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic... Instead, most of them looked at flu transmission in normal conditions, and many of them were about other interventions like hand-washing.
"Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular. Furthermore, neither of those studies looked directly at whether people wear masks, but instead at whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks by researchers."
Incorrect use rampant (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care how many people wear a mask when they're not covering their nose or they're wearing it over their chin.
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One could even argue that 'message' that masks made things safe emboldened people to go out into crowded areas more because 'they wore a mask'. I've seen families of 4 wearing masks walking through the grocery store. If
Re:Incorrect use rampant (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a pretty good idea of how effective different kinds of masks are, because it is easy to measure. The uncertainty is over how effective asking the general public to wear masks in various settings is, because you will end up with a mixture of different kinds, and people not wearing them properly.
If you are concerned about COVID then the best thing to do is get an FFP3 mask, because those protect you from infection. FFP3 requires greater than 99% of the particles that carry airborne viruses to be filtered out. You need to make the effort to wear them properly, and do a basic fit-test to ensure there is no leakage. Since nobody else bothers masking now you can get one with an exhalation valve to keep them cool and breathing easy.
I prefer Moldex ones with neoprene seals. Very easy to don and doff, good seal, and comfortable enough to wear on 13+ hour flights.
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Just curious...are you actually still wearing masks?
If so, are you immune impaired or have some sort of medical problems?
Re:Incorrect use rampant (Score:4, Insightful)
The benefits of wearing the types of masks available to the public is still unknown as the scientist never really went through the trouble of creating proper studies with proper control groups. Mostly what we saw were meta data studies which by nature are almost always inherently flawed.
Even worse, we never got the needed studies of how the son of man, son of god told us of injecting bleach. He tried to help, and just like Jesus, the Democrats are crucifying him. Repent America!
Now to be serious, what did you want? Purposely attempting to infect people, one group with no masking, others with various levels of masking? then see who dies?
Yah, no. Maybe 1930's Germany or the creeps that ran the Tuskegee experiment might approve, but we try to keep some semblance of ethics these days.
It isn't rocket surgery. Measurements of masks are made all the time, and aerosol ejection from humans has known sizes and velocities. To make a study where you purposely expose a control group to something that may kill them wouldn't be remotely ethical.
Although, there is a self selected group of people that refuse to vaccinate. They are now the control group.
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Don't worry about Rei.
She's the same genius who swore we'd have Tesla tier 5 automation robo taxis by the end of 2019.
Anyone so willing to naively buy into blatant corporate hype has no business demanding perfection in science, spelling, grammar or anything else from anyone.
I'm still waiting for my model 3's tier 5 functionality to be enabled. I assume that'll happen right after we get cold fusion, personal jet packs and a cure for cancer. Maybe an OTA update will turn on the flying car function. Rei wou
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The Kansas Evidence is Weak (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: The Kansas Evidence is Weak (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:The Kansas Evidence is Weak (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious explanation for that is that rural and suburban areas are less densely populated.
You also have to be careful when comparing "infection rates". There are potentially two benefits to masking.
1. Reduced overall number of infections.
2. Reduced rate of infection, so as not to overwhelm hospitals.
In practice it's a combination of both that you see in areas where masking was done properly, i.e. a high percentage of people wearing them properly and not reducing their other COVID protection measures like washing hands more frequently and creating airflow indoors. Unfortunately, from what I can tell outside of Japan that rarely ever happened.
A paper mask (Score:3, Funny)
..for the deadliest virus in human history /s^2
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Masks exist to prevent transmission, not to prevent death once one has it. The fatality rate of a virus isn't relevant to that consideration. And calling covid the deadliest virus in history is a simple strawman. Covid is not as deadly as Ebola or the 1918 flu, and people have generally not asserted otherwise. A virus doesn't need to be the deadliest in history to be really bad.
Ebola is quite deadly, but also very complex so it can't just sit around on surfaces for a week like COVID did, you pretty much require direct contact with infected blood. The 1918 and 20 flu pandemics were so deadly because we didn't understand how viruses worked back then. The infected were stacked in like cordwood with uninfected, when they died the next patient was piled onto the virus laden sheets... No quarantine of the infected, no sanitation procedures, the actual virus is thought to be weaker than
Re:A paper mask (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of automotive enthusiasts have been tricked into thinking the same way about the air going into their engines. But a paper filter is actually the most effective, and people switching to cotton filters (e.g. K&N(tm)) have "dusted" their motors by failing to keep up with filter maintenance. Paper filters both have smaller pores and exert an electrostatic effect. Cotton filters depend on fresh oil to trap airborne particulates, and people don't wash and reoil them enough.
Modern "paper" filters are spectacular and enormously effective. But because they're called "paper" (which is not particularly accurate, in that many of them are made entirely out of petroleum plastics, and contain nothing even derived from wood) people doubt them like you're doing here.
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..for the deadliest virus in human history /s^2
Black death? That was the deadliest pandemic in human history, and I don't think anybody suggested paper masks for it.
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Maybe not made from paper but a mask is what almost everybody knows from the term "plague doctor" [wikipedia.org], masks themselves apparently referenced all the way back to 1373
it's polices, not masks that need to be evaluated (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:it's polices, not masks that need to be evaluat (Score:4, Funny)
Respiratory viruses are taking advantage of flaws in human nature. We could easily reduce their spread, with small and minimally inconveniencing changes to behaviour, and by spending relatively small amounts of money on equipment like UV lamps for offices. But we don't. In fact many people are quite hostile to such things.
Interestingly the same isn't the case for sexually transmitted diseases, where education is generally effective and many people are willing to use PPE (condoms) to protect themselves. Maybe the near certainty of having to go to the STD clinic to get your urethra swabbed is more of a deterrent than the small possibility of death or life-long disability. If only COVID tests had been administered anally.
Conflating masks and respirators (Score:5, Insightful)
This "defense" is pretty thin.
Yes, an N95 respirator, if correctly fitted, can reduce the incidence of certain viral diseases. But it's a partial solution in even the best of conditions (which were seldom seen in 2020-2021).
No, a cheap mask made out of N95 material doesn't do a damned thing versus many respiratory viruses. Since it's not fully fitted to the face, the viruses just float around the edges of the mask when you breathe in and out. Plain cloth? Might as well be wearing a sign saying "viruses keep out," for all the good it does.
For bacterial diseases carried on particles? Yeah, might be useful, but that's a whole different situation.
Here's a clue: If someone is wearing glasses and a mask, and their glasses are fogging up when they breathe, the mask is ineffective.
The one stupid assumption the authorities made at the start of COVID was that it was ONLY carried by larger liquid particles. The evidence for that was flimsy at best, and we found out fairly quickly that it wasn't true. Yes, a cloth or poorly-fitted N95 mask can stop some particles, but neither of them will stop a single virus - and no standard mask will stop a virus particle coming in contact with the eye. Yeah, it turned out that you can catch it that way, too, just like the flu.
The Scientific American article is just flailing around, trying to excuse the bad medical advice that so many bureaucrats gave during COVID. They're trying to justify cheap mask use by discrediting a bunch of actual studies, but fail to notice that there really wasn't any evidence FOR non-fitted non-N95 mask wearing in the first place.
Re: Conflating masks and respirators (Score:2)
I am not sure fogging is necessarily a sign of ineffectiveness. N95 respirators are designed to keep particles away from the user. On inhalation they press closer to the face if correctly fitted. But a leak on exhalation will not harm the user much (maybe a little will come in at the end of the exhalation?). And i assume the fogging is from exhalation.
I suspect a better sign of poor fit is if the mask material is failing to move in and out with breathing.
(None of this is based on actual research, just specu
Re:Conflating masks and respirators (Score:5, Interesting)
The one stupid assumption the authorities made at the start of COVID was that it was ONLY carried by larger liquid particles.
Nobody assumed that. Nobody believed that masks were going to stop all covid transmission, either. What was believed is that they would reduce infection rates and severities, and that's what the evidence shows. Where mask mandates were issued early and largely obeyed the rates are lower than in other places. As it turns out, viral load matters, and you are more likely to get a more serious case of most any virus if you are exposed to more of it. Also, the less you put into the air, the less there will be available for others to breathe in. The total number of droplets and their size are therefore both relevant. By catching the bulk of emissions during coughs or sneezes, the masks reduce both.
The Scientific American article is just flailing around
You're attacking a straw man because you don't understand the argument, whether naturally or willfully. You don't get to accuse others of flailing.
Re:Conflating masks and respirators (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only do viruses float around the edge of the mask, they are then effectively trapped for recirculation. Studies have shown that surgical masks increase bacterial and viral infection likelihood of the wearer. Those masks are to protect the surgery subject from spittle infection.
Problem with Kansas type (Score:5, Insightful)
Air leakage (Score:2)
If you are not in- or exhaling all the air through the mask then part of the viruses get in or out. So at percentage if the mask working? Can you get Covid only from at least 1000 viruses or is 1 already enough to start replicating?
Re:Air leakage (Score:5, Insightful)
The fewer virus particles, the less likely you are to catch it and the less severe it will likely be. Yes, one particle could infect one cell (unlikely), but even then the infection would ramp slowly allowing your immune system to get the upper hand quicker.
Spit shield. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Thank goodness those are pretty much all taken down now....
As long as it aligns with my political faction... (Score:2, Insightful)
Masks did help ... (Score:2)
... but you can't save people who don't want to be saved. In the Netherlands we call them 'wappies'.
correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
COVID rates decreased in all 24 counties with mask mandates and continued to increase in 81 other counties that opted out of them
I think I favorite expression around here is "correlation doesn't equal causation"
Someone has an opinion which requires... (Score:2, Insightful)
...that we abandon a well-acknowledge and rigurous scientific tool. That's cute but misses the point
Masks in conjunction with other methods work - Namely washing hands and maintaining social distance. If you're touching your face all the time to apply/unapply a mask and aren't washing your hands, well... then you're pretty much defeating the purpose of the mask.
If you're hanging around large groups of very probably infected individuals... you may as well not be wearing the mask if its not securely fastened
Logic really. (Score:2)
But yeah, that cheetah print cloth mask is definitely going to protect you from COVID-19...
I do agree that masks alter the trajectory of the aerosol plume we expel at one another when we talk, so they're better than nothing, but I would never count on them to give me 100%.
Let's not talk of the useless plastic barriers hung at every checkout.
Both sides are lying (Score:3)
Prior to the pandemic there was some evidence that masks don't work for "respiratory illnesses", and this was about 90% from studies about the flu. Early talking points from medical people tended to cite these studies. After (cloth) mask mandates became a thing you'd see memes circulate with a list of "42 studies that prove masks work." Well, I'm one of those kinds of people who click on links, so after hours of clicking through those links what I can tell you is that I wasn't swayed one way or the other. Most of them that showed a clear result were only measuring droplet movement in a laboratory environment. The few that tried to measure the impacts of mask mandates on real world transmission rates showed tiny, tiny changes, if any. Sure, that may be due to compliance. But the fact is that evidence that cloth masks reduce transmission just wasn't there, at least back then. And cloth masks were all that were available at the beginning.
The problem I found when trying to look at the transmission rates vs. interventions is that everybody seemed to be implement mask mandates at the same time that they implemented lockdowns. In our area the lockdowns were turned on and off repeatedly, and you could see very measurable changes in transmission rates, but masking was implemented quite early at the same time as a lockdown, and masking was never turned off independently.
I hate wearing a mask, but will absolutely wear one if it's mandated, and due to what I've read I did my best to find N95 or at least surgical masks once they were available.
But this argument being had in the media isn't science. It's an "us" vs. "them" ideological war, and I want no part of it. Scientists don't scream at people and shame them for their opinions. They publish their evidence and let other people review it.
That IS NOT strong evidence! (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, there is strong evidence that masks do work to prevent the spread of respiratory illness. It just doesn't come from RCTs. It comes from Kansas. In July 2020 the governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring masks in public places. Just a few weeks earlier, however, the legislature had passed a bill authorizing counties to opt out of any statewide provision. In the months that followed, COVID rates decreased in all 24 counties with mask mandates and continued to increase in 81 other counties that opted out of them... Cochrane ignored this epidemiological evidence because it didn't meet its rigid standard.
This isn't "strong evidence" at all. Strong evidence comes from a double-blind placebo-controlled study. The evidence sited is nor strong, it is actually quite weak, because there are too many variables being uncontrolled for. Right off the top of my head, I can tell you that counties that CHOSE to mandate masking are also likely counties with higher numbers of population who vaccinated and were generally ultra cautious... so was the reduction due to the masks or due to these other factors?!
This conflating of strong evidence with weak evidence throughout the COVID pandemic is why no one trusts the media or their elected officials anymore.
Fund a proper study or GTFO.
Scientific American no longer an unbiased source (Score:4, Insightful)
Kansas data... (Score:3)
Why did the masks work in Kansas? It could be that the masks prevented people from getting infected as you would think.
But maybe there is another mechanism. Maybe the awareness of "an issue with a contagious disease" makes people more careful, and the continuous reminders by seeing people with masks and having one on yourself creates that awareness.... That's what the non RCT studies cannot tell you.
My doctor prescribes me something for "high blood pressure". I call it the "zero F***s were given" medicine. It is possible that the effect is completely psychological. Work not done? No stress, go home. Doctors require RCT tests to prove effectiveness before they will prescribe a medicine. This could pass the tests that way....
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Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Informative)
On March 8, 2020, Fauci said "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask," according to Reuters—but this was before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on masks on April 3.
He also privately told people in emails:
"The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you."
He added: "I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location."
According to revision history, that was simply one of Fauci's "noble lies": https://slate.com/technology/2... [slate.com]
In March 2020, as the pandemic began, Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president of the United States, explained in a 60 Minutes interview that he felt community use of masks was unnecessary. A few months later, he argued that his statements were not meant to imply that he felt the data to justify the use of cloth masks was insufficient. Rather, he said, had he endorsed mask wearing (of any kind), mass panic would ensue and lead to a surgical and N95 mask shortage among health care workers, who needed the masks more. Yet, emails from a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Fauci privately gave the same advice—against mask use—suggesting it was not merely his outward stance to the broader public.
Although some have claimed that the evidence changed substantively in the early weeks of March, our assessment of the literature does not concur. We believe the evidence at the time of Fauci’s 60 Minutes interview was largely similar to that in April 2020. Thus, there are two ways to consider Fauci’s statement. One possibility is, as he says, that his initial statement was dishonest but motivated to avoid a run on masks needed by health care workers. The other is that he believed his initial statements were accurate, and he subsequently decided to advocate for cloth masks to divert attention from surgical or N95 masks, or to provide a sense of hope and control to a fearful and anxious public.
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
a) A garbage surgical mask "worn" under your nose probably won't protect you much.
b) When YOU sneeze with a mask on, the virus doesn't go ten feet like it does without a mask.
A properly worn, N95 mask can't not help. Anybody who tells you it doesn't help is a lunatic who needs to be put in a room full of people with COVID.
c) Trump was too vain to ever wear a mask and Fauci was his right-hand man. What was Fauci supposed to say if he wanted to keep his job?
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a) A garbage surgical mask "worn" under your nose probably won't protect you much.
I'm still amazed at how many people I see wearing a surgical mask under the nose, or a useless cloth mask, or a useless cloth mash under the chin... TODAY.
Today, when few people are still wearing masks, if you do still want to wear one then there is absolutely no reason to do it wrong. The only reason to wear a mask today is to protect yourself and/or others, not to meet some sort of poorly-enforced vague masking requirement. So why, among the few people still wearing masks, do I still see so many people
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
Wearing masks when you have the sniffles or a cough was done by some people even before the pandemic. Mostly east Asians, which also caused some of the early backlash to the masks because some said they didn't want to just copy what the "Chinese" did.
Note that all this mask wearing, washing of hands, and social distancing possibly contributed to the much lower than usual flu rate that first year. Of course, big reason was from everyone staying home. It's just common sense that not sneezing or coughing on people near you would lower the transmission rate, but common sense isn't used often in the conspiracy theory world.
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The virus was aerosolized, not primarily fluid transfer. To wit, merely breathing produced sufficient loads of the virus to infect people unless in a sufficiently ventilated space. For instance, an outdoor skate park would be considered a sufficiently ventilated space, but the pro-lockdown neofascist shitstains did things like fill those full of sand to maintain control.
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Also for coughs. No, anyone pulling down the mask to cough or sneeze is either ignorant, or an asshole, or possibly both. Yes it's difficult at first, but we got used to it. The first initial pushback that I remember was that some said they didn't want to be like asians who put on a mask every time they have a slight sniffle, and that expanded out into part of the anti-Chinese thing that was happening when the pandemic started. A few weeks later this was highly politicized for weird reasons across the b
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Informative)
The simple fact is that we learned a lot more about disease transmission over the pandemic. A huge amount of research went into studying respiratory disease transmission, decades of research condensed down into a short timeframe. For example, we learned that the old paradigm of droplet transmission appears to be mostly, if not entirely, misguided. That respiratory diseases in general travel on fine aerosols, not droplets**
With respect to masks, we "learned" (I put this in quotes because honestly the research from the SARS epidemic had already discovered this) that even cloth masks, let alone N95s, help reduce spread. This seems counterintuitive given the above (aerosols readily flow around gaps), but it turns out a couple factors are at play - namely:
* When you exhale, you aim a warm plume of moist, aerosol-laden air at the person you're speaking at (which decelerates over a meter or so and rises). This is a vastly higher concentration than in the ambient air.
* Infectivity of viral aerosols declines rapidly in the first ~5 seconds (down to about half), but then it levels out and declines in infectivity thereafter are very slow. The reason for this is that aerosols evaporate when encountering dry air into droplet nuclei (masses of salts, proteins, etc which are at a moisture equilibrium), and this transition ends up "killing" a lot of viral particles.
Even a cloth mask, while offering little or no protection to the wearer, redirects the highly infectious plume horizontally. It still enters the ambient airspace, but at lower infectivity.
Obviously, of course, N95s which actually filter particulates work much better, providing protection not only for others, but also for the wearer. Even though quality of what was on the market varies greatly (which I can confirm - I once did a fit test of a dozen different types of masks, and some provided basically no protection at all while with others not a single bit of bitrex aerosol got through in multi-minute tests).
Again: a HUGE amount of research on transmission was done in the pandemic. It would have been irresponsible for people to cling to old ideas as new data showed them wrong (sadly, some people - most famously at WHO - did just that).
** - The notion that most respiratory diseases are transmitted as droplets, not aerosols, has an interesting history [royalsocie...ishing.org], and comes down to an early misunderstanding from research on tuberculosis. Basically, TB is only effective at infecting people when spread on fine aerosols (under 5um) which can penetrate deep into the lungs, but this got mistaken reported as TB is unusual for transmitting on fine aerosols. Also the early calculations of what particles would remain suspended vs. settling out assumed no air motion whatsoever. But even a seemingly calm room still has air movement from thermal gradients and the like; the notion that under 5um was required to stay airborne is grossly incorrect. Other mistakes were made from e.g. not considering the impacts of evaporation on particle size post-exhalation and a whole host of other things. Basically, "assume a spherical cow".
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact is that we learned a lot more about disease transmission over the pandemic. A huge amount of research went into studying respiratory disease transmission, decades of research condensed down into a short timeframe. For example, we learned that the old paradigm of droplet transmission appears to be mostly, if not entirely, misguided. That respiratory diseases in general travel on fine aerosols, not droplets**
Someone somewhere must have been trying to wordsmith things, because the very definition of aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in another liquid, suspended in a gas.
There is no official size of a droplet, and we actually have to work to come up with a monodisperse droplet field. Most of the stuff we sneeze or hack up will be all over the size range. Plus they coagulate. So the "extremely fine aerosol" that is sometimes used to refute the efficacy of masks is pretty bogus.
I learned a bit about aerosols in pursuit of atmospheric sulfur aerosols.
Enough certainly to know that wearing a mask and keeping distance was a good bet until vaccines arrived. No matter what Fauci, or Trump, or others said.
Note - I have no issues With Fauci, he is a physician, not a physicist. Even so, he was smart enough to modify his stance. Unwavering stances are the province of religion, not science.
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Informative)
I think this one of those situations where looking at an event through the lens of how people feel about a certain subject can change how that event is interpreted.
Fauci's statement was aired on 2020-03-08. I didn't dig into when it was recorded, but I'm assuming it takes a least a week to edit and air an episode. So very early days in the pandemic, and well before the hospitals were getting overwhelmed with patients (side note, I work in large-scale health care).
At about 10 seconds into this video excerpt of the interview [youtube.com], Fauci states, "The masks are important for someone who's infected to prevent them from infecting someone else."
From my point of view, that brings us to the biggest problem with understanding and reporting on the mask mandate. It was never about keeping the wearer from getting Covid-19, it was only ever about reducing the speed at which the virus spread, so that hospitals could keep up. That's it, and it does work. Even the crappy cloth ones help a little in that effort. Unless all standards are followed and using N95 type masks, they don't prevent anyone from getting a virus, but it will mean the rate at which a virus spreads across a population is slowed.
I can't tell you how many times I heard low-level, undereducated health care workers say in private something like "It should be MY choice!" What??? Your choice to infect other people? Your choice to cripple the US health care system and make your job vastly more difficult? Your choice to send the elderly to the ICU? No, they meant their choice as to whether or not they get infected. Dumb, but sure it's their choice. That's not what the mask mandate was about and the fact that they were saying that indicates they had no idea what the masks were really for.
In order to push their stock price through increased ad revenue, some news organizations chose to intentionally misreport mask use to make it seem like an attack on personal liberty when they should have framed it as a nation coming together to bolster the health and well-being of the citizenry. They did this even as their most vocal talking heads were fearful of contracting the virus and strictly adhering to the mask mandate.
But people want to belong to tribes, regardless of how harmful they are.
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Let's be very careful here. The article you posted supports Shadow of Eternity's statement. Did you read it? Please don't argue against silliness with more silliness.
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Informative)
The most interesting part about all this. We are all told masks don't work, yet my mother in law who is immune compromised due to cancer treatment is told to have everyone put on masks around her and she should also mask up.
So masks work to protect people who have no immune systems, but not normal people. \_()_/
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According to revision history, that was simply one of Fauci's "noble lies"
There is a simple analysis to all of this, one that does not require massive studies, or Conspiracy theories, of Fauci or anyone else.
First is that viruses are not free floating, If they were, any mask with a pore size larger than the virus in question would be useless.
A virus is attached to something in order to get into your lungs. Sputum, phlegm, bodily liquids.
What you need to stop that is a mask with a pore size smaller than those particles.
I wore the simple disposable masks from day one of thi
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Two things I think are frequently lost in these discussions:
1. When Fauci made his statement about people not needing to wear masks, people tend to forget the context of the situation. At the time, mask manufacturers were caught off-guard and there was a huge run on masks. They were extremely hard to find to buy. Hospitals were running out and having a very hard time procuring the masks that they needed to perform operations. They were actively trying to discourage people from hoarding masks so that medical
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Being a visual reminder to keep you afraid
this one is the ultimate conservative projection. they live in a life of fear (fear of liberals, fear of the government, fear of immigrants, fear of change) so they assume everyone else does.
"i'd prefer to avoid getting a possibly debilitating respiratory virus by taking a precaution that has a very small effect on my activities" is not "being afraid". it might be for you but it's not for everyone.
it's also funny the performative fight against "submission" when your entire political belief system is based
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Once someone made this analogy: if
Re:Masks are effective... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, those police just let those people in [youtube.com]. Or did you mean the three hour battle [youtube.com] at the tunnel? Just look at all these peaceful protestors taking a tour with baseball bats, and sticks, and flag poles, wearing body armor and helmets [youtube.com]. Clearly the police let them through when the barricades were thrown at them.
After all, when you're a peaceful tourist, who doesn't bring a tomahawk [nbcnews.com] and smash windows? Or use a fire extinguisher [npr.org] on guards when visiting a site? Or hell, attacking guards [cbsnews.com] in general when on a "tour"?
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Because people went around saying and believing shit like this.
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I'm just back from a month of traveling through Argentina and Chile, which involved visiting a widely scattered range of places, from Buenos Aires and Santiago to the extreme south. There were places where a lot of people were masking, indicating that a Covid strain was active in the area. But I stayed healthy the whole time, because I'm fully vaccinated. I took the latest booster as soon as it became available, two days before starting the trip.
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
That was because there was a severe mask shortage.
Saying that wearing a mask would dramatically reduce your risk of getting COVID early on would have made it impossible for medical professionals that actually needed the masks to get them.
It all comes down to how should we communicate effectively in a way that prioritizes need but still extolls trust in the community.
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:4, Informative)
That was because there was a severe mask shortage.
Saying that wearing a mask would dramatically reduce your risk of getting COVID early on would have made it impossible for medical professionals that actually needed the masks to get them.
It all comes down to how should we communicate effectively in a way that prioritizes need but still extolls trust in the community.
Here is what Faucci said: https://rumble.com/vp1xst-fauc... [rumble.com]
It's not "don't wear a mask because there is a shortage".
It's "You don't need to wear a mask, and if you do it could lead to a shortage for people who really need it"
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Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We were told from the very beginning (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: We were told from the very beginning (Score:2)
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That nobody should be wearing masks unless you're somehow a 'professional' - ie. a member of some elite class, which you're not a member of.
This was official advice given for a brief time early in the pandemic, when there was a shortage of masks.
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That nobody should be wearing masks unless you're somehow a 'professional' - ie. a member of some elite class, which you're not a member of.
This was official advice given for a brief time early in the pandemic, when there was a shortage of masks.
That fact remains that Fauci choose to act and speak politically not scientifically. People would understand there is a shortage and doctors, nurses and first responders have to be at the front of the line. People would understand that, but then people would ask the politically inconvenient question, why is there a shortage? Fauci acted minimize that line of questioning, he acted politically, he revealed his true nature.
Re:Inconsistent messaging (Score:4, Interesting)
Regardless, messaging is irrelevant to this story.
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Fauci worked under the Reagan administration. That should give him a lifetime pass among the conservative community.
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No...it was Anthony "The Science" Fauci that said no masks at first....then pulled the 180 and said masks for everyone.
So what is your point, MAGA?
Wer the people who refused to wear masks based on Fauci being right, or were the disappointed that OBlama got to him, and had him change his mind so peopel could concentrate the virus inside their masks and die.
After I got my bleach injections, I haven't had as much as a cold since.
Donald Trump, son of man, son of God, have you been saved?
Re:Inconsistent messaging (Score:5, Informative)
Right, to prevent a run on masks and medical professionals becoming unable to get them initially.
Instead we had a lack of toilet paper.
Then our knowledge changed, we learned it was transmitted more in air than on surfaces, and masks became the priority over gloves/hand cleaner. But the hoarders still focused on toilet paper.
Self Serving Message (Score:2)
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But the hoarders still focused on toilet paper.
Argh. The rest of your post I agree with, but then you make a statement like this. It's just smug intellectualism.
Where I was (UK), there were a lot of people buying more toilet paper than they would normally buy, because the govt told them to avoid going to the supermarket - something I'm sure you'd agree was a good idea. So when they went to the supermarket, they all tried to stock up for the next month. This created an acute increase in demand, that resulted in the initial shortages, as there are not vas
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No, there was media saying that the problem was hoarders. He believed them uncritically.
The problem is "All I know is what I read in the papers" is true. You don't really know something just because the media says it's true. They usually oversimplify, often in ways that are dangerous to understanding what's actually going on. (Sometime they also have an agenda, but that's not necessary for this effect. It works even if what they're trying to do is just make the story intelligible to the widest audience
Re:Inconsistent messaging (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Inconsistent messaging (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inconsistent messaging (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes almost as if it took a gathering of data to reach a conclusion.
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In the beginning of the pandemic, these same people said *LOUD AND CLEAR* that you shouldn't be wearing masks, then they turned 180' and *EVERYONE* needed to wear them.
DID THEY?
If you need a never changing narrative, use your bible, not science. And a person that gets their science from politicians is a fool.
Are you still taking your ivermectin?
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The point is simple. In politics you can NEVER change your mind and evidence is useless. If you use experience or evidence and change your position you are a flip flopper and terrible.
This is called the "Appeal to Hypocrisy" or "Tu Quoque" fallacy. This fallacy occurs when someone argues that an opponent's argument must be wrong because the opponent has at some point changed their position or acted in a way that contradicts their argument. Essentially, it diverts the discussion away from the argument at han
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Well, duh. That's the definition of a right.
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It comes off to someone reading your reply that you find the idea of rights something worthy of derision, or only something for you.
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Let's see, the mask is basically an article of clothing...would you be comfortable with the govt. compelling you to wear other sorts of clothing? A special hat perhaps....or some armband with some sort of symbol?
If not
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Well, a seatbelt isn't really an article of clothing...it's a restraint system that is part of a car.
And if, by chance, yo
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While no specific federal law exists about mask mandates, public health laws empower the executive branch to make rules “to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession.”
That said, I don't necessarily "like" the idea of being forced to wear a mask, but I respect the need to protect the population. My issue lies with people who are declaring their rights as being trodden on when in fact they just don't like what's being done.
Re: The "My rights" crowd was going to find a reas (Score:2)
No, it's not. A right is a privilege or power that someone has that government cannot limit or take away without very good reason, and then generally only to the extent required to meet limited government interests.
All rights have limits. You have the right to free speech, but that does not include the right to intentionally spread damaging lies about someone else or to get a person or group of people to commit violence. You have the right to a religion of your choice, but you may not murder someone or sacr
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The “my rights” crowd sure is strangely silent when it comes to a lot of things.
Re:WHy cant I downvote this load? (Score:5, Informative)
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Indeed, the physics strongly precludes free viral particles, as surface tension is insanely strong at those scales. If it starts out bound to a solid or a liquid, it's going to stay bound to a solid or liquid, of some kind or another.
Respiratory aerosols appear to be primarily created by film rupture - aka, tiny bubbles pop. Upon exhalation, they dry out into droplet nuclei, which are mixtures of all the "gunk" that was in the liquid (salts, proteins, lipids, surfactants, etc - including a tiny fraction o
Re:WHy cant I downvote this load? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:WHy cant I downvote this load? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because something isn't a 100% effective (not any things are in reality) people act justified like it's 0% effective.
That's even worse statistics. It's the kind of probability that people who play the lottery use, to conclude that the chance of winning is 50%, because either you win or you don't.
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That's not how filters work (M95 masks are essentially filters on your face).
Filters only capture large particles like a fishnet does, where things too big can't get through. Somewhat smaller particles are captured by impingement; even though they could get through
Re: WHy cant I downvote this load? (Score:2)
You donâ(TM)t protect yourself from Covid by wearing a mask that stops the virus from entering your body. You protect yourself by wearing a mask that slightly reduces transmission to others, and by convincing others to do the same, so the whole country does not get infected. The ones saying "oh no these masks are no good" are the ones who spread it.
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Re:You have to be REALLY ignorant... (Score:4, Informative)
N95 masks have an electret [wikipedia.org] filtration layer, which effectively has a permanent electrostatic charge. It's not a just a mechanical filter like a sieve, they actively attract submicrometer-sized aerosol particles to the mask fibres. This is also why you should be wary of trying to clean masks for re-use - soaps can significantly degrade the electret charge.
Re: This is highly incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
Re: âoeMasks work.â (Score:2)
Only six of the studies included in this review were conducted during the pandemic. There were plenty of others that were not included for some reason that was likely exp