Are Face Masks Effective? CBS News Explains What We Know (cbsnews.com) 391
Are face masks effective in stopping virus transmissions? CBS News re-visited the question Sunday on its news show 60 Minutes by sending their chief medical correspondent to interview Linsey Marr, a professor who specializes in aerosol science at Virginia Tech University.
Here's a transcript from an excerpt posted on YouTube: 60 Minutes: Is there any doubt in your mind that masks prevent the person who's wearing it from getting Covid — or at least, are helpful?
Professor Marr: I would say they are very helpful in reducing the chances that the person will get Covid. Because it's reducing the amount of virus that you would inhale from the air around you.
It's not going to guarantee that it's going to protect you, because are masks are not 100% effective — we talk about N-95's being 95% efficient at filtering out particles, if they're properly fitted and everything, and so that's in an ideal world. But even so, if you — instead of breathing in 100 virsues, I'm breathing in 20, because my mask was 80% effective? That's a huge reduction, and that greatly reduces the chance that I'm going to become infected.
On the CBS News web site, they highlight this excerpt from the interview: Early in the pandemic, some guidance from health professionals suggested that wearing a mask might actually lead to infection: A person might encounter a contaminated mask and then touch their eyes, nose, or mouth. But research in the ensuing years has shown that fear to be misplaced. "There wasn't any evidence really that that happens," Marr said.
Marr said her team aerosolized the coronavirus, pulled it through a mask, and then examined how much virus survived on the mask. The study reported some viral particle remained on some cloth masks, but no virus survived on the N95s or surgical masks. Marr's team also touched artificial skin to masks and looked at how many virus particles transferred to the artificial skin. No infectious virus transferred.
"I hope the study kind of shows that it's something we don't need to worry about as much as we were told," Marr said.
CBS gave their video interview the headline "Face mask effectiveness: What we know now" — and asked professor Marr for a definitive answer: 60 Minutes: There was a lot of controversy over whether or not masks worked at all. Were you able to show that they worked scientifically?
Professor Marr: We were able to show that they block particles that are the same size as those that carry the virus... What happens is the virus is being carried in the air, and it's not just going straight through those holes. It has to weave around all these layers of fibers in there. As the air is going around the curves, the virus may crash into one of those fibers, and so then it's trapped, or maybe it comes up close to the fiber and brushes against it. And the really small particles, like the virus by itself if it were by itself, would be small enough that it undergoes these random motions, because it's getting bounced around by the gas molecules, and it ends up crashing into the fibers of the mask too.
So there was accumulating evidence — and there had been kind of a handful of papers before that, too, showing the same thing. That masks — even cloth masks — do something.
Here's a transcript from an excerpt posted on YouTube: 60 Minutes: Is there any doubt in your mind that masks prevent the person who's wearing it from getting Covid — or at least, are helpful?
Professor Marr: I would say they are very helpful in reducing the chances that the person will get Covid. Because it's reducing the amount of virus that you would inhale from the air around you.
It's not going to guarantee that it's going to protect you, because are masks are not 100% effective — we talk about N-95's being 95% efficient at filtering out particles, if they're properly fitted and everything, and so that's in an ideal world. But even so, if you — instead of breathing in 100 virsues, I'm breathing in 20, because my mask was 80% effective? That's a huge reduction, and that greatly reduces the chance that I'm going to become infected.
On the CBS News web site, they highlight this excerpt from the interview: Early in the pandemic, some guidance from health professionals suggested that wearing a mask might actually lead to infection: A person might encounter a contaminated mask and then touch their eyes, nose, or mouth. But research in the ensuing years has shown that fear to be misplaced. "There wasn't any evidence really that that happens," Marr said.
Marr said her team aerosolized the coronavirus, pulled it through a mask, and then examined how much virus survived on the mask. The study reported some viral particle remained on some cloth masks, but no virus survived on the N95s or surgical masks. Marr's team also touched artificial skin to masks and looked at how many virus particles transferred to the artificial skin. No infectious virus transferred.
"I hope the study kind of shows that it's something we don't need to worry about as much as we were told," Marr said.
CBS gave their video interview the headline "Face mask effectiveness: What we know now" — and asked professor Marr for a definitive answer: 60 Minutes: There was a lot of controversy over whether or not masks worked at all. Were you able to show that they worked scientifically?
Professor Marr: We were able to show that they block particles that are the same size as those that carry the virus... What happens is the virus is being carried in the air, and it's not just going straight through those holes. It has to weave around all these layers of fibers in there. As the air is going around the curves, the virus may crash into one of those fibers, and so then it's trapped, or maybe it comes up close to the fiber and brushes against it. And the really small particles, like the virus by itself if it were by itself, would be small enough that it undergoes these random motions, because it's getting bounced around by the gas molecules, and it ends up crashing into the fibers of the mask too.
So there was accumulating evidence — and there had been kind of a handful of papers before that, too, showing the same thing. That masks — even cloth masks — do something.
The sound is deafening!@ (Score:3, Funny)
All those conspiracy hotheads with mechanical keyboards are ROARING!
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The anti-maskers want direct evidence they reduce infections, not just particle experiments in labs, such as A/B population illness studies. Then again, they'll probably invent a reason to reject those also; they are a stubborn lot.
Re:The sound is deafening!@ (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be silly. If we've learned anything, it's that they don't actually want evidence. All they're interested in is justifying their selfish decision to not wear a mask.
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Or in my case, my choice to switch from N95 to Hepa-16 due to particle size- that was utterly *denied* by all the hospitals in my state during my wife's recovery from brain surgery. They actively forced me to switch to a mask that was objectively *less effective* due to not believing that my silicone frame didn't have an unfiltered exhaust port (the number of idiot guards and supposedly educated medical personnel that told me somehow a double Hepa-16 filter would only protect me from others and not my wife
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There's a perfectly good reason to deny you wearing your home-made mask. I don't doubt that it was better than a commercial mask, but the hospital had no way to verify that. They are not equipped with the manpower, equipment, or probably even the expertise to certify a new mask design. Especially not when there's a stack of already certified masks close at hand.
Or putting it another way... Say they allowed your non-certified mask. And they allowed the guy seeing the person in the next bed over to wear t
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What got me was the racism protesters were given a total pass- and then had the audacity to complain about tear gas. If you were truly prepared to protest during a pandemic, your mask would be effective enough to make tear gas ineffective....
Re: never underestimate stupidity (Score:3)
I'm afraid another pivotal concern may have been costs: inferior masks such as surgical are much cheaper. So, here in Virginia the hospital admin logic went, the mask they chose should be the standard for all purposes (our hospital required visitors to give up their personal N95s for a surgical mask, which was at least free).
As even more damning evidence of institutional thinking, the same hospital network required my PCP to wear a mask for telemedicine visits. I burst out laughing when I saw him and asked,
Sheeple but unironically this time. (Score:4)
Part of the problem is that the CDC discouraged mask usage so there wouldn’t be a run on masks. They had a good notion that it would help and even recommended that hospital workers wear surgical masks while in casual contact with infected patients (Like walking by open doors). Literally one link over on the same website they’re telling normal people they’re useless.
They also lied about the difficulty of properly wearing n95 masks. Short of a full fit test which wasn’t usually happening in hospitals, everything you need to know about wearing an n95 can be communicated in a short infographic.
The interesting thing to observe was how few people were able to think critically about information in the face of contradicting information from an authority. All it would have taken was a gut feeling that something was off and a few time limited google searches from before the crisis or enough curiosity and concern to bother clicking the CDC link for healthcare providers.
But no.
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You literally don't know what "literally" means.
Re: The sound is deafening!@ (Score:4, Insightful)
And a cloth mask is better than no mask, evidenced by many studies and openly available lab experiments. And once essential roles had a good enough stockpile of N95 masks, it was then recommended that people get rid of the cloth and use a proper N95+.
I don't know why people seem to think that it wasn't an evolving situation with many variables dictating public policy, which shifted necessarily to achieve the best outcome available at whatever time decisions were being made. There are so many bad-faith arguments made about "conflicting" advise where the timeline is completely ignored as if that's rational at all.
Re: The sound is deafening!@ (Score:5, Informative)
Cloth masks protect other people by catching most of what you spew out of your gob at them. The reality is when you talk, even to some extent when you breathe, there are droplets being thrown out into the air. It's why respiratory viruses like the common cold and flu are so successful.
N95, or better still FFP3 masks will protect you. FFP3 filters >99% of virus carrying particles. You can get foldable, compact ones that area ideal for travel. I personally like Moldex ones with a neoprene gasket, because they are very easy to don and doff and get a good seal with.
Re: The sound is deafening!@ (Score:4, Interesting)
If it doesn't protect ME, I'm not seeing the cost benefit of the effort.
The idea was that if everyone does it, we all protect each other. That was particularly important when N95/FFP3 masks were in short supply and needed for medical staff.
But after the first vaccine...I pretty much kicked them to the curb.
Unfortunately even when vaccinated it's still a lottery. The odds are better but you can still get Long COVID and other permanent damage done. It's up to you how much risk you are willing to tolerate, but just know that Long COVID is an absolutely horrible disease that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
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Every time there is a wave of COVID, it coincides with a wave of 1 star reviews of Yankee Candles. Reviewers complain that the candles have no scent. In other words, they got Long COVID and their sense of smell is likely permanently lost.
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My wife just came down with COVID in spite of being fully vaccinated and boosted.
COVID hasn't gone away.
Wear a mask!
Re: The sound is deafening!@ (Score:5, Insightful)
If it doesn't protect ME, I'm not seeing the cost benefit of the effort."
And people say the anti-Vaxxers are jerks.
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I think one of the main benefits to cloth masks is simply acting as a reminder to keep your hands away from your face, until you have washed them properly.
I kinda like having part of my face hidden too. Aside form slightly frustrating commercial surveillance in shops, I don't have to think about the expression on my face so much.
Re:The sound is deafening!@ (Score:4, Funny)
the volume of air I pull in through my eyes is relatively small.
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Re:The sound is deafening!@ (Score:5, Insightful)
not because they reduce reception - as the [pathetic] article attempts to claim - but rather transmission.
Good luck receiving a quantity of something that hasn't been transmitted - they are intrinsically linked. Though it has been proven to reduce both, to different extents.
Your eyes covered??
Reduce. You can attack just the primary concern and not eliminate all secondary concerns and still cause a reduction. You can do more if you'd like. Eyes don't breathe, and they're not a direct target of the virus so you are drastically less likely to acquire an infection through the eyes in the first place.
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Well now (Score:2)
This is going to be an entertaining discussion thread!
/grabs popcorn
Glad thatâ(TM)s settled. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Glad thatâ(TM)s settled. (Score:5, Informative)
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If you get lower dosage of the virus, than there's less viruses that can causing an infection, and incubate in your body. Therefore a greater chance you have a mild case of covid versus a serious case. It's simple logic.
It's like radiation. If you get a lower dosage, it's better than getting a higher dosage.
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That's exactly how it works. It was never about stopping anything at 0.
Re:Glad thatâ(TM)s settled. (Score:5, Informative)
Using a mass-shooting analogy is a very, very American way to put it.
Re:Glad thatâ(TM)s settled. (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the main benefit of wearing a mask accrued to people around you.
They may not prevent you from getting Covid, but they make a much more significant reduction in the chance you will pass on an infection. This article doesn't seem to address that.
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Re: Glad thatâ(TM)s settled. (Score:3)
The #1 benefit of masks was the ability it gave you to conceal runny nose due to allergies from others without being treated like Typhoid Mary.
In South Florida, most people wore masks... but 95%+ were largely-symbolic cloth masks nobody *ever* actually washed & were probably a bigger cumulative biohazard after a few weeks than no mask at all.
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Washing a mask destroys its abilty to function as intended. The fibers work by electrostatic attraction to small particles, and that is destroyed completely by immersion in liquid. Hang it up when not in use, and the viruses in it will die, and as long as it's not visibly contaminated it will remain safe and functional for a long time.
There is no evidence what so ever that a mask becomes a "cumulative boihazard after a few weeks". On the contrary, it will still reduce virus load in both directions.
.3um (Score:4, Insightful)
I read that a properly fitted N95 mask blocks 95% of all 0.3um particles.
I'm not sure how that relates to viruses, but I doubt the viruses travel alone, and I have no idea how much or little virus it takes to infect someone via the eyes, mouth, nose etc. But minimizing the amount of virus that gets into the airway seems like it would be beneficial to me.
All the research I've seen (Score:5, Interesting)
All that research though is for covid I believe they've been shown to be highly effective against the flu and other viruses that are less contagious. To the point where if we could just get people to wear masks when they were feeling under the weather we'd probably save thousands and thousands of lives.
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For something as leaky as cloth, it works a lot better on the sick person than on the well person. Aerosolized droplets carrying viruses are bigger at the beginning and they get stopped from hitting the air by cloth. Going the other way, as those virus droplets evaporate, they will eventually get small enough to even breach an N95. Or at least VERY easily breach anything more porous.
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Hell with my luck I'd be part of that tiny cohort who's fully vacci
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All that research though is for covid I believe they've been shown to be highly effective against the flu and other viruses that are less contagious. To the point where if we could just get people to wear masks when they were feeling under the weather we'd probably save thousands and thousands of lives.
To the point where one of the major strains of Influenza B (Yamagata) likely went extinct entirely because of the combination of masking, social distancing, higher rates of flu vaccination, and viral interference during the COVID pandemic. By itself, that probably prevented a few dozen deaths per year from now until the end of time. :-)
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They're not very effective at keeping you from getting sick just by wearing them though, although it's still somewhere between 5 and 10% which isn't nothing if you consider the number of interactions you're likely to have.
If you are likely to have a large number of interactions, a low-effectiveness mask makes very little difference, because the interaction count dominates the infection probability.
If you have probability p of infection on each interaction, over n interactions, your total probability of infection is 1-(1-p)^n. For example, with 100 interactions, p=1% (unmasked) yields a total probability of infection of 63%. A cloth mask that reduces your per-interaction probability by 10% to p=0.9%, only reduces your total
Re:.3um (Score:5, Informative)
I read that a properly fitted N95 mask blocks 95% of all 0.3um particles.
I'm not sure how that relates to viruses ...
Airborne viruses always travel suspended in droplets or aerosolized particles of liquid, and those could be a wide range of sizes, depending on where in the lungs/nose/throat they were generated.
For COVID, the highest concentration (at least when measured in 2022) are in particles 0.94 to 2.8 micrometers [nih.gov] in size, but they can be considerably smaller or larger.
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I agree smaller dose intuitively means less of a hazard of an infection putting down roots before the immune system wipes it out. However, I've never seen data for this.
IIRC coronavirus particles were around 0.1 um, but the virus would fall apart traveling bare. N95 do filter in that range in any event, just not at the advertised and tested level of an N95's 95% @ 0.3 um (you can get N100s which don't quite hit 100%; it's a rounding thing). Aerosols are typically much larger, 1+ um up, then transition to vi
Too much politics behind this... (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, if I am in a closed space, I will pull one out. Without a face mask on a plane or a bus, you almost certainly will come down with some illness, because airflow is little, and enough viruses in a closed space will overwhelm any immune system, no matter if one has had the shot or not.
Other than that, I just don't care about the politics and follow common sense guidelines. I've had enough of "compliance is violence" on one side, and "Befehl ist Befehl" on the other side. I get my immunizations on schedule, like I've always done since I was a kid, as the anti-vax lobby's main support are Russian psy-ops divisions. PPA is not up to political debate. Nobody says that I'm being a weem because I'm using goggles for eye protection when using power tools, so I don't care what anyone thinks about face masks.
The politics are really only coming from one side (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual science is pretty well settled. Cloth masks are highly effective if people will wear them in Mass because although they're not that effective at preventing you from getting sick they're highly effective at preventing you from getting other people sick. The reason it became a culture War issue is because when you have something that is mildly inconvenient and largely benefits people other than yourself there's a certain class of people who will want to say fuck it who cares about anyone but me.... Those people will amplify the message that there is doubt around the science and get people who are perhaps willing to take the inconvenience on their side by whipping up a frenzy...
It's a classic moral panic strategy. the same technique was used back in the '80s with the satanic panic and when they used to tell us that dungeons and dragons and He-Man were going to turn us into satanists. It's the same basic tricks over and over and over again used against us and I wish folks would start to detect the patterns or at least be taught them in school
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Cloth masks were effective until maybe Delta. After Omicron the CDC basically said and the swiftness of the infectious wave in China proved they are ineffective as a transmission preventive measure.
https://health.clevelandclinic... [clevelandclinic.org]
In mid-January, the CDC announced that loose-fitting cloth masks were not enough to protect against omicron. To give yourself the best shot against the variant, upgrade your cloth masks and instead choose a high-filtration mask that fits closely to your face.
âoeYou really wan
Re:The politics are really only coming from one si (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I like about science, it evolves as new facts emerge:
Again they are and remain effective (Score:4, Insightful)
Wearing the masks prevents the virus from spreading very far so that social distancing is more than enough to stop the spread.
The problem is when people refuse to take precautions because they believe in the culture War over everything else they go around spreading the virus and the fact is it's much less effective to wear a mask for protection than it is to wear a mask to protect others.
What we have here is a kind of hyper antisocial behavior where you have people who literally want to go around getting other people sick just as a sort of fuck you and a childish bit of rebellion. I don't think it's the majority of the population but the problem is that minority is catered to because they're useful politically for a variety of other reasons.
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The reason it became a culture War issue is because when you have something that is mildly inconvenient and largely benefits people other than yourself there's a certain class of people who will want to say fuck it who cares about anyone but me....
And in a leopards eating faces sort of turnabout, those people also ended up being more likely to catch Covid. My partner actually has quite a few family members who hit the right-wing Kool-Aid rather hard and they refused to do the mask thing. They all ended up catching it before the vaccines were available and had a rather rough go of it. One of them even ended up hospitalized.
We, however, followed all the recommended masking and staying the fuck away from people guidelines. We didn't end up catching
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He did say if there are enough viruses and virus particles in the air.
At this stage of the wuhan plague i still wear a surgical mask when i leave the house. My reason is simple: i don't want to catch anything, no matter the odds, period.
Run the damned experiment (Score:2)
Take about 200 people. Give half of them whichever mask you want to test. Then sit them across the table from covid mary for a half hour conversation and have them swab themselves daily for a week.
No need to extrapolate from lab measurements or make any idealized assumptions. If the mask group catches covid elsewhere within those 7 days, that's *also* a datapoint worth remembering. If the mask group ends up with the mask on their chin half the time, that's also a datapoint worth remembering. Because the que
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Tl;dr
I disagree and will continue googling for a source to confirm my bias.
Re:Run the damned experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
Take about 200 people. Give half of them whichever mask you want to test. Then sit them across the table from covid mary for a half hour conversation and have them swab themselves daily for a week.
Turns out that the existence of medical ethics prohibits doctors from doing this.
But, go ahead and get 200 of your friends and do the experiment yourself.
Re: Run the damned experiment (Score:2)
Medical ethics is funny. I bet you would have gotten more than 200 volunteers for a challenge trial of the vaccines. And you could have gotten an answer in weeks, not months. Could have saved tens of thousands of lives rolling it out a few months early.
Medical ethics is sometimes reasonable, but its primary performance metric is avoiding lawsuits. Doing good in the world is a nice-to-have, but not the main objective.
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Take about 200 people. Give half of them whichever mask you want to test. Then sit them across the table from covid mary for a half hour conversation and have them swab themselves daily for a week.
The problem is that if I understand the proposal correctly, you'd be testing the wrong thing. By putting masks only on the healthy people, you're effectively testing the effectiveness of voluntary mask use, rather than mask mandates. That will give you very different results than a mask mandate, where the sick people are also masked, because a sick person in a mask reduces the risk for everyone around that person, while a healthy person in a mask reduces the risk for only that person, resulting in the imp
Effectiveness was never the real question (Score:3, Interesting)
All but the most rabid deniers agreed that masks had some positive benefit. The question that split Americans was this: Are masks effective enough, and the risks great enough, to make masks legally mandatory? And if so, under what conditions should they be mandatory?
In Houston where I live, early in the pandemic, the county went around inspecting businesses. If they found someone not wearing a mask, they would shut the business down. Yes, this is Texas I'm talking about. Many other states and places had similar policies, or more strict. This kind of heavy-handed enforcement generated a huge backlash, even from those who otherwise supported mask-wearing.
Mask-wearing is no longer about science or effectiveness. It has become a religion. Some religiously wear them, and others religiously refuse to wear them. When we ask academic questions about the effectiveness of masks, we cannot forget the human side of the equation. The harder you push, the harder people push back. Finding the right balance is never easy, but nevertheless is crucial.
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Many of the most ardent mask-refusers believe that N95 masks *work*. What they don't believe, is that they work *well enough* or that the risk was *high enough* to justify a legal mandate.
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That's not how they argue. The arguments are "I wore a mask and got covid anywa, masks don't work", and "if I take my mask off to eat, I nullify the effect of the mask, so I might as well not wear one."
You're giving the naysayers WAY too much credit here. The reasoning in most people is extremely binary. Masks work if they make you immune to getting sick, and if they do not, you might as well not wear one because they do not work.
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This kind of heavy-handed enforcement generated a huge backlash, even from those who otherwise supported mask-wearing.
Personally, I find post 9/11 security checkpoints to be far more obnoxious than having to wear a Covid mask. But then I remember that was a long time ago and there are adults alive today who don't even remember a time when you didn't have to take your belt off and try to hold your pants up while trudging through a metal detector, just to enter a theme park.
Also more annoying than mask wearing are Walmart's reduced operating hours. My partner works 2nd shift and everything is closed by the time he's off wo
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I agree that the 9/11 security protocols are a good parallel. We still can't bring a Coke with us through airport checkpoints, but we can bring a knife with a blade less than 4 inches long--which is precisely what the terrorists used. The same silliness and inconsistency of rules tends to sabotage both airport security, and COVID prevention.
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I'm curious, what dangers does "extended masking" carry? I mean, you have surgeons who wear them for darn near an entire extended shift. You have military people like me who wore them, again, almost all day long. Much heavier masks than just surgical ones, by the way.
Also, under what metric do you consider the benefits to be "insignificant"? The figures I saw said that they seriously reduced your chances of infection as long as you wore them seriously. IE not under your nose, covering only your chin, e
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That's pure russian bot propaganda. There are no dangers with extended mask carrying. And the benefit even of an ill fitted mask is well over 50% reduction in viruses transmitted on exhale, which is a far cry from statistically significant.
Omicron changed the risk reduction factor of masks (Score:2, Informative)
Omicron is so contagious that cloth and poorly fitted N95 type masks provide almost no protection from spread. On early variants masking with just about anything was effective but today only a well fitted respirator provides good protection. What's slowing and stopping spread now is immunity from vaccination and exposure.
Omicron, after Covid-zero was lifted in China (little exposure and poor vaccination) was spreading exponential in weeks in a population where masking was mandatory.
https://www.nature.com/a [nature.com]
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Tell me you don't know anyone who has had COVID recently without telling me you don't know someone who's had COVID recently.
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From personal experience the two times I caught COVID, both were on a plane when I was double masked.
Right here we can see issues:
1. You're in the worst sort of petri dish exposure situation. You're on a cross-pacific flight, 14+ hours of close contact with "everybody" else on the plane.
2. You're double masking. If you don't do it right, odds are you'll merely make the seals worse, and just increase exposure.
Where did I catch Covid from in a society that is mostly masked, if masks work at all to stop spread?
You're committing a fundamental statistical error here.
"Masks work at all to stop spread" would be a "greater than zero" standard. They could be 50% effective and meet this standard. Take condoms
The other thing about face masks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Face masks are as much about protecting other people from you as about protecting you from other people. That's why doctors wear masks during surgery. They aren't protecting themselves from anything they might catch from you. They're protecting you from anything they might be carrying. Same thing in everyday life, those cheap non-N95 masks that don't fit properly are still 95%+ effective at catching the droplets you breathe out and keeping them from getting into the air where other people can breathe them in. Even those cloth ones with the vent on one side are 90%+ effective.
If everyone masks up, everyone starts out with only 5-10% of the virus load in the air that there'd be without masks. N95 masks then cut that down by 95%, yielding 0.25-0.5% load as opposed to 5% if nobody else masks up.
Bluntly put, people who refuse to mask up during a pandemic are saying "My comfort matters more than anybody else's life.".
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This is exactly it. Masking isn't about protecting the individual, it's about reducing the probability of transmission population-wide. It's all about statistics.
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Indeed. But most of the nil wit anti-maskers do not understand even simple statistics. And because they mistakenly believe they are smart, they then come up with the most outlandish and stupid "explanations" why not to wear masks. Like small children really.
Is forcing it warranted? (Score:3, Insightful)
The main objection is that people do not like to be pushed around. If the government forces people something they do not want to do, this creates some push back. If we cannot just say NO, then we try to come up with reasons why this should not be forced on us. This is why there are all these discussions. OK, as I see it, the main question is, "If the benefit the masks provide is worth of forcing people to wear them, is it worth of violating their personal freedoms?"
Is is worth of violating personal freedoms to gain 1% protection? Or 20%, or 60% protection? Where do we draw the line? This is a technical question, it could be difficult to answer, but if we would put it in this discussion plane, it would definitely be less divisive. And, probably, more scientific. So far it was done badly, just do it because we said so. Obviously, some people do not want it.
Absolute IDIOT!!! (Score:2)
The answer is simply yes, properly used, genuine N95 masks are 100% effective at filtering particles in the size category of a covid virus but able to let breathable air pass mostly unimpeded.
What he should have pointed out is the vast majority of masks used during the outbreak did not meet specification, were mostly used improperly and very few peopl
Re:Absolute IDIOT!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
And here we see a perfect example of the binary reasoning in effect. If masks do not stop 100% of particles, they are ineffective.
That's not how masks work, and that is not the point of wearing masks. Masks exist to reduce the probability of getting infected, by reducing the viral load. Even 5% effectiveness at that can be enough to lower the viral load to the point where the immune system can handle it. But not even a simple cloth wrapped around the head is that inefficient.
Evren a mask which does not meet specification and is used improperly will do its job, and reduce the viral load the wearer and others receive. If everyone improperly wears masks which do not meed specification, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lives are saved, and long covid would be a parenthesis in history instead of a major problem.
The overall protection is probably much better (Score:3)
As viruses do not float around in the air by themselves but in small water droplets which are much larger than viruses and much more easily absorbed by the fibers. Also the protection is obviously much much higher if all people wear masks as the virus/droplet has a high change to get blocked by mask of the person exhaling and then another high chance to get blocked by the mask of the person petentially inhaling. It would also be interesting to know if they/somebody studied the fluid dynamics of what it means that the air gets more spread out when exhaling, in comparison to breathing out through the mouth or nose.
Yes. (!?!) (Score:3, Insightful)
That facemasks are effective in reducing the spread of airborne pathogens is well established and has been confirmed in countless peer-reviewed scientific studies. This is the reason surgeons, dentists and other healthcare professionals have been wearing them on the job for a century or more. It's also the reason some societies such as Japan consider it common sense and decency to wear them when you're ill.
Why is this even a topic in 2023?
Or is this once again some loony US American thing I'm to European for to understand?
Re:Yes. (!?!) (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is this once again some loony US American thing I'm to European for to understand?
Very likely, yes.
There's a segment of society that sees it as "un-american" to take on even the slightest inconvenience if it benefits the public good, and strongly denounces as "nanny state" any suggestion that they do something that benefits anyone but themselves. This was the crowd that would run around maskless saying stuff like "I had covid and it was just a cold!" and would at times violently defend their civil right to put others at risk. There's a significant overlap between this group and the folks who don't wear seat belts or motorcycle helmets (or begrudgingly wear the useless turtle shell style), complain about paying taxes, and leave their cars parked at the gas pump while they go inside to buy lottery tickets.
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Or is this once again some loony US American thing I'm to European for to understand?
Sounds like it. Low education, low insight but gigantic egos and big mouths. Very American.
Lol, I'm the only one still wearing one (Score:4, Interesting)
At least around me.
Dunno if they do anything for covid, but I used to get 1 - 2 respiratory illnesses a year, now I get none. I like that.
That said. all the cool kids who thought I was a walking demon for doubting any aspect of the covid police state, none of them wear masks anymore.
It was never about science for 99.9% of people; it was about fashion, signaling allegiance, and politics.
BUT MAH FREEDUMZ (Score:3)
I don't *want* to wear a mask! I don't wanna, don't wanna, don't wanna!!! Noooooo!!!!! Stop it!!! I don't want it on my faaaaaace!!! It makes it hard to breathe! HELP, HELP, I CAN'T BREATHE, I HAVE SOME CLOTH ON MY FACE!!!!!
Why are you trying to destroy America with your anti-freedom health care science mumbo jumbo!!!
I'm just gonna inject bleach in my body, bleach kills viruses!!!
FREEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM
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Almost as if it took time to gather data to reach a conclusion.
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The data that masks prevent the spread of an airborne virus?
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I mean yes? Not all viruses spread the same or have the same infection rate.
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Almost as if it took time to gather data to reach a conclusion.
The data that masks prevent the spread of an airborne virus?
The data that shows the prevention is significant when used by the general population instead of just those in close contact with heavily symptomatic patients.
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No the data showed the exact opposite
False.
We've known for some time now that cloth and surgical masks are also effective. Why do you continue to lie about things that are trivial to check?
Re:Of course they are (Score:4, Informative)
The data that COVID could be spread through airborne transmission. Most of the pre-cursor coronaviruses were not as virulent through airborne transmission and typically required direct contact with contaminated bodily fluids (someone coughing on you, you touching that person's mucous, etc.). That's why they didn't think masking would be effective, because it doesn't really help diseases like MERS or SARS. Both of those diseases lose potency when airborne and don't stay alive nearly as long when spread that way.
This is why they advised to wipe down packages and clean counters with disinfectant at the beginning of the pandemic, because that's how they thought it was getting transmitted. I'm pretty COVID-19 can get transmitted that way too, but most of its transmission is airborne.
COVID-19 though, hits different. Its transmission is very effective when airborne and it stays active a lot longer when aerosolized.
Here's a research paper where they compare the different coronaviruses and their transmission rates: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.10... [pnas.org]
Enjoy.
Re: Of course they are (Score:2)
Also, studies of masking vs flu showed no effect, for whatever reason.
Re: Of course they are (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Of course they are (Score:3)
One strain of influenza has gone extinct in the past 2 years, probably because of masking.
Re:That's not how that works. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are no less likely to get a virus if only 20 get on you versus 100. Viruses reproduce. As long as one gets into your system, you may get sick.
Sounds logical, but turns out not to be the case.
In terms of probability of infection, dose makes a difference. No, one virus is not just as bad as 20.
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Re:That's not how that works. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's not how that works. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are no less likely to get a virus if only 20 get on you versus 100. Viruses reproduce. As long as one gets into your system, you may get sick.
Yes you are, viral infections have a dose dependent risk of infection, one, 100, 10,000 viruses entering the body all have different probability of causing infection, this is even observed on cell tissues (that only have a very limited immune system to fight the infection) much more on actual living organisms.
Re:That's not how that works. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are no less likely to get a virus if only 20 get on you versus 100. Viruses reproduce. As long as one gets into your system, you may get sick.
Yes you are, viral infections have a dose dependent risk of infection, one, 100, 10,000 viruses entering the body all have different probability of causing infection, this is even observed on cell tissues (that only have a very limited immune system to fight the infection) much more on actual living organisms.
IIRC, even severity of infection can be dose dependent. A smaller number of virus particles allows your immune system more time to adapt and learn how to fight the intruder before the number grows to the point where it would overwhelm all defenses. This can make the disease milder and recovery may be faster. I suspect this effect explains a lot of asymptomatic infections.
Re:That's not how that works. (Score:5, Insightful)
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"BTW, from the epidemiology angle, we know that people who used masks got COVID much less often, plain and simple."
I use masks when they mandate them, and I'm all about reducing the spread, and if you want to publish some hard evidence supporting mask use that'd be great, but this is the least convincing argument you can make. There are *obviously* confounding factors when you consider "people who used masks" because those people are almost certainly more cautious to begin with and less likely to go to soc
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That isn't a function of how many of the virus gets into your system,
READ. A. BOOK. It is very much a function of that. This isn't pregnancy where 1 successful sperm is the same as a million. If your body hasn't seen a virus before, it needs time to mount a defense and spread the knowledge throughout the body in the form of antibodies. If the virus replicates at a rate faster than your body can adapt, you get sicker. If you are able to mount a strong defense, you will keep the replication at bay until you can completely fight it off.
If you only look at whether someone
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Tell me you didn't read what I wrote without telling me you didn't read what I wrote.
What part of what I wrote contradicts what you wrote?
Re:That's not how that works. (Score:5, Informative)
Tell me you didn't read what I wrote without telling me you didn't read what I wrote.
What part of what I wrote contradicts what you wrote?
All of it. You said:
You are no less likely to get a virus if only 20 get on you versus 100.
This is not true. First, most viruses that get inhaled also get exhaled, so only a small percentage will actually hit anything. Second, not all tissue is equally susceptible. Third, if you get 20, there's a better chance that those few viruses will be destroyed when a couple of epithelial cells send out a signal that they are in trouble and your immune system kills off those cells with the replicating virus inside. This can happen even without your immune system being aware of the virus itself.
That's why there's a threshold below which you likely won't get sick at all, because your multi-layer immune system will fight it off before it becomes what would be typically considered an infection in the first place, which also means your immune system won't learn about it, and won't have any immunity to it, but still, you didn't get sick, so whatevs.
Viruses reproduce. As long as one gets into your system, you may get sick. Now, you immune system may protect you, or it may not. That isn't a function of how many of the virus gets into your system, but rather or similar virus having been seen before.
Actually, it is. Even if you ignore all of the pro-inflammatory cytokine responses, etc. that can happen without the immune system having seen the virus before, even a naïve immune system will still eradicate a virus more quickly once it realizes that the virus exists and is a threat if the viral dose was smaller, because it is fighting fewer fires at once, and the antibody response doesn't have to beat down as many circulating virions.
You can only produce antibodies so quickly, and this is doubly true when the immune system has never seen the virus before, so by the time your immune system starts producing antibodies, the virus will have gone through some number of replication cycles. if you started with 20, you're going to have way fewer virions circulating than if you started with 1,000, and there's way better chance of those antibodies wiping it out very quickly, early in the exponential growth curve, when it can be wiped out without doing much damage, to the point where you might not even get detectably sick, i.e. it might be confined locally to the epithelial tissue in a small area of your nose, lung, intestine, etc.
Whether your immune system knows the virus or not, the bigger the initial dose, the more likely you are to become infected, become contagions, get seriously ill, or die. And this has been shown to be true for other airborne viral diseases as well, such as influenza. To use a bacterial analogy (admittedly not a great one), it's like the difference between healing an infected cut on your finger and healing a gangrenous limb. The sicker you are when your body starts fighting it off, the worse you're going to end up.
This is why the studies that have been down on mask effectiveness in actual use show very tiny differences versus not wearing a mask.
No, not really. The studies that have shown poor effectiveness of masks have usually involved environments where transmission was inescapable, such as households where one person is sick. Most people aren't going to wear a mask 24x7, and when you're sharing air, that's pretty much a necessity if you want it to be effective. Also, there are other modes of transmission that often end up being likely enough to get you sick that the airborne transmission becomes moot.
For example, one study within households (or maybe dorms, I forget which) that showed masks "don't work" also bizarrely showed that washing your hands more often led to higher rates of infection. This result seems utterly nonsensical until you realize that people were likely washing
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Masks are to keep contagious people from spreading covid, not from getting it
A mask is more like a resistor than a diode - there is negligible directional effect.
Arguably, a well-fitting mask may do a slightly better job of filtering incoming virus particles than outgoing ones. Positive pressure on exhalation tends to loosen the fit, where negative pressure on inhalation may tighten the fit. Both of those are subject to a LOT of variables though; so as a rule of thumb, masking is as important in preventing reception as it is in preventing transmission.
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Challenge trial is a lot of work (Score:2)
They could indeed have tested with SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. It's just a lot more work to recruit volunteers for such a challenge trial [slashdot.org].
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The funniest thing to see is someone driving in a car by themselves, wearing a mask.
My wife and I have often had our masks on in the car, and still do occasionally. This has nothing to do with protection in the car, and everything to do with convenience. If we're doing a short hop between stores, it's often more trouble to take them off and put them back on than to just leave them on. We take some care to get a good fit, and often wear fabric masks over top of the N95 as well, primarily to help improve the seal. So sometimes it's just easier to leave 'em on.
I must say though that masks help quite a bit against cold air, they do keep your face warmer in the winter should you choose to wear one outside and they do defeat face recognition cameras if used with shades
Yes, we're happy to wear our mas
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While researchers continue to discuss how masks might stop the spread of viral infections, actual research shows that mask policies don't work:
https://nypost.com/2023/02/14/... [nypost.com]
No, they actually don't show that. Studies that review other studies are the lowest-quality study you can look at, because how you select the studies can mean the difference between positive and negative results. And when you actually look at these studies more closely, you'll invariably see that they're myopically focused on RCTs. The problem is that at the time, no RCTs had ever been done on community environments, so they were all reviewing studies that were performed in environments that are meaningf
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Did they cover the risks of masking?
No, because there are no credible studies that show risks from short-term use of masks.
Besides that, the Denmark Study and the professional reanalysis of the Mass. School Study were the highest powered studies and showed no benefit, congruent with the Cochrane Review.
Citations needed.
The Massachusetts study itself [nejm.org] says "The lifting of masking requirements was associated with an additional 44.9 cases per 1000 students and staff (95% confidence interval, 32.6 to 57.1), which corresponded to an estimated 11,901 cases and to 29.4% of the cases in all districts during that time." If your "professional re-analysis" is one of the papers that "extend it" to a larger number of districts, then