241–250 of 387 posts
Not that this will settle anything. Anecdotally, I've not gotten even a slight cold while being socially distanced while consistently masked.
Anecdotes are not data.
For those of you who haven’t seen the slowmoguys video about talking with and without a mask this is good: https://youtu.be/gZ66wJFD3bs If you want to skip the technical lighting bits then jump to the 4 minute mark. It’s difficult to argue against footage like that and it makes you wonder why some people take off their masks to talk.
Because voice is muffled by the mask and makes it very hard to understand in some cases. Taking off the mask is not acceptable, but it is not an unjustified response.
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During an interview with some of the doctors sent into Wuhan in their wave, they claimed none of the 10 thousand or so doctors sent in became infected. They used strict PPE protocol, including N95 masks. Given what we know about the covid transmission now, it was absolutely the N95s that prevented these doctors from getting infected.
Then run a proper randomized controlled trial with comparisons to cloth and surgical masks so we have actual data, not 10000 anecdotes. This was the biggest event of the last 50 years, we can throw a few billion at a real trial.
Can't knowingly give humans less protection. It's not a money problem.
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I'm not defending what they did, but let's make the facts clear. Initially (december?) they denied there was human-human transmission, and tried to down play magnitude of the virus. And once Wuhan was locked down, they down played how harsh it was, cut out the media (with the excuse of not causing panic). But even before Wuhan locked down, they allowed the release of the virus sequence (Jan 2020), their mitigation ef…
I don't suggest ignoring everything the Chinese health authorities said, that would be ridiculous. "Take everything China allows to be released to the West with a pinch of salt" is a sensible starting point though - you can use it as an input, but you have to be more skeptical of information fed to you by a communist-controlled authority than you would otherwise be, and you certainly don't add credibility by pointing…
The CDC and WHO's decision to deny airborne transmission 14 months into the pandemic is purely idiotic.
So who do I trust now? Independent Scientists. Basically Twitter, ffs.
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Indeed this is the money paragraph: "The effectiveness of masks, however, is still under debate. Compared to N95/FFP2 respirators which have very low particle penetration rates (around ~5%), surgical and similar masks exhibit higher and more variable penetration rates (around ~30-70%) (2, 3). Given the large number of particles emitted upon respiration and especially upon sneezing or coughing (4), the number of respi…
> The effectiveness of masks, however, is still under debate Effective for the mask wearer, or effective for others in the vicinity of the mask wearer? It's well established that cheap cloth masks and procedure masks don't protect the mask wearer very much. The rationale for cheap masks is that they drastically reduce the spread of particles from the wearer to everyone else nearby . If your goal is to protect yoursel…
If so, why does states with the highest mask use (CA, NYC) have much higher covid rates than states with some of the lowest mask use (Florida, Texas)?
This isn't a study; it is a mathematical model [1]. > Here, we develop a quantitative model of airborne virus exposure that can explain these contrasting results and provide a basis for quantifying the efficacy of face masks. We show that mask efficacy strongly depends on airborne virus abundance. Based on direct measurements of SARS-CoV-2 in air samples and population-level infection probabilities, we find that the…
Here is a recent published review for those seeking a more comprehensive and complete evaluation of the literature: Howard, Jeremy, et al. "An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118.4 (2021). https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
Consider that it doesn’t mention the only randomized controlled trial of masks and Covid ever performed (it showed no significant protective effect), which was conducted during the period the “review” was being compiled:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817
There’s simply no excuse. the authors cherry-pick and misinterpret top-line data to craft a narrative. It’s not a review, it’s an editorial.
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Here is a recent published review for those seeking a more comprehensive and complete evaluation of the literature: Howard, Jeremy, et al. "An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118.4 (2021). https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
That is a joke of a “review”, and should never have been published. Consider that it doesn’t mention the only randomized controlled trial of masks and Covid ever performed (it showed no significant protective effect), which was conducted during the period the “review” was being compiled: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817 There’s simply no excuse. the authors cherry-pick and misinterpret top-line data t…
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A properly fit N95 should block out all dust. If you are getting plaster in your nose, try different types of masks (folding), or a half-face respirator. One of the justification for not advising N95s to the public was the fact that most people don't know how to properly wear one. As if they couldn't be trained in a few weeks, or duration of the pandemic. Also, N95s filter out particles smaller than .3 microns (the 9…
Actually it DOES work like a sieve on larger particles. The electrostatic mechanism works on smaller particles, while the larger ones are indeed filtered "mechanically". The 0.3 micron size is used in the specification because it's the "worst" case... too large for maximum electrostatic attraction, too small for mechanical filtration...it's the worst case.
Covid survives for 30 seconds in sunlight, so wearing a mask outside is bad on balance as you breathe in your own CO2 and reduce oxygen intake which both have negative health effects (especially during exercise).
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> On the other hand, "observational data show that regions or facilities with a higher percentage of the population wearing masks have better control of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (7–9)." So how to explain these contrasting results and apparent inconsistencies? My hypothesis regarding surgical mask prevalence and how it correlates with better virus control: People who wear masks--however effective they m…
"Some people with swine flu travelled on a plane from New York to China, and many fellow passengers got infected. Some researchers looked at whether passengers who wore masks throughout the flight stayed healthier. The answer was very much yes. They were able to track down 9 people who got sick on the flight and 32 who didn’t. 0% of the sick passengers wore masks, compared to 47% of the healthy passengers. Another wa…