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Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

med.stanford.edu

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Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#111

Post by bgorman »

The problem with this mask business is it treats masks as the only variable. The United States is incredibly unhealthy and most people do not get enough exercise or spend enough time outdoors. It would not surprise me if governments would obtain better results by telling citizens to exercise regularly and eat healthy. Instead it seems like governments are doubling down on a strategy on scaring/bullying out of shape citizens into staying at home afraid.

The most rediculous policy of all is governments requiring masks for outdoor exercise.

11% is frankly not going to move the needle. I could probably reduce my chance of dying in a vehicle accident by way over 11% by refusing to ride bicycles. It simply isn’t meaningful.

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#112

Post by iandanforth »

Things I wish everyone knew and acted on:

1. Masks reduce spread (this study)

2. Covid-19 is an airborne disease and primarily spread through aerosols

3. Being in a poorly ventilated space (even if everyone is masked) with an infected person means a significant chance of being infected.

4. While (1) is true for even meh-masks, to prevent infection in (3), you need to be wearing a tight-fitting high quality mask. No beards, no cloth, no surgical. N-95 or better with total seal.

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#113

Post by gotoeleven »

numbsafari wrote: post #50
treis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty modest impact, a short duration, and is somewhat clouded by it not being a double blind study. The rate of infection at 7.62% vs 8.62% are particularly troublesome. As a comparison, it's estimated that 1/3-1/2 of Americans have been infected with Covid. It's an open question of what the end game would be. Could be that both groups would end at the same infection rate. The masked group might just take…

> The masked group might just take longer to get there. That's not a bad thing. Remember "flatten the curve"? Avoiding everyone from getting it isn't the goal. Preventing the collapse of the healthcare system is.

We are now into month 17 of two weeks to flatten the curve. Even in the height of the initial wave hospitals were mostly not overwhelmed. Remember the field hospitals and hospital ships that sat empty in New York City?

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#114

Post by nradov »

What people seem to be missing is that this study only covered a limited period. While surgical masks can slightly reduce the risk of contagion for individual interactions, over a longer period all of us will eventually be exposed regardless of what precautions we take. The virus isn't going away.

Think of it like a soccer goalie defending against an endless series of penalty kicks. He might block the first few balls but eventually one will get through.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

This is why it's so important for people who haven't yet been infected to get vaccinated. And take other steps to strengthen your immune system such as reducing obesity, maintaining adequate vitamin D levels, and engaging in the recommended level of physical activity.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...

https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/07/21/bjsports-2021-...

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#115

Post by 908B64B197 »

kragen wrote: post #104
slg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's surprising to me that cloth masks can't even do the 11% of surgical masks. Just want to add clarification here. The 11% number is the community impact of the programs designed to increase mask usage. It is not the effectiveness of a mask on an individual level. That number will be much higher since as you said a number of people didn't/don't comply at a societal level.

Given a really effective intervention for a contagious disease, the effectiveness on a community level will be much lower on an individual level. Think about PRC vs. USA: 4636 deaths in PRC, 618591 deaths in USA, even though it's a four times smaller country. There is no measure that even comes close to reducing your risk of death from covid by a factor of 600 on an individual level, but because they were able to get…

> Think about PRC vs. USA: 4636 deaths in PRC, 618591 deaths in USA, even though it's a four times smaller country.

4636 deaths as reported by the CCP to foreign journalists. Same party whose official line is that nothing happened in Tiananmen Square.

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#116

Post by rubyist5eva »

douglasisshiny wrote: post #13
exabrial wrote: post #6

This is truly great news, as we've need some controlled studies. However, _mandates_, literally threatening people with police violence, bodily or financial harm, is not the correct way forward. I think the best solution is improved mandates for airflow. It's a lot easier to improve airflow in a building than it is to police and enforce a mask mandate.

>However, _mandates_, literally threatening people with police violence, bodily or financial harm, is not the correct way forward. Maybe I'm missing something, but is this actually a thing? Who in the mainstream proposing police violence, bodily or financial harm? The worst I've heard (in the U.S.) is that a business may not allow you to enter if you're not wearing a mask, which is well within their right and reasona…

This is the popular sentiment on most Canadian subreddits:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/pgr2sl/it_is_pas...

Anecdotally, I was personally assaulted for not wearing a mask because I took it off after needing to use my ventolin to prevent an asthma attack in a mall. I only need to remove it for about 2-3 minutes at a time the odd time I feel an attack coming on, which only really happens when the weather is really aggrivating me during the hottest summer months where I am. That was enough time for some lunatic to come suckerpunch me in the back of the head and run away.

I've seen people yelling and screaming at others, store employees putting their hands on elderly people not wearing masks and pushing them around. Mobs of masked people surrounding and intimidating individuals who were not masked in places they were not required to be.

There were reports of police breaking into homes and physically removing people that were visiting over Christmas.

I could go on and on...

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#117

Post by ta07643887 »

learc83 wrote: post #97
betwixthewires wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty solid gotcha.

It's a terrible gotcha. It's only effective on people who already agree with you. Imagine a town council meeting where someone is proposing a $25 fine for crapping on the sidewalk. And a libertarian pops and screaming "You're saying you want to use violence up to and including murder to keep our sidewalks clean!" Again technically there is a hypothetical chain of causality from sidewalk crapping fine to bodily harm/m…

Absolute nonsense. It’s merely walking through the chain of events and realizing that all dictates are backed by force.

The fact that people “don’t agree” means they’re morons. It is fact.

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#118

Post by 908B64B197 »

majormajor wrote: post #11
ch4s3 wrote: post #3

> There were significantly fewer COVID-19 cases in villages with surgical masks compared with the control villages. (Although there were also fewer COVID-19 cases in villages with cloth masks as compared to control villages, the difference was not statistically significant.) This aligns with lab tests showing that surgical masks have better filtration than cloth masks. However, cloth masks did reduce the overall like…

It's surprising to me that cloth masks can't even do the 11% of surgical masks. Which isn't much, but surgical masks are non-optimal for many reasons. Not to mention that this doesn't seem the same as "while wearing a surgical mask you only get 11% increase in protection" but is a population-level thing. There was still non-compliance that presumably lowered the efficacy. I would've intuitively guessed that the bette…

"Cloth masks" can mean anything.

I wish early in the pandemic someone would have made some piece of equipment to asses whether a given cloth mask is good or not. Most people have a few now and I'm sure they would like to use the best one.

Re: Surgical masks reduce Covid-19 spread, large-scale Stanford study shows

#120

Post by treis »

numbsafari wrote: post #50
treis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty modest impact, a short duration, and is somewhat clouded by it not being a double blind study. The rate of infection at 7.62% vs 8.62% are particularly troublesome. As a comparison, it's estimated that 1/3-1/2 of Americans have been infected with Covid. It's an open question of what the end game would be. Could be that both groups would end at the same infection rate. The masked group might just take…

> The masked group might just take longer to get there. That's not a bad thing. Remember "flatten the curve"? Avoiding everyone from getting it isn't the goal. Preventing the collapse of the healthcare system is.

>That's not a bad thing. Remember "flatten the curve"?

That isn't how exponential growth works unfortunately. As long as the exponent is greater than 1 eventually you will get a large peak.

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