Earlier quoted context omitted.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects, why is it so difficult to discern any reduction in community transmission from Germany's N95 mandates?
> Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects... There are professions that've been doing this for decades without any apparent negative impacts.
Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
21–30 of 105 posts
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been known since 2020. From the beginning, the public health message could have been "protect yourself using a N-95 mask", but for some reason they went with "protect others using a cloth/surgical mask". The only reasonable explanation I can find for this is that N-95 masks were in short supply at the time and they had to be saved for medical professionals. We needed a distraction to prevent the general publ…
I believe that you are entirely correct. One of the big lessons-learned is that the response should have been: "N95s work. They are very important. If you hoard them, healthcare professionals will die. Please donate your extras to your nearest hospital." I saw firsthand, working with findthemasks.com, just how many people came to that conclusion on their own and rapidly aggregated and donated as many N95s as they cou…
This is the sort of thing gov will have years to solve but I’m sure many will fail to do it and a bunch of countries will be pushing surgical masks then next pandemic (or Covid 2.0).
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#23Doesn’t seem like a very ground study. But living in Asia has taught me masks do work, and they work at school. My 3yo doesn’t get a cold when the 1 kid in the class is sneezing and coughing. The 1 case of covid didn’t spread in the school to Teachers or students. But I get there’s a bunch of adults who can’t wear masks as well as a 3yo so in that case the adults are more likely to catch or spread covid with their in…
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#24> Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students. I’m glad that public health officials are actually doing this research and publishing these conclusions. Maybe I’ve gotten cynical, but I was worried that there would be limited retrospection about positions taken during the pandemic given the…
Hopefully we learn from our mistakes and are better prepared for the next pandemic.
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#25We also did not have data on the types of masks being worn or on masking adherence rates in the two school districts It is known that this is an aerosolized pandemic. Airborne. Cloth and surgical masks do not work. Source – there are many to choose from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362... The posted study on mandates has effectively no meaning. Closed FFP2/N95-style masks work. This is fa…
control-f for "mask": 1 match, and it's in a sentence talking about how mask quality and fit is important to preventing infection, but doesn't elaborate on the effectiveness of cloth/surgical vs n95 masks.
On the other hand there are also studies that show it working, eg. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
>The surgical and N95 masks were both effective in significantly reducing the risk of infection, which together with the finding that 30% of non-infected staff did not use masks (table 2) supports that transmission is not airborne.
Do you have better a better study for this, preferably some sort of meta-study?
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#26Doesn’t seem like a very ground study. But living in Asia has taught me masks do work, and they work at school. My 3yo doesn’t get a cold when the 1 kid in the class is sneezing and coughing. The 1 case of covid didn’t spread in the school to Teachers or students. But I get there’s a bunch of adults who can’t wear masks as well as a 3yo so in that case the adults are more likely to catch or spread covid with their in…
In Asia, actual decent factory-made masks seem to have been widely available for years. I would believe that the effects of people in Asia wearing masks sold in Asia is not the same as people in America wearing masks sold in America.
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#27> Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students. I’m glad that public health officials are actually doing this research and publishing these conclusions. Maybe I’ve gotten cynical, but I was worried that there would be limited retrospection about positions taken during the pandemic given the…
> Maybe I’ve gotten cynical, but I was worried that there would be limited retrospection about positions taken during the pandemic given the political sensitivities. Hopefully we learn from our mistakes and are better prepared for the next pandemic.
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been known since 2020. From the beginning, the public health message could have been "protect yourself using a N-95 mask", but for some reason they went with "protect others using a cloth/surgical mask". The only reasonable explanation I can find for this is that N-95 masks were in short supply at the time and they had to be saved for medical professionals. We needed a distraction to prevent the general publ…
I believe that you are entirely correct. One of the big lessons-learned is that the response should have been: "N95s work. They are very important. If you hoard them, healthcare professionals will die. Please donate your extras to your nearest hospital." I saw firsthand, working with findthemasks.com, just how many people came to that conclusion on their own and rapidly aggregated and donated as many N95s as they cou…
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe I’ve gotten cynical, but I was worried that there would be limited retrospection about positions taken during the pandemic given the political sensitivities. Hopefully we learn from our mistakes and are better prepared for the next pandemic.
Monkeypox is now at 10,000 cases worldwide with a growth rate of 12% per day and we're seeing the same lagged response as we did with Covid. We've learned nothing.
Unless there's some additional context to this the figure of "12% per day" doesn't tell me much. Is this better or worse than covid? How does it compare to other endemic infections like the flu? Without knowing how bad the spread rate is, it's hard to know whether "the same lagged response" is justified or not.
Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota
#30Doesn’t seem like a very ground study. But living in Asia has taught me masks do work, and they work at school. My 3yo doesn’t get a cold when the 1 kid in the class is sneezing and coughing. The 1 case of covid didn’t spread in the school to Teachers or students. But I get there’s a bunch of adults who can’t wear masks as well as a 3yo so in that case the adults are more likely to catch or spread covid with their in…
Your one anecdote overturns this whole study?