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Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

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Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#71
post #9

Earlier 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 thought that "airborne" meant "could survive in water aerosols for long enough to get breathed in" not "sprouted little virus wings and flew through any hole it could fit through" And I assumed water droplets were in fact several orders of magnitude larger than the virus, but would still be caught my masks. Otherwise what's the point for any virus?

The water droplets are several orders of magnitude larger than the virus, but still small enough for some of them to fit through the gaps in a cloth mask (but almost none make it past an N95 mask).

The cloth mask still stops the vast majority of such drops, cutting risk significantly compared to no mask.

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#72
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t know what the quality of masks is like overseas but one thing you don’t see is cloth masks. If you do see them they are always over the top of an actual mask just for a fancy design. But never cloth only.

Here in Spain there were lots of cloth masks. And I've never seen people wear two of any type.

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parent comment was a claim that their 3 year old did not get COVID in a preschool/daycare setting because of widespread mask wearing. Both yours and theirs can be true. Perhaps preschoolers in Asia have better parental modeling of proper mask wearing, having been a fairly widespread practice in some areas since the first SARS. Perhaps there's a difference in how careful the teachers were to make adjustments whe…

In Singapore you almost never saw kids even young as 2 years old not wearing a mask right. My daughter started wearing from 1y7m and it took about 1 week of adjusting it correctly when she would touch her face or mask to her just leaving it alone. While you see most westerners wearing their mask below their nose, the kids follow suit. In Taiwan since September last year, enrolled my daughter in school, every kid in h…

No post body was provided.

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#74
post #65

I'm surprised nobody has raised concerns about the authors. This group is notorious for producing near-fraudulent preprints in support of their preconceptions and widely publicizing them. Tracy Hoeg was responsible for an atrocious VAERS-based study making false claims about vaccine safety, and Neeraj Sood was intimately involved in the Hoover Institution's successful efforts in March/April 2020 to persuade certain m…

Why don't you read the paper and address its evidence and logic instead of ignoring it entirely for an ad-hominem attack on the authors? Ad-hominem attacks are worthless on any politically-contentious issue, because of course people are going to be trying to destroy the reputation of scientists who present data that opposes a political narrative.

This pandemic has sparked a whole industry of politically motivated “scientists” overhyping and misstating the results of their poorly designed studies. Examining the authors’ affiliations and past work is a good way to avoid wasting time.

There are dozens of other studies about this topic, many of them done carefully by serious researchers.

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which profession requires constant 8-10hr a day use of an N95 mask?

Some forms of mining, asbestos remediation, industrial work, etc. They've been used extensively by enough people the burden of proof lies on the folks claiming they're somehow dangerous at this point.

If you look at EU standards for asbestos removal [1] this really isn't the case. Ditto for the other examples you cite.

Almost nobody doing industrial work with comparable PPE doesn't spend at least 1-2 hours of a typical workday out of the PPE.

The linked PDF has an example of a typical workday when removing asbestos, note how many times it involves putting on or taking off the PPE.

I'm not making any claim about COVID mask mandates, other than your examples seeming irrelevant to "chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s".

https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=7478&langId=en

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#76
post #65

I'm surprised nobody has raised concerns about the authors. This group is notorious for producing near-fraudulent preprints in support of their preconceptions and widely publicizing them. Tracy Hoeg was responsible for an atrocious VAERS-based study making false claims about vaccine safety, and Neeraj Sood was intimately involved in the Hoover Institution's successful efforts in March/April 2020 to persuade certain m…

Why don't you read the paper and address its evidence and logic instead of ignoring it entirely for an ad-hominem attack on the authors? Ad-hominem attacks are worthless on any politically-contentious issue, because of course people are going to be trying to destroy the reputation of scientists who present data that opposes a political narrative.

In fields where uncovering methodological flaws or malfeasance is difficult, prior history of the authors is a useful first approximation of how seriously the conclusions should be taken.

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#77

It's not necessarily because masks don't work, medical professionals use them to great success. Mask usage at the community level does not follow the same strict policies related to mask usage that medical professionals do, like discarding them between operations. Wearing the same mask over and over every day and removing it when you sit down to eat is a very ineffective policy. And it's kind of an abuse of power for…

This is a common misconception. The blame lies squarely on a grand failure of delivery of public health information. Outside an industrialized hospital sanitization chain, it’s actually fine to reuse a mask – as long as it’s a mask that works against SARS-CoV-2 aerosol to begin with. I can provide sources.

This article that you are replying to seems to work to contradict your claim and I've read numerous others that seem to as well.

Would love to see your sources if you have them handy.

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#78

We 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…

>Cloth and surgical masks do not work.

this sort of statement really bugs me.

anything that slows the airspeed/spread is helpful. and there for "works". A cloth mask is definitely better than no mask... its has a much higher chance of catching larger droplets than no mask, it has a much higher chance of rate limiting even smaller droplets than no mask.

if 100% of the population worse cloth masks you would get a significant reduction of spread just because of the rate limiting.

N95 masks are not 100% effective.. so do we claim that they "Dont Work" as well? no we dont.

Nothing is black and white. nothing is works or doesn't work... every little step on the way every little effort all helps and by extension "Works".

Re: Study: Association between mask mandates and Covid infections in North Dakota

#79
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some forms of mining, asbestos remediation, industrial work, etc. They've been used extensively by enough people the burden of proof lies on the folks claiming they're somehow dangerous at this point.

If you look at EU standards for asbestos removal [1] this really isn't the case. Ditto for the other examples you cite. Almost nobody doing industrial work with comparable PPE doesn't spend at least 1-2 hours of a typical workday out of the PPE. The linked PDF has an example of a typical workday when removing asbestos, note how many times it involves putting on or taking off the PPE. I'm not making any claim about CO…

> Almost nobody doing industrial work with comparable PPE doesn't spend at least 1-2 hours of a typical workday out of the PPE.

Which leaves many thousands of hours in PPE, for many thousands of people. If the N95 masks caused health issues, we'd know. If someone can demonstrate a) a mechanism and b) any evidence for such an effect, I'm all ears.

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