Preface. The use and requirements of masks have become incredibly political and partisan. Unfortunately, far too much of science, knowledge, journalism, and even epistemology are becoming political.
The following is presented as is, for information only. — charles rotter
Guest post by Leo Goldstein.
Abstract
A survey of peer-reviewed studies shows that universal mask wearing (as opposed to wearing masks in specific settings) does not decrease the transmission of respiratory viruses from people wearing masks to people who are not wearing masks.
Further, indirect evidence and common sense suggest that universal mask wearing is likely to increase the spread of COVID-19.
This paper agrees that wearing masks in specific settings (such as healthcare facilities) achieves protective effects, although the masks should not be home-made, must be worn correctly, replaced frequently, and not overestimated.
Theory
Introduction
Recently, the CDC has recommended universal mask wearing (UMW) in public settings. Some state governments have even issued orders mandating near-universal mask wearing. The recommendations apply to cloth mask, including disposable masks from non-woven materials, not surgical masks.
The UMW recommendation is expressed in (Brooks et al., “Universal Masking to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Transmission—The Time Is Now,” 2020) co-authored by CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, and on the CDC website (CDC, “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19),” 2020). The CDC website states:
“CDC recommends that people wear cloth face coverings in public settings and when around people who don’t live in your household… Cloth face coverings may help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others. Cloth face coverings are most likely to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are widely used by people in public settings.
Cloth face coverings are recommended as a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from traveling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the cloth face covering coughs, sneezes, talks, or raises their voice. This is called source control.”
Notice the expression “may help prevent.” This kind of expression is used in the marketing of echinacea and similar products, and it is effectively a non-statement alongside “may not help” or “may harm.” Unfortunately, “may help” is widely used as an affirmative recommendation for universal mask wearing.
When Masks are Useful
In many situations, wearing a face mask is certainly an effective source control measure. Mask wearing for infection source control is firmly established in some medical procedures. For example, surgeons wear surgical masks during procedures to protect patients’ open body cavities from infection via germs from the surgeon’s mouth and nose. Surgeons have to change their masks at least hourly and between patients[LG1] (Kelsch, “Changing Masks,” 2010). Other professional examples include hairstylists, massage therapists, and nail technicians working with clients. Such uses are collectively referred to here as “Situation A.”
The next level of mask wearing includes patients waiting in clinics or undergoing certain procedures as well as people visiting nursing homes et cetera. The common feature of these situations is that people wear masks for short periods of time, with a clear purpose and sometimes under medical personnel’s supervision. This might be called “Situation A— “.
Some people might voluntarily wear masks in public settings to protect themselves and others. Such uses are referred to here as “Situation B.” On such uses, professional opinions differ. Some institutions (including the CDC and the US Surgeon General) say the benefits of Situation B mask wearing are uncertain and that harm may result from these uses because members of the general public might be unable to properly wear and handle masks.
Notice the differences between Situations A and B. When professionals (like surgeons) wear masks during a professional activity (like surgery), they:
- Are trained and used to wearing masks.
- Handle masks properly (including masks’ replacement, disposal, and disinfection).
- Wear masks for a specific task and a short amount of time.
- Use masks to protect against the forward spread of the germs. Surgical and cloth masks do not protect against germs spreading in other directions.
Members of the public, however, are likely not trained in proper mask wearing and handling—despite good intentions. A mask’s usefulness and potential dangers depend highly on the wearer’s actions.
When people are forced or even subtly encouraged to wear masks for long periods, they wear masks differently. Some people position their mask to cover only their mouth but not their nostrils, though nostrils have higher viral concentration, see Leung et al. below. Some people frequently remove and replace their masks. When removing their masks, some people fold or roll masks so that the interior and exterior sides come into contact. Some people drop their masks into a purse, pocket, or glove box only to use them again at their next stop. After a few cycles, the masks’ interior and exterior become interchangeable. Even if a wearer has no infection, their mask can pick up coronavirus and other germs from the air and from dust particles. These masks can then spread the virus because every time the wearer exhales, the coronavirus and any other germs that have accumulated in the mask spread into the air. This kind of masking wearing is referred to here as “Situation C.”
When people are told to wear masks in specific situations to protect vulnerable individuals—for example, in pharmacies, nursing homes, and medical buildings—most people are careful to follow rules and recommendations. However, when people are ordered to wear masks everywhere and all the time, proper mask use and handling become significantly less probable. It is possible to enforce mask wearing, but it is impossible to enforce proper mask handling.
Mask Effects
The coronavirus spreads via droplets and aerosols that are exhaled by contagious persons with or without symptoms. Technically, it is also transmitted by fomites, but fomites originate in exhaled droplets and aerosols. In the best-case scenario, a cloth mask catches large droplets and some of the forward-moving aerosol. Neither surgical nor cloth mask restrains aerosols from escaping at the sides, top, and bottom of the mask.
Masks redirect aerosol flow to all sides. Though we take protective measures, none of these measures protect against viral-loaded aerosols—especially when they can settle downward from above. For example, we know not to sneeze or cough in other people’s direction. And recently, we have also become accustomed to keeping six feet of distance away from others in a frontal arc. Moreover, clerks, cashiers, and other service providers are usually protected by plexiglass barriers. But because these measures fail to protect against viral-loaded aerosols, even ideally worn and cared-for masks might cause more harm than benefits.
Additional Downsides of Wearing a Mask during the COVID-19 Outbreak
All masks make breathing more difficult, requiring more effort to inhale and exhale and potentially causing more viral load to be expelled into the air. Moreover, when a non-contagious person wears a cloth mask, his or her mask accumulates the coronavirus and other germs from the environment. If a contagious person wears a cloth mask, the mask also accumulates some viral load with each breath, and soon, it might discharge more viral load with each exhalation than the contagious person would otherwise exhale—and in more directions.
Masks cause heavier, deeper, and more forceful breathing as well as straining—all of the attributes believed to have caused exceptionally bad outcomes in the case of a church choir in Seattle (Read, “A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead,” 2020). Deeper breathing allows the coronavirus to go deeper into the lungs, causing infection to take hold faster. The article explains:
“Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled.”
As of now, hundreds of thousands of people are breathing similarly forcefully through masks in public spaces, and other people are inhaling what mask wearers expel. Read’s article contains another illustrative passage:
“Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech and an expert on airborne transmission of viruses, said some people happen to be especially good at exhaling fine material, producing 1,000 times more than others.”
This finding had been described in an unrelated study (Edwards et al., “Inhaling to mitigate exhaled bioaerosols,” 2004).
The Math of Viruses and Cases
The idea that cloth masks can significantly decrease transmission of the coronavirus faces a mathematical challenge. Viral load, or titer, is usually expressed as log10 of the number of viruses per unit of volume, and it is the best unit for estimating a virus’s ability to infect people. On the log10 scale, an emission decrease like 40% hardly registers. The same is true of a 60% increase. Unfortunately, masks can cause much higher emissions. A virus-contaminated mask worn by a healthy person, shedding viruses during breathing, would increase the viral load in a room from 0 to a non-zero level that may be sufficient to infect another person.
Literature Review
Unsurprisingly, academic literature shows an absence of benefits for universal mask wearing as source control and does not address the possible harms.
(Xiao et al., “Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures,” May 2020) is the only systematic revie[LG2] w focusing on whether face masks decrease the transmission of viral respiratory disease in a nonhealthcare setting. With a focus on source control, the authors find that masks cannot decrease transmission in this context—or, at least, cannot have a significant effect—and that masks might even increase transmission. There is no reason to believe the results for COVID-19 differ from the results for influenza.
(Martin,” Response to Greenhalgh et al.,”2020) deserves to be quoted here:
“First, the evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in reducing viral transmission is very weak. Few studies examine the use of face masks in community settings; those that do find no evidence of reduced transmission compared with no face masks. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: both recent systematic reviews cautiously suggest that in some circumstances, wearing of face masks may be warranted. They also note, however, the absence of systematic study of harms.”
(MacIntyre et al., “A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers,” 2015) is not directly relevant here because they investigate mask wearing for wearers’ protection. Nevertheless, they find that for healthcare workers, wearing cloth masks is worse than not wearing any masks. Wearing surgical masks was beneficial in the study.
References on the CDC website and in Brooks et al.
This subsection covers all the references in the CDC recommendations and Brooks et al. (the CDC team). Many sources address asymptomatic and aerosol transmission of the Wuhan coronavirus, which are not in doubt anymore, so they are left out here. The rest of the sources include some anecdotal cases, examples of lab-tested masks or mask fabrics, and studies showing masks’ effectiveness in hospital settings, followed by attempts to extrapolate these results for universal mask wearing. Many studies, or their interpretations, combine multiple fallacies.
Healthcare workers and patients wearing masks in hospital undoubtedly decreases virus transmission. However, this effect cannot be generalized to make a case for universal mask wearing. But (Wang et al., “Association Between Universal Masking in a Health Care System and SARS-CoV-2 Positivity Among Health Care Workers,” 2020) miss an elephant in the room. The drop in new infections started before their implementation of masks, probably because healthcare workers started taking hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis See(Goldstein, “JAMA Rejected my Comment on Masks and HCQ,”2020). The effectiveness of COVID-19 prevention among healthcare workers via hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis is also shown in (Chatterjee et al., “Healthcare workers & SARS-CoV-2 infection in India,” 2020). It is unfortunate that Brooks et al. (the CDC team including CDC Director Dr. Redfield) selected this irrelevant and erroneous study as a cornerstone for their article.
(Schwartz et al., “Lack of COVID-19 transmission on an international flight,” 2020)
provides anecdotal evidence. Worse still, its evidence is probably incorrect. It describes a COVID-19 patient wearing a mask on a January 22 flight. After the flight, six passengers became sick[LG3] with COVID-19 symptoms. They tested negatively, probably because of high ratio of false positives in the tests at that time.
(Hendrix, “Absence of Apparent Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from Two Stylists After Exposure at a Hair Salon with a Universal Face Covering Policy — Springfield, Missouri,” May 2020)
provides similarly anecdotal evidence on the absence of coronavirus transmission from the two stylists described in the study, at least one of whom was capable of transmission, to their clients. The stylists wore masks, so this case constitutes Situation A. The stylists’ clients wore masks, too.
(National Academies of Sciences, “Rapid Expert Consultation on the Possibility of Bioaerosol Spread of SARS-CoV-2 for the COVID-19 Pandemic (April 1, 2020),” 2020)
confirms that the coronavirus can spread via aerosols [LG4] generated by a person’s exhalation. They also state, “These findings suggest that surgical face masks [not cloth masks —LG] could reduce the transmission of human coronavirus and influenza infections if worn by infected individuals capable of transmitting the infection.” Even this limited suggestion, pertaining only to surgical masks, is based solely on Leung et al., discussed below.
(Leung et al., “Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks,” 2020)
examines the exhalation of patients with any of three types of virus (flu, coronavirus, and rhinovirus) collected over 30-minute intervals with no forced cough. The researches attempted to collect some, but not all, sideways flow. This semi-realistic testing demonstrated a lower effectiveness for even surgical masks. Detection of the virus was:
- In droplets, masks versus no masks: 11% versus 21%.
- In aerosols, masks versus no masks: 26% versus 46%.
The surprising aspect of Leung et al.’s study is surgical masks’ apparent low effectiveness in blocking virus-laden droplets. Droplets are supposed to hit masks, even as aerosols escape along the mask’s four sides, and remain inside the mask. Surgical masks retain over 99% of the exhaled droplets that hit them. Only 17 persons were infected by coronaviruses, none of which were the COVID-19 pathogen. Leung et al. also finds: “On average, viral shedding was higher in nasal swabs than in throat swabs”
(Johnson et al., “A Quantitative Assessment of the Efficacy of Surgical and N95 Masks to Filter Influenza Virus in Patients with Acute Influenza Infection,” 2009)
confirms that surgical masks significantly reduced the forward flow of the virus when flu patients coughed into a testing device. The authors stressed that participants wore masks for only for three to five minutes and that side flow was not collected.
(Konda et al., “Aerosol Filtration Efficiency of Common Fabrics Used in Respiratory Cloth Masks,”2020)
found that surgical mask material [LG5] intercepts about 99% of droplets and large (>300 nm) aerosol particles. But in tests were holes were made that had an area of only 1%, the effectiveness dropped by 60%! Cotton and other common materials have lower filtration effectiveness, although cotton quilt and high-TPI cotton are quite effective, and using multiple layers further increases effectiveness to nearly 99%. But the gaps in masks are much larger than 10%, so only large droplets expelled forward are captured. The CDC does not claim otherwise. Also, that finding suggests that an individual who needs to wear a mask should neither try to use a homemade mask nor use a surgical mask for COVID-19.
(Ma et al., “Potential utilities of mask-wearing and instant hand hygiene for fighting SARS-CoV-2,” 2020)
has an inaccurate title. The study tests mask fabrics’ filtering ability, not actual masks worn by real persons.
(Aydin et al., “Performance of Fabrics for Home-Made Masks Against the Spread of Respiratory Infections Through Droplets,”2020)
is another study of fabrics. They also explain why a mask may stop large droplets but allow small droplets and aerosols to escape: “when an infected individual coughs, sneezes, or talks into a mask, the droplets that would hit the inside of the mask are relatively large, and have high momentum.”
(Davies et al., “Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks, “2013)
is a study of an unusual type of mask:tightly fit (like a respirator) homemade masks. As expected, these masks decreased the number of exhaled germs, but nobody recommends or uses tightly fit masks for COVID-19.
(Anfinrud et al., “Visualizing Speech-Generated Oral Fluid Droplets with Laser Light Scattering,” 2020)
visualizes droplets motion, consistently with the belief that large forward moving droplets are intercepted by a mask.
(Hatzius, “Goldman Sachs | Insights – Face Masks and GDP,”2020)
is not a scientific paper, one passage merits attention here:
“By our estimates, the increase in distancing our Effective Lockdown Index (ELI)—a combination of official restrictions and actual social data—subtracted 17% from US GDP between January and April, and other countries with even more aggressive restrictions saw even larger economic effects.”
(Greenhalgh, “Face coverings for the public,” 2020)
study’s declared methodis narrative rebuttal. Accordingly, it reports no scientific findings.
(Fisher, “Factors Associated with Cloth Face Covering Use Among Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States,” April and May 2020)
, published on the CDC website on July 14, reports statistics on how many people wore masks. These statistics are irrelevant to the question of whether masks were useful or harmful.
References
- Anfinrud, Philip; Stadnytskyi, Valentyn; Bax, Christina E.; Bax, Adriaan: Visualizing Speech-Generated Oral Fluid Droplets with Laser Light Scattering, in: New England Journal of Medicine, 2020, vol. 382, no. 21, pp. 2061–2063, available at: https://www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1056/NEJMc2007800, accessed: 07/23/2020.
- Aydin, Onur; Emon, Md Abul Bashar; Cheng, Shyuan; Hong, Liu; Chamorro, Leonardo P.; Saif, M. Taher A.: Performance of Fabrics for Home-Made Masks Against the Spread of Respiratory Infections Through Droplets: A Quantitative Mechanistic Study, in: medRxiv, 2020.04.19.20071779, available at: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.19.20071779v2, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Brooks, John T.; Butler, Jay C.; Redfield, Robert R.: Universal Masking to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Transmission—The Time Is Now, in: JAMA, 2020, available at: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.13107, accessed: 07/23/2020.
- CDC: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), in: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020, available at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html, accessed: 07/23/2020.
- Chatterjee, Pranab; Anand, Tanu; Singh, Kh Jitenkumar; Rasaily, Reeta; Singh, Ravinder; Das, Santasabuj; Singh, Harpreet; Praharaj, Ira; Gangakhedkar, Raman R.; Bhargava, Balram; Panda, Samiran: Healthcare workers & SARS-CoV-2 infection in India: A case-control investigation in the time of COVID-19, in: Indian Journal of Medical Research, 2020, vol. 151, no. 5, p. 459, available at: http://www.ijmr.org.in/article.asp?issn=0971-5916;year=2020;volume=151;issue=5;spage=459;epage=467;aulast=Chatterjee;type=0, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Davies, Anna; Thompson, Katy-Anne; Giri, Karthika; Kafatos, George; Walker, Jimmy; Bennett, Allan: Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic?, in: Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 2013, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 413–418, available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/testing-the-efficacy-of-homemade-masks-would-they-protect-in-an-influenza-pandemic/0921A05A69A9419C862FA2F35F819D55#, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Edwards, David A.; Man, Jonathan C.; Brand, Peter; Katstra, Jeffrey P.; Sommerer, K.; Stone, Howard A.; Nardell, Edward; Scheuch: Inhaling to mitigate exhaled bioaerosols, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,2004, vol. 101, no. 50, p. 17383, available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/101/50/17383.abstract.
- Fisher, Kiva A.: Factors Associated with Cloth Face Covering Use Among Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, April and May 2020, in: MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 69, available at: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e3.htm, accessed: 07/23/2020.
- Goldstein, Leo: JAMA Rejected my Comment on Masks and HCQ, available at: https://defyccc.com/jama-declined-comment-masks-hcq/, accessed: 07/23/2020.
- Greenhalgh, Trisha: Face coverings for the public: Laying straw men to rest, in: Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2020, available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jep.13415, accessed: 07/23/2020.
- Hatzius, Jan: Goldman Sachs | Insights – Face Masks and GDP, in: Goldman Sachs, 2020, available at: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/face-masks-and-gdp.html, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Hendrix, M. Joshua: Absence of Apparent Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from Two Stylists After Exposure at a Hair Salon with a Universal Face Covering Policy — Springfield, Missouri, May 2020, in: MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 69, available at: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e2.htm, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Johnson, D.F.; Druce, J.D.; Birch, C.; Grayson, M.L.: A Quantitative Assessment of the Efficacy of Surgical and N95 Masks to Filter Influenza Virus in Patients with Acute Influenza Infection, in: Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2009, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 275–277, available at: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/49/2/275/405108, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Kelsch, Noel: Changing masks, in: Registered Dental Hygienist (RDH) Magazine, 2010, available at: https://www.rdhmag.com/infection-control/personal-protective-equipment/article/16407656/changing-masks, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Konda, Abhiteja; Prakash, Abhinav; Moss, Gregory A.; Schmoldt, Michael; Grant, Gregory D.; Guha, Supratik: Aerosol Filtration Efficiency of Common Fabrics Used in Respiratory Cloth Masks, in: ACS nano, 2020, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 6339–6347, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.0c03252#
- Leung, Nancy H.L.; Chu, Daniel K.W.; Shiu, Eunice Y.C.; Chan, Kwok-Hung; McDevitt, James J.; Hau, Benien J.P.; Yen, Hui-Ling; Li, Yuguo; Ip, Dennis K.M.; Peiris, J.S. Malik; Seto, Wing-Hong; Leung, Gabriel M.; Milton, Donald K.; Cowling, Benjamin J.: Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks, in: Nature Medicine, 2020, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 676–680, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2
- Ma, Qing-Xia; Shan, Hu; Zhang, Hong-Liang; Li, Gui-Mei; Yang, Rui-Mei; Chen, Ji-Ming: Potential utilities of mask-wearing and instant hand hygiene for fighting SARS-CoV-2, in: Journal of Medical Virology, 2020 available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/jmv.25805, accessed: 07/23/2020.
- MacIntyre, C. Raina; Seale, Holly; Dung, Tham Chi; Hien, Nguyen Tran; Nga, Phan Thi; Chughtai, Abrar Ahmad; Rahman, Bayzidur; Dwyer, Dominic E.; Wang, Quanyi: A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers, in: BMJ Open, 2015, vol. 5, no. 4, p. e006577, available at: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.abstract.
- Martin, Graham: Response to Greenhalgh et al.: Face masks, the precautionary principle, and evidence-informed policy, 2020, available at: https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1435/rr-43, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: Rapid Expert Consultation on the Possibility of Bioaerosol Spread of SARS-CoV-2 for the COVID-19 Pandemic (April 1, 2020), Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, available at: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25769/rapid-expert-consultation-on-the-possibility-of-bioaerosol-spread-of-sars-cov-2-for-the-covid-19-pandemic-april-1-2020.
- Richard Read: A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead, in: Los Angeles Times, 2020, available at: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/coronavirus-choir-outbreak, accessed: 07/22/2020.
- Schwartz, Kevin L.; Murti, Michelle; Finkelstein, Michael; Leis, Jerome A.; Fitzgerald-Husek, Alanna; Bourns, Laura; Meghani, Hamidah; Saunders, Andrea; Allen, Vanessa; Yaffe, Barbara: Lack of COVID-19 transmission on an international flight, in: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2020, vol. 192, no. 15, p. E410, available at: http://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/15/E410.abstract.
- Wang, Xiaowen; Ferro, Enrico G.; Zhou, Guohai; Hashimoto, Dean; Bhatt, Deepak L.: Association Between Universal Masking in a Health Care System and SARS-CoV-2 Positivity Among Health Care Workers, in: JAMA, 2020, available at: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.12897, accessed: 07/25/2020.
- Xiao, Jingyi; Shiu, Eunice Y.C.; Gao, Huizhi; Wong, Jessica Y.; Fong, Min W.; Ryu, Sukhyun; Cowling, Benjamin J.: Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures – Volume 26, Number 5—May 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC, available at: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article, accessed: 07/22/2020.
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Leo Goldstein, did you teach your children (if you have any) to cover their faces when they cough or sneeze?
You face-mask Believers do love your false analogies, don’t you?
Common sense is not a false analogy. Teaching this behavior spans cultures, and centuries.
Trump is a face-mask Believer. He said wearing on is patriotic.
When the false analogy doesn’t fly, whip out a couple of red herrings. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Face-mask Belivers — reminds me of a Monkey’s song:
https://youtu.be/9_SMJ-Uwmkg
Except my version would start something like this:
Oh, I could hide ‘neath the strings
Of the cloth that’s filtering
The virus doom alarm will always ring
But two layers suffice
Keeping germs locked on my side
My thinking mind is scared and it screams
Cheer up, sneezing Jean
Oh, what can it mean to a
Face-mask believer and a
Home-prisoned queen?
The N95 Mask Folly
N95 masks were sold decades ago and could be found in the woodworking aisle at Home Depot. They are good for curtailing inhalation of dust in the shop or allergens when mowing the lawn. But do N95 masks work against viruses? Wearing an N95 mask to protect yourself from Covid-19 is as effective as a screen door holding back water in a submarine.
In 2003, during the Code Orange emergency involving potential anthrax attacks, N95 Masks were flying off the shelves. Back then, N95 masks met CDC Guidelines for use in protection from Anthrax, a rod-shaped bacterium quite similar in size and shape to TB. Its typical size range is 1 to 1.5 microns in diameter by 4 to 10 microns in length. A micron is one millionth of a meter, or 0.00003937 inches. The average hair is about 75 microns in diameter. Today, N95 masks are flying off the shelves again, this time to combat the Covid-19 virus. Viruses are particles ranging in size from 0.06 to 0.14 microns. The Coronavirus has a range of 0.07 to 0.09 microns, or about 1/937-th of a hair diameter.
Filter ratings vary from a low of MERV1 up to a high of MERV20. MERV stands for Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value. N95 masks have a MERV16 and are 95% efficient, meaning they will filter out 95% of particles between 0.3 and 1.0 microns. The remaining 5% will pass thru, as well as a boatload everything else smaller than 0.3 microns including all viruses. MERV 20 is the most efficient filter available. These HEPA filters are capable of trapping 99.99997% of air particles 0.3 to 1.0 microns. The remaining 0.00003% of particles between 0.3 to 1.0 microns will pass thru, as well as a smaller boatload of particles less than 0.3 microns including all viruses.
Ever notice in TV commercials for cleaners and disinfectants that nothing ever kills 100% of anything; it’s always 99.9-something percent. If even one virion enters the body, it is enough to infect you. If anything gets through (and it always does, irrespective of the mask), then you are going to be infected.
If you want to read more on this subject, check out this June 2020 article appearing in River Cities Reader: Masks Don’t Work, A review of science relevant to COVID-19 social policy, Denis G. Rancourt PhD, Researcher, Ontario Civil Liberties Association (ocla.ca). Here is the link to the pdf:
https://www.rcreader.com/sites/default/files/Denis%20G.%20Rancourt%20PhD%20April%202020%20%22Masks%20Don%27t%20Work%3A%20A%20review%20of%20science%20relevant%20to%20COVID-19%20social%20policy%22.pdf
Finally, this thought. Masks address blocking the virus transmission pathway from air to the respiratory system via nose and mouth. However, the pathway from air to the body thru the eyes still remains unimpeded even using a face shield, which is as effective as an open double-hung window holding back water in a submarine.
No, it’s not.
Common misconception. Dry particles and wet particles behave differently. Pore size is not the only variable when dealing with a material and liquids. Hygroscopic/hydrophobic characteristics are important bc it’s also about absorption and not only about filtration.
There are different grades of masks and respirators.
In 1995, a patent was awarded for the process of giving the N95 respirator an electrostatic charge.
The efficacy is proven.
Only a damn dummy would insist on an incorrect opinion instead of actually doing some minimal fact checking first.
Or maybe a narcissistic anti-social blowhard who thinks posting his professional status with his name makes him more likely to know what he is talking about.
Being educated and uninformed is no badge of honor.
“Locking your door may help to prevent burglary. Or may not. A circuit breaker may prevent electric fire. Though often they don’t. Seat belt… etc.”
Your “analogy” falls flat on its face, as does the entirety of your argument. Logic is not your strong point I guess.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article244473917.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0868-6
I will add this,
there is now research that indicates the severity of the infection depends upon the innoculum.
basically like a dose response. Less virus, less severe disease. with the crusie ship that went to the antarctic
https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693
masks were handed out to everyone…
81% of those getting sick were asymptomatic.
I guess it just flies right over your head that that’s circumstantial evidence.
Here is the fastest, cheapest, and pretty accurate diagnostic test yet: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/german-researchers-trained-dogs-sniff-out-covid-19-coronavirus-infections/
I’ve seen unpublished data that points in the opposite direction. No correlation of viral load to disease severity. Other intrinsic individual factors at play though. I guess the manuscript will be published soon.
But there is another manuscript at medrxiv from Lausanne, Switzerland that also points out that there might be no correlation between inoculation and severity although they don’t describe an underlying mechanism.
mosher posted the link https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693
Very interesting. Most were aymptomatic (81%) with19% presenting symptoms and 1 person died (.8%). I dont know the age of the individual who died or if he/she has other underlying issues. Also, I assume (because I didnt see it in the article) that they only gave surgical masks on day 3 to everyone onboard AFTER the first person presented symptoms. Maybe I missed something but from the story I can’t tell if masks were required from day 1 of the voyage (I assume they weren’t). if this is accurate, then many board had already been exposed by day 3 so masks would only work going forward from that point (59% in total were infected). If this is not accurate and masks were required from day 1, then the masks didn’t work or they had the worst luck with half of onboarding passegers coming aboard infected.
the biggest takeaway I got was .8% death rate. my state has @6% death rate. maybe the ship sample is too small but my opinion is that many deaths categorized as covid deaths are actually deaths with covid (but not from covid) and deaths presenting covid-like symptoms (but no test to confirm covid was present). this is a big problem if we want to get an accurate picture of covid. the CDC did no favors for advancing science with the guidelines they published in med to late April.
At the moment it’s impossible to determine if intubated patients die from the virus or with the virus because invasive ventilation and the virus (supposedly) produce the exact same pathologies, i.e., out-of-control immune response, hyper-inflammation, microthrombosis and mutiple organ failure.
Wrong. Patients don’t get ventilation if they are not hypoxic. They will die w/o intervention. If they die they die not bc of ventilation. If they survive they survive bc of it. No intervention = death.
You are also confusing cause and causation. Patients have already coagulation and hyper-inflammation before they get on the ventilator. There are papers that describe these markers as predictors for severe disease course later on.
If there are better more efficient ways of saving the patients is another topic.
Patients are intubated as a matter of policy, not physiology. Hospitals are afraid of aerolsolized virus and consequently have adopted the policy of intubating patients early without regard to physiology. That is unethical and disastrous. Doctors who are not rushing to intubate patients are having good results (i.e., patients not dying and leaving hospital early) with high flow oxygen and proning, which disproves your claim that patients would die without intubation. For example:
https://twitter.com/DFarcy/status/1282051526912024576
Point me to a paper in which a patient had the markers of hyper-inflammation before being intubated. Lung x-rays and CTs don’t count. It only takes an hour or two after a patient is intubated for inflammatory markers to notably increase.
This paper and the references of similar studies therein:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971220302575
Abstract doesn’t distinguish who was intubated and who was not.
You understand that if something is supposed to have predictive value it has to be measured before the treatment, do you?
I am not here to do a journal club for you. Look at the paper or not. Everyone who’s interested to know the science can check for himself.
That was not my claim. Try again.
Yeah it was your claim:
“They will die w/o intervention. If they die they die not bc of ventilation. If they survive they survive bc of it. No intervention = death.”
If intervention above doesn’t mean ventilation then you are just a confusing communicator.
Intervention =/ ventilation. An intervention is anything you do to a patient by definition. No intervention = doing nothing.
But that would explain why you have such difficulties understanding scientific literature cause precise reading and deciphering the jargon is key there.
You’re just a damn pompous idiot. You’re desperate to look like an authority while saying things that make you look like a fool. You’re not trying to have an intelligent discussion; you’re just throwing up flack to sow confusion and feed your own ego.
It is very hard to have an intelligent discussion if one part is defying conventions about what a word means in a specific context and just making things up.
Definitions are crucial for science to be on the same page and avoid confusion.
I say supposedly because it’s been known for decades and is well documented that ventilators cause the pathologies I mentioned, but the virus is only presumed to do so. Until a deceased covid patient who was not intubated is autopsied, we will never know if the pathologies were caused from being ventilated or from the virus.
There have been autopsies w/o ventilation before. Here two patients died at home w/o ventilation, paper about microthrombrosis:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30178-4/fulltext
Here three out of seven patients didn’t get ventilation:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-2003#t1-M202003
The Lancet paper cites six more references [6,7,10-11,22,25] about autopsies but it’s not my job to look for you there how many cases more didn’t receive ventilation.
Unless I missed it, the second paper says 2 patients died outside of hospitals, but not that they never were in a hospital. I read of several accounts of patients who after being released from hospitals died of thrombosis.
In the second paper I count 5 that were ventilated and 2 that died at home. Also, microthrombosis is not specific to covid, e.g., sepsis.
Not convincing enough evidence for me.
To be convincing, a study would have to autopsy deceased patients who had no co-morbidities and who had not been intubated. Then we could get a clear signal about covid’s real pathogenesis.
There are six more references to go. Feel free to educate yourself.
Nonsense, there’ve been controls of other non-COVID-19 ARDS fatalities which just did not show the same kind of pathology.
Stop putting up a straw man. Your initial claim was the pathology was coming from the treatment and not from the virus. I told you people are not put on ventilators when they are not hypoxic.
Then you said you don’t believe people without ventilation would have clots and inflammation. Then I showed you that there are people like that.
Now you claim you only believe it when people would have no co-morbidities. Completely ignoring the fact that obese people don’t die suddenly on random basis at large numbers by inflammation and thrombosis. They. Don’t. Do. That.
What will be next?
You’re just trying to twist everything I say around without addressing the real issue which is: covid’s claimed pathologies are indistinguishable from those produced by ventilators. Why don’t you address that? The pathologies you keep referring to are not unique to covid. Some things may be more prevalent with covid, but so is intubation.
“…obese people don’t die suddenly on random basis at large numbers by inflammation and thrombosis. They. Don’t. Do. That.”
They do when they’re on ventilators for weeks. Ventilators would, and do, ki!ll even healthy people.
I did. You are just too dense to understand it.
I showed you data about autopsied patients who have never been on a ventilator so how the f… could a ventilator responsible for the findings?!
The data you provided is inconclusive. The 2nd study was only an abstract that didn’t say if the patients were intubated. The out-patients could have been formerly intubated patients who were released from the hospital and later died at home. The first study mentions 2 patients who were not intubated who sound like they had pre-existing heart issues; so their inflammation and thromboses may have been due to that.
Mr Smartypants thinks that’s conclusive data to make his point, but doesn’t want to acknowledge the well-documented research that shows mechanical ventilation causes the same pathologies attributed to covid. You can’t accurately measure a signal if you ignore the noise component, Mr, Smartypants.
And in case my last sentence was too hard for you to grasp, covid pathogenesis is the signal and mechanical ventilator pathogenesis is the noise. Characterize and filter the noise first, then measure the signal. Otherwise you’re just wasting your time.
You just can’t read and understand scientific papers. You are thinking you are critical but you are just ignorant and full of confirmation bias. That makes you look like a fool, do you know that?
You don’t get inflammation and full of microthrombi in your lungs bc of a heart attack. You don’t. Stopp making up things in your mind that are not backed up by any medical evidence.
The “noise” was taken care of by autopsies of ARDS patients w/o COVID-19 which didn’t have a similar pathology. In science we call that control.
Also, Steven M,
Everybody does not shed viruses the same, and everybody is not infected by the same dose. Also, the chances of getting infected by just passing in close proximity to somebody appear to be quite small.
Infection requires more prolonged contact than just passing by somebody or just being in the vicinity of infectious agents for a relatively brief time.
Working a full shift in an ER is one thing. Shopping at Lowe’s for twenty minutes is another.
Reducing all people to the same infectious status, and reducing all physical situations to the same infectious threat is childishly over simplistic thinking, where intimate human freedoms are concerned.
Having a brief lunch back to back in a company’s cafeteria was sufficient to transmit the disease as cluster analysis showed.
Yet on the ship mentioned in the link somewhere in this thread (https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693) 10 sets of cabin mates in close proximity had opposite test results. Too many inconsistencies.
It’s not inconsistent, it’s all about chances.
That something can be sufficient to transmit the virus doesn’t mean it happens in 100% of the cases.
That’s the whole point of wearing masks: decreasing the risk not setting it to zero. Like seatbelts.
Until the ‘Cancel Culture’ is dealt with debate and science dies.
It seems to me that those that are involved in destroying someone’s life should be libel for the outcome. RICO was formed to deal with the mob, there is a new mob now, deal with it. If instead of jail time lawyers could go after n$-damages for being a conspirator involved in a group collusion to destroy a persons life because that person did not believe as the ‘group’ did.
I thank CR for this post and the comments it has generated.
I wear a mask to be polite. I doubt if it really makes anything safer, but it keeps other people from accusing me of irresponsibility.
I thwart viral infection by wearing my lucky Hoyt Axton t-shirt. I have always worn that shirt in good health.
We still don’t have a vaccine for any coronavirus as far as I’m aware…. or a pneumonia cure/vaccine. Did Nicholas intend to kill grandma back in february2020 when he wasn’t wearing a mask? Did he hate people the way he says I hate people now? Were masks produced prior to march2020 ineffective so that’s why Nick wasn’t wearing one back in february2020? Has the politization of Covid rendered much of the science done post march2020 regarding masks scewed (at least the science too controversial for youtube videos and on the reknowed and famous science blog Twitter)?
I smell sock puppet.
Masks work. They don’t work 100% but that is not necessary to slow down the spread. Just stochastics.
Even if they reduce the risk of a non-infected person to get the virus only by 10% and the chance of an infected person to spread the virus by 20% you get altready p = 0.9 x 0.8 = 0.72 if both wear a mask. Nearly 30% decrease. That’s already quite substantial. But probably highly underestimating the effect.
I agree that masks work.
An understanding of the concept of Marginal cost – Marginal benefit
A lot of time, money and costs are diverted to the enforcement of wearing masks where the risk of transmission is already zero or near zero. In those environments, the masks provide virtually zero additional / marginal benefit. On the other hand, where the risk of transmission is much higher, the mask is not required or the mask is insufficient to substantively reduce the risk of transmission.
I am not objecting to wearing a mask where it does help reduce the spread. I do object to wearing the mask where the mask doesnt reduce the risk of transmission.
That statement is somewhat nonsensical because there are only two scenarios where that would be the case:
1) The risk is already 0% otherwise masks would still decrease the risk further even if from 0.1 to 0.099.
2) The risk is not decreased by wearing a mask at all for what there would have to be a very high concentration of viral particles to be around.
I gotta work on proofreading my statements.
should have stated that I object to wearing facemask where the reduction in the risk of transmission is trivial.
the other point that seems to overlooked is the protocols are inadequate where the risk is high and far too strict where the risk of transmission is miniscule, yet the protocols are treating all areas as if the risk of transmission is the same
The uncertainties about different situation’s transmission risks are just too big to give well-suited advise at the moment so the only working option is to apply more precaution than is probably necessary.
Which is definitively better than the other way around.
In my opinion the fastest way to recover the economy is to push the prevalence down and get people used to wear masks in places of gatherings with unknown people that they can live their lives otherwise as much as before.
Ron’s statement – “In my opinion the fastest way to recover the economy is to push the prevalence down and get people used to wear masks in places of gatherings with unknown people that they can live their lives otherwise as much as before.”
The current approach – ie trying to contain the virus is the better short term solution – but the far worse mid-term and long term solution.
The fastest way to reach a solid long term solution is to let the virus spread so that there is sufficient immunity in the population.
The current approach is to the long term detriment of the human immune system.
Ron’s statement – “In my opinion the fastest way to recover the economy is to push the prevalence down and get people used to wear masks in places of gatherings with unknown people that they can live their lives otherwise as much as before.”
The current approach – ie trying to contain the virus is the better short term solution – but the far worse mid-term and long term solution.
The fastest way to reach a solid long term solution is to let the virus spread so that there is sufficient immunity in the population.
The current approach is to the long term detriment of the human im
That statement has at least two assumptions:
1) There is long lasting immunity.
2) The infection fatality rate is low.
A vaccine is not our only option. If treatments get established that lower the fatality rate to that of a flu season things might get back to normal.
What does “slow down the spread” mean?
Does this mean that it will take longer for me to get it? If so, then I’d rather get it now, and get on with it. I don’t want to get it later, if I am going to get it anyway.
Doesn’t “slowing the spread” also mean prolonging the duration? Who wants to see it drag on for months and months, when it could have been done with, if we had not slowed it down?
Actually, the death spike is done, as I read the graphs. So what is it that we are now trying to “slow”? — cases?
Cases are consequences of discovering something already there. Cases are events of detection, NOT events of infection. If we want to slow detection, then we should slow testing.
” If we want to slow detection, then we should slow testing.”
…
Excellent idea. If we follow your prescription, if we stop testing, we’ll detect nothing, and presto, the virus is gone. Oh….don’t mind the refrigerated trailer trucks with all the bodies.
What does “slow down the spread” mean?
..
It means avoiding this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/26/covid-19-death-panels-starr-county-hospital-texas
Using the Guardian as a your reference, eh?
then why r we not wearing masks year round and everywhere? covid is not the only virus/bacteria that spreads via droplets/coughing/sneezing. dis u hate grandma too back in february2020 prior to covid?
It is mandatory at my work to get the flu shot or wear a mask if you don’t during flu season. Since years.
This site has always been the champion of common sense. Wearing masks is common sense. To state otherwise is twisting logic like a pretzel.
I was under the impression that it champions science.
Wrong. Wearing masks is akin to a religion. It is the mask-Believers who twist logic to fit their mask ideology.
Have another pretzel, then, JV, because, as I see it, the pretzel makers are the mass maskers.
It’s sickening to see the backtracking by those who formerly fully stated the inadequacy of evidence to support the level of mass control we now see.
I positively have no objections whatsoever to your wearing your mask, but do not force it upon me. You might say that everybody has to wear one in order for them to work. I could say the same about smoking — unless everybody stops, then the contagious behavior still persists to infect the minds of young people with the idea that smoking is still an allowable option. [One BILLION people world wide smoke, and eight MILLION deaths PER YEAR are attributed to smoking].
How about we require diners in restaurants to carry government-guided food-groups charts, and they are only allowed to order, if they present their official chart. They must also order a balance selection of foods. Or, let’s do weight checks and skin fold measures at the door to assess body mass index — if it’s above the recommendation, then you have to eat in a separate area, where food selections and eating practices are monitored for the good of others, since obesity is costing others dearly too.
Has the effects of using masks buy an infected person been looked at in relation to that persons health in not being able shed the virus?
I was not going to add to the comment thread, as most of my argument has already been said. The O/P refers to the study by Leung et al, published in Nature May2020 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2). What he didn’t mention was that 29% (72 out of 246) were asymptomatic (didn’t cough at all during the 30 minute testing period) and the researchers were unable to detect any viral particles in the exhaled breath – with or without masks. (Note: the viri present were that season’s ‘flu, rhinovirus (head cold) and coronavirus (‘common’ cold), not the current SARS-2 coronavirus).
I have no reason to doubt this result and the paper mentions the bafflement of the researchers as to why this should be. To me, the next logical conclusion to draw is that asymptomatic sufferers (those who do not cough) do not shed virus. However, several commenters above state that asymptomatic people ARE infectious. Presumably both statements cannot be true, so what recent testing has been done to shown that asymptomatic WuFlu patients ARE infectious?
asymptomatic people are assumed to be contagious because they can not prove they are not
Sweden was told told to expect 124,000 deaths before the 1st of August.
In Sweden 5697 people have died. That’s around 118,000 fewer than the doomsayers.
Amazingly, thousands more deaths are still being predicted.
Yesterday, 9 people died.
What does this mean? It means a lot more people die of heart disease in Sweden, than by Covid.
To see how utterly ludicrous the forecasts were for Sweden, check this out:
I keep seeing garbage articles from the US and British media, but they never mention that the deaths in Sweden are trending towards zero – with the health care system not having been overwhelmed, and without having destroyed their economy. Sweden is not embarking on a dangerous, radical experiment. It’s the rest of the world that is.
The rest of the world should butt out and take care of themselves. Unlike the British and the Americans, Swedes understand that you can’t hide from a virus,
Forget masks ,we need prayer.
For praying to the Proper Gods will protect you from this virus about as effectively as paper masks,poorly used.
And the infighting over which Gods are the “proper Gods” in this case would be about as productive as arguing over the effectiveness of mask wearing.
Especially since few bother to define the mask in question.
Half respirators with appropriate filters might provide some protection,but a designer handkerchief pulled up over over the nose?
Yet all are Masks and meet the directive.
Most are useless,especially when hanging off of one ear.
Public Official A advice on masks wrt Covid-19:
“Wearing a mask in enclosed public spaces will help reduce virus transmission”
Public Official B advice on masks wrt Covid-19:
“Wearing a mask in enclosed public spaces will help reduce virus transmission due to making you and the people around you uncomfortable, less sociable, and might help contain a sneeze or cough, however, they must be worn correctly and be replaced or cleaned on a regular basis. In some situations they do nothing at all, and in some specific situations may actually increase the chances of you becoming infected.”
Question: Which Public Official is more likely to be elected? (or reelected)
🙂
Ethan Brand
I skimmed comments but did not see any mention of facial hair, beards, stubble, etc. Unless clean shaven, mask effectiness is near zero, because air takes route of least resistance. Ie unfiltered pathway.
Anyone with a beard and a mask is either virtue signalling or compliant ( avoiding fines).
I think I figured out what is driving the governors of the USA to manically mandate mass masking — MODEL projections of mandated universal face masks by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
One MODEL !
MODEL !
NOT reality, NOT rationality, NOT level headed reasoning, but … a MODEL.
Of friggin’ course, it’s all being driven by …. a … MODEL.
All the world is a stage, and COVID is a tragedy, … no a comedy, … no … both.
I’ve found that Fenofibrate reduces the amount of material available for the virus to replicate with. My covid is nothing more than common cold at the moment
Well, FWIW, Goldman Sachs thinks that universal mask wearing would reduce the damage to the economy by about a trillion (yes, that’s a T) dollars and reduce the hit to GDP by about 5%.
https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/face-masks-and-gdp.html
Goldman is not political. Their only interest is in what makes money, and they stand to lose a lot if they’re wrong, so they put some serious effort into evaluating the available information.
I’d be interested hear our resident statistician’s opinions on the data presented in the Goldman report.
“Goldman is not political”….
LOL. Thanks for the laugh.
Here’s some data that might shed some negative light on Goldman Sachs’ analysis:
Notice that AFTER face mask mandates were enacted for whole nations, even allowing for several ample incubation periods over multiple months, case numbers continued to climb, sometimes even MORE sharply than before the mask mandates.
I would like to see anyone show data in the US where the infection rate (positive/tested) changed *as a result of a mask mandate*. In my review, I did not see any step changes or increases in the rate of infection reduction (steeper slope from high to low) from a trend before the mandate within three weeks of a mandate.
Yeah, it’s funny how the mask mandates in the states seem to come exactly at the points where case numbers show a steep rise, as if it is a universal knee-jerk panic reaction. Like, Oh hell, lockdowns didn’t work, let’s try this. … Oh hell, that didn’t work, let’s try this?
Panic management, NOT sound management. I’ve seen it in business before — it’s just stupid. Sorry, but I’m loosing patience.
Shelli:
It seems to me that’s an unreasonable expectation outside of a strictly controlled environment.
Doesn’t this presuppose that masks are the key to infection reduction, and not merely one piece of a larger puzzle?
If so, is that presupposition reasonable?
I agree with what you said and that is exactly my point.
Comparing one country to another with mask wearing ignores all factors including different strains (which may have slightly different infection modalities which I do not see a lot of people considering), societal difference, ability and desire to contact trace effectively, etc.- the only way to prove impact of a change is in the same population.
I do not think mask wearing makes a significant impact and even in the same population we do not realistically know much about mask usage before and after mandates, however, surely, somewhere there would be something, to indicate a change occurred if there is an actual benefit in the same population… or how can we justify a mandate?
As to the former, again, I don’t see how you’re going to see any indication of change scientifically provable without a strictly controlled environment. There’s just too much going on. It just might be that the rate of infection WAS reduced by some unknown degree, but that’s almost like trying to prove when you stopped beating your husband, if you know what I mean by that legal reference?
You’re almost asking to prove a negative by proving what DIDN’T happen. Very difficult.
As to the latter, do you focus on the “mandate” portion because it offends your sensibilities re: freedom? This isn’t a judgmental question on my part, i.e., I’m not judging you if the former is true, but rather more an invite to introspection. I like my freedom too.
If you know for example that you could be asymptomatically infected (thus you don’t know it), therefore that viable virus particles exist and could be propagated to others via your breath, does your freedom NOT to wear a mask override the other guy’s freedom not to be infected by you?
Again, I’m not making judgments, I’m just asking questions that interest me.
See this study referenced by Steven Mosher below:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20041632v1.full.pdf
A few thoughts…
COVID 19 has infected just south of 4.2 million people in this country. That represents 1/3rd of 1%.
Covid has killed 146,000 (which includes all those that died not only exclusively “from” COVID but those that died “with” COVID (like George Floyd) in this country. That represents 4/100ths of 1%. The recovery rate for COVID 19 is on average 95%. And we shut down the economy and forced people to shelter in place for 4 months and are forcing everyone to wear masks.
My question is this. The H1N1 infected 60.8 million people in this country in 2009. That is nearly 14.5 times more that COVID 19. Why didn’t we shut down the economy and tell people to shelter in place and wear face masks then?
One reason might be because the H1N1 virus is estimated to have killed 12,469 people during a one year period:
“From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated that there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (8,868-18,306) in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus.*”
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/burden-of-h1n1.html
As of right now, death estimates for the U.S. in a mere 5 months are around 150,000, over 10 times that of H1N1:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Also, I do not know of anyone who did anything different back in 2009.
I was barely aware that there was something bad going around.
How would this virus have progressed if no one had done anything different?
Even in the places with no lockdown, people did change behavior markedly.
I also think that for several reasons, we do not know how many people have really died of or with the virus.
There were undercounts and overcounts, and probably some shenanigan’s here and there.
But also people who died at home who never went to a hospital and were not counted in the official tallies.
I do not recall the exact numbers, but in NYC it was found that many people were known to have not been counted because they only counted people who had been diagnosed and died in a hospital or other facility. They did not count anyone who died at home.
So it is unknowable.
And the lockdowns make it difficult, probably impossible, to compare overall death rates with rates from previous years as a means of indirectly determining the likely range of numbers of deaths.
Plus a lot of people got very sick and then lived. Many of them have severe lung damage and scarring. Other mild damage, but permanent. And other types of organ damage.
No telling, but we know it is substantial.
With flu, people real sick and then are fine ten days later.
There are no massive numbers in the hospital with viral pneumonia.
Maybe the CDC gets funding my going in front of congress and making up some crap about tens of millions of people with the flu every year.
I can believe two things at once very easily: The whole thing is blown out of proportion, but it is still very bad as pandemics go.
Someone could have played hopscotch in the middle of Times Square with headphones on for weeks straight without ever needing to look up to get out of the way of a car.
So who really can say what would have happened if it was business as usual?
I can believe it would have been a lot worse while also believing it would not have been Biblical.
Maybe we will have some hurricanes, bad earthquakes, and a volcano or two over the next several months, to make up for all the people who cheated death?
“Plus a lot of people got very sick and then lived. Many of them have severe lung damage and scarring. Other mild damage, but permanent. And other types of organ damage.”
This is not really meaningful until it is determined which of those patients were intubated. All of those things are side effects of mechanical ventilation so there’s no way to ascribe their cause to just covid with any certainty..
It is meaningful for the purpose of comparing it to the flu where more people got the virus but far fewer died and few wound up intubated by comparison.
Can we trust all those death attributions to COVID-19, to claim a valid comparison between H1N1 and COVID-19. I don’t know that those figures are comparable at all.
Robert:
No, not all of them. But if you’re asking me to believe that +/- 138,000 deaths (and growing) currently attributed to C-19 (thus making a valid comparison to H1N1 at +/- 12,000) are ALL bogus, I think you’re being irrational.
E.g., I think we pretty much know for certain that Dr. Death Senior Slayer Cuomo has almost 3x more deaths in his state ALONE attributed to C-19 than all that the CDC has attributed to H1N1. At some future point in time we’ll know more and hopefully, better. Do you really believe that number is going to be significantly reduced such that only 12,000 people will have died from COVID?
There’s reasonable doubt, and then there’s unreasonable doubt. Don’t fall too far on the latter to justify your assumptions re: freedom.
Here is a scientific first
Collection of VIABLE virons from the air.
This is a first. collecting the virus from the air and then proving viability by culturing it.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20041632v1.full.pdf
of course anti markers will have doubts. no data, but doubts
What’s an “anti marker”
The Chinese did a similar study that included surfaces, but some were concerned that the PCR test used to identify the virus could detect both viable and non-viable instances:
https://tinyurl.com/y4zdbux4
Yours seems to confirm viability. But are you bothered by this at the top of page one (emphasis added)?
“medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.13.20041632. this version posted July 20, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.”
“What’s an “anti marker”
auto correct “anti masker”
““medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.13.20041632. this version posted July 20, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.”
Bothered? No, The findings confirm other findings that I read daily in Korea. For example, there is a recent
increase in imported cases on Russian ships. Swabbing of the ships is indicating virus found on surfaces.
What is new here is the actual air capture of viable virus. Most people misunderstand what peer review
is for:
A) ensuring the relevant literature is cited
B) ensuring that there are no obvious errors
C) ensuring that the description of the method is sufficient for replication.
NOT confirming that the study is correct in every detail.
What I am more concerned about is that they share their results but not their data.
But they seem to achieved a first in culturing live virus. One of the authors is a ex DARPA GUY
and so top of the art when it comes to these things. A few other researchers are working on replicating
”
so bothered? Nope, It also confirms what we see daily in Korea: when there is a cluster, it starts with
someone somewhere not wearing a mask, for example in Pocheon, 21 soldiers people infected:
singing and improper mask wearing . Songpa-gu church: singing, improper mask wearing.
There is a safety reporting application so that if you see policy violations you can report them.
so being able to assign causality may improve. today they have to interview people and look at
CCTV film of the meetings and church activities, etc
also For people who enter the national service ( around 45-50K) they are all instructed to wear masks
and are tested when they report to boot camp. 1 out of 46,000 tested positive. Since national service
is compulsory nobody wants to miss their boot camp call up, so they wear the masks so they can
pass the test and do their service
Data on around 5500 cases is being released if you would like to apply to get access. but my sense is that you
dont like data, you like doubt
I couldn’t find the tables referenced in the text. All I could find were “Fig.1,” “Fig. 2,” etc. Guess I don’t know yet how to read these kinds of docs.
Because that’s what I did when I checked your Independence Day massacre prediction the day after? I just doubted it instead of calling you out with the actual numbers? It IS true that lately I enjoy the heck out of doubting YOU when it comes to certain things though.
Anyway, data on what, mask wearing? Meh. Mask wearing seems like just so much common sense to me.
I wouldn’t know what to do with a bunch of raw numbers anyway. Why don’t you hire and teach me how to do it?
Might be worth a read:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-europe/how-munich-turned-its-coronavirus-outbreak-into-a-scientific-study
I wear a mask. The same one since day one. It is noticeably dirty. But it is COVID free because I limit the number of times I have to wear it – allowing at least 4 days in between.
And it creeps people out. That’s a good thing. The goal is to get back to not wearing masks. So many people have forgotten that. If all the lockdown measures do is prolong – and the recent spikes seem to actually prove that – then let’s get on with it now that lethality is down for whatever the reason.
I suppose you could say the same thing about your underwear. Wearing a dirty mask is gross, not to mention what other pathogens you are spreading around.
dummies
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/pastor-40-infected-coronavirus-church-event-72006518
hopefully they wont take the hospital bed of someone who needs it.
or maybe they bring there illness to a meat packing plant and wipe out a business.
Hopefully they’ll take their HCQ or nebulized budesonide and stay out of a hospital, or worse case find a competent hospital that is able to treat patients without intubating them. Don’t say it can’t be done because doctors around the world are proving that specious claim to be false.