You read some articles about virus immunity ?
Vaccine can be just useless and probably lost time.
Sorry that it took me 3 weeks to respond, but yesterday I had another talk about the masks.
It really annoys me how writing without providing any evidence, but with a confident âfuck yesâ yields you 17 likes. I will insist to say that I am not convinced that masks bring more benefit than harm. Why? Because a mask is only effective as long as itâs dry. A moist mask is not effective and it can even be a great place for bacteria to develop.
So how long is a surgical mask effective? According to a study, already after 90 minutes the effect wears off, and thatâs in an operating theatre, not in a bus! Put on correctly, not by amateurs.
Hereâs another source, from a Sydney newspaper from⊠2003:
Health authorities have warned that surgical masks may not be an effective protection against the virus.
âThose masks are only effective so long as they are dry,â said Professor Yvonne Cossart of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney.
âAs soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets.â
Professor Cossart said that could take as little as 15 or 20 minutes, after which the mask would need to be changed.
So tell me, do you think everyone is putting on a new mask every 20 minutes? Or at least using a new mask on the way to work and from work? Do they throw away used masks? Do they exclusively use surgical masks (not the material âfashionâ ones that you get at clothes shop). And did you consider the ecological footprint of producing billions of single-use masks that people will throw away anywhere after use?
3 Likes
Say someone is using it for the morning commute and the evening commute. If the tram/bus travel is 20 minutes or less, everything should be fine, as long as the mask is let try completely and you wonât need more than one single-use surgical mask. Isnât it?
Anyway, if you reason in a selfish way, you could let everyone use their mask for too much time and change yours as much as is needed and you are safer than everyone not wearing them because itâs too complex/useless/costlyâŠ
If you tuck your moist mask in your pocket with your hand, which touched the railings, and let it there for 8 hours, Iâm not very optimistic about itâs state in the evening. If you somehow manage to not contaminate it and really let it dry, then yeah, maybe itâs fine. Itâs just not very realistic.
By the way, my approach is: letâs keep an open mind and discuss and in the meantime letâs of course adhere to the instructions. I donât like the approach: âshut up and do as youâre told! omg heâs not wearing a mask!â
1 Like
I was saying it with a generic âyouâ. 
Last time I looked (which admittedly was quite some weeks ago) the opinion seemd to be that the virus doesnât survive very long outside our body, even in a moist mask in a pocket.
There might be an increase of diverse bacterial infections, but this might not be such a bad thing if the aim is to reduce Covid-19. We already have good treatments against most bacterial infections.
The mask not being effective for filtering a virus or bacteria (after some wear) is not the point of wearing masks at this time. Itâs about containing/reducing the spread of droplets (and possibly aerosols to some degree).
1 Like
Is there a similar study for 3 ply masks?
Because 2 ply masks miss the filter layer in the middle so Iâm not sure how transferable the results are to 3 ply masks.
The Swiss National Science Task Force has released a policy brief on the topic that summarizes the research:
https://ncs-tf.ch/de/policy-briefs/benefits-of-mask-wearing-1-july-2020-en/
There seems to be a scientific consensus that masks are beneficial.
1 Like
The point is not the coronavirus itself, but other viruses & bacteria. Weâre looking at the total net benefit against all pathogens, not just one.
Thatâs an interesting read. Itâs nice that they publish the scientific consensus. A consensus can change, once new facts come into the light. This statement is quite fresh, only two weeks old.
Arenât hospital/OR settings fairly different than travelling in public transit? Avoiding bacterial/nosocomial infection during a surgery sounds like a different problem (you have open bodies around you donât want to infect).
The study also measured at very short distances (10cm), which is realistic for a surgery, but not as much for people in public transport (at least in Zurich) or stores.
Edit: also in that articleâs experimental settings, masks are never worse than no masks (per the graph you showed).
3 Likes
But this is exactly the problem. People think thy can do âresearchâ by having a preconceived opinion and then look for confirmation of what they think. The âevidenceâ you provide is from what looks like a predatory journal (impact factor 0.5), more or less trustworthy as my nieceâs diary. If you and I make a âstudyâ where we fart on each other faces and then measure if we got covid, pretty sure we can get it published there with the title that âFarts do no transmit covidâ.
But this is not even relevant, because even taking the âstudyâ for good, it really does not add much to the discussion for many reasons (e.g. sars-cov-2 is not a bacterium), mostly because thatâs not how these things should work. If you want to do this properly, collect ALL evidence that you can (the one that agrees with you and more importantly the one that does not agree with you) and then judge if your position still holds.
Here, I will help you:
But then again this would be a better effort (better than scouting google for 2003 newspaper interviews that agree with you) but still not sufficient, because thereâs a reason someone is a virologist and weâre not. Iâm not saying âDO AS YOUâRE TOLDâ because I like authoritarian regimes, itâs because people making these suggestions are making them based on years of study and expertise, with the public good in mind. We need to understand that everyone having a right to an opinion does NOT equate to the fact that everyoneâs opinon has the same value on any topic. My opinion in software development does not count very much, because I wouldnât know what the fuck Iâm talking about.
Itâs good to be curious and to understand stuff, but one has to know his/her own limits otherwise can make embarrassing comments. This does not even count this time, because in this case itâs stuff that by doing a more honest search one can find easily.
We are in a global pandemic, everything we do has an impact on ourselves but also on others. There is enough evidence to suggest that wearing a mask can help spreading of the disease (by how much? is it enough? for how long? all good questions but the main message stands), itâs a really small effort. Is âI think wearing a mask causes more damage than goodâ really the hill you want to die on?
14 Likes
I certainly hope they do, but you could make the same statement about the central banks and the Fed. Do you also think they act in the best interest of the public? Maybe they think they do, but it just seems to me that theyâre just covering their asses. âdeflationary crisis & series of bankruptcies? not on my watch!â.
Iâm not fighting a cause here. I just come across people, often intelligent, who are against masks, which makes me think and share my thoughts here. In part, I do this to be able to go back to them and refute their arguments with the feedback that I got here.
I agree that this might be just human psychology, totally irrational, that fools even the smartest of us. Iâm not saying masks are definitely bad. Iâm just saying: if you want me to be on your side, donât have me take your word for it, but convince me.
Iâm not taking your âIâm just an impartial observer only interested in the truthâ-line serious.
If I google âcovid-19 masks effectivenessâ I get a frontpage half-full of papers and university-articles laying out the current knowledge quite plainly and fairly. (Allthough not all sources agree completely, something like âN95 are much better than surgical masks, surgical masks better than scarfs and scarfs better than nothing.â doesnât seem super controversial.)
Then you come along with an article from 2003 and some (possibly junk) paper that are both not relevant to the discussion.
And you bring up some theory why bacterial infections are relevant here, but provide no basis for it at all.
So, i have a couple of questions:
-
Do you agree that the aim of the masks is to reduce the spread of droplets? (Something like: If youâre in a train, the droplets would spread in a radius of 45cm with masks and in a radius of 1.5m without the mask. But itâs obviously still a probabilistic protection.)
-
If yes, did you not find any of the evidence, such as the one from @ripper23, for masks being at least somewhat effective for 1. before posting here?
-
After claiming a mask was âonly effective as long as itâs dryâ you retreat to saying we should be âlooking at the total net benefitâ. Did you find any evidence that âpocketing masksâ was a cause for an increase in bacterial infections or did you just make this up?
3 Likes
@ripper23 thank you. thank you for the time, effort, detail, and patience with which you answered. My answer would have probably gotten be banned from this forum.
3 Likes
@trotro: Iâm aware of the goals of wearing a mask. The studies provide evidence, but their result depends a lot on what is being measured and on the conditions. So (just as a hypothetical example) they could reduce the distance that the droplets travel after you cough, but maybe they stay in the air, and as we know, in a bus people move around all the time.
Then you have a problem, if you canât control your emotions in a civilized discussion.
Alright, that was my last post on masks, I donât feel like discussing anything after such a responseâŠ
1 Like
Yes, exactly! And thatâs why itâs a good idea to use it. Even in a bus, where people move around, the area where people get infected is thought to be diminished. For example, instead of everyone in the 10 closest seats potentially being infected it might only turn out to be 6 people who might get infected.
Maybe youâd be interested in this anectode:
https://www.springfieldmo.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=6939
Two stylists had tested positive after working at the Great Clips at 1864 S. Glenstone Ave, potentially exposing 140 clients and six other coworkers. No additional clients or coworkers tested positive.
Testing was offered to all those potentially exposed, and 46 people pursued testingâall came back negative.
In addition to masking, Great Clips had policies in place that also likely prevented the spread of diseaseâsuch as distancing of salon chairs, staggering appointments and other measures that will also be studied
1 Like
@Bojack
You went from saying that cheap masks donât help to saying this:
And then this masterpiece.
Any proper respectable evidence to convince me or anyone else that masks do equal harm and benefit or more harm than benefit? Why do you start from the position you start from?
Why donât you try to convince people with facts and evidence rather than starting by saying something fringe and then claiming to have âopen mindâ and putting the burden on proof on others to 'âconvince youâ.
7 Likes
@ripper23 your answer is so good that it can be applied to many many other fields and questions.
âŠbut letâs just add that we need to know who are we speaking with (or listening to). The BAG should be working for us but at the beginning they said not to buy/use masks. It does still lay in the group âworking for usâ because they werenât helping us not to catch it, they were helping us having a working hospital system, since hoarding masks would have been a bigger issue at that point.
So, if you listen to a nobel prize in Economics talking about economy, go check where he works.
did @Cortana invest yesterday? 
It seems the marked is tanking again. Maybe are the morning investors reacting to the recession?
Did anybody watch the press conference of the Federal Office of Public Health today?
They sounded very pessimistic and asked cantons to consider making masks mandatory in shops.
3 Likes
I find that reasonable - if itâs compulsory in public transport, why not in shops too?
Many of the countries surrounding and beyond have the same, and itâs really not such a huge deal.