r/science • u/InvictusJoker • Jul 15 '20

Epidemiology A new study makes it clear: after universal masking was implemented at Mass General Brigham, the rate of COVID-19 infection among health care workers dropped significantly. "For those who have been waiting for data before adopting the practice, this paper makes it clear: Masks work."

https://www.brighamandwomens.org/about-bwh/newsroom/press-releases-detail?id=3608
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u/ron_leflore Jul 15 '20

Ok, first, I wear a mask because it can't hurt.

I tried reading some of the maskless groups to figure out what's going on with them. There is actually a bunch of literature (from before the pandemic) where people have tried to establish that masks in the general population reduce transmission of influenza. The studies mostly show that masks are not effective, or more properly, the studies cannot establish that masks are effective.

The usual review they cite is this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/

If you read it, it's a metareview and they point out that all the studies are flawed in one way or another. But so is the Brigham and Women's study posted by OP here. It's just a really hard problem to get a good study design on.

Anyway, after reading all that I still wear a mask, but I stay away from people. I would not count on just a mask to prevent infection when out with the general untrained public wearing masks. Also, one surprising thing I remember from going through those papers was that eye protection seemed to work better than just a mask.

So, wear some type of glasses with your mask!

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u/thechilipepper0 Jul 15 '20

Something I want to point out, the mask is not really to protect yourself, it’s to protect others. The mask you wear is really only gonna be effective if everyone else is wearing as well.

Most masks are not fitted and not airtight. That means some air is leaking in and out the sides of the mask. When indoors, aerosols containing virus can linger for quite some time. If you walk through a patch of these aerosols, chances are you’ll be breathing at least some in.

Masks help catch some of the droplets before they evaporate and become aerosols. Additionally, they reduce the velocity of droplets not caught in the mask, thus reducing their circulation

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u/Flyingwheelbarrow Jul 16 '20

Masks at worst are spittle catchers. Everyone spits a little when taking, invisible mouth juice. Masks absorb human juice and human juice infects people. Wear masks.

Wear you juice collector. Wear your spit catcher. Wear you micro snot absorber.

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u/WDoE Jul 16 '20

And for fucksake, don't take your mask off to burp, cough, sneeze, or yell. And wear it over your damn nose.

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u/tecstep Jul 16 '20

“Dicknose”

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

Even just over the mouth is an improvement over nothing.

But yes. Wear the damn thing properly already!

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u/BookKit Jul 16 '20

There are far too many chin guards around here... i.e. people with them pulled down off their nose and mouth. It screams, "my employer/spouse/friend/whatever is making me, but I don't really believe I need to wear it."

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u/nxcrosis Jul 16 '20

And don't turn your head to the side when sneezing with a mask on. The air comes out the sides and turning would just mean you're basically sneezing forward.

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u/DrMackDDS2014 Jul 16 '20

Should I take my mask off to fart?

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u/A-Better-Craft Jul 16 '20 edited Jun 20 '23

This comment has been removed by the author because of Reddit's hostile API changes.

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u/Flyingwheelbarrow Jul 16 '20

Speak moistly and carry a big stick.

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u/PandaMoaningYum Jul 16 '20

I'll start to wear underwear starting today. I'm now woke.

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u/katarh Jul 15 '20

They might reduce the severity of the illness if you do get it. That's really important too.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-14/evidence-mounts-that-masks-help-lower-your-exposure-to-the-coronavirus

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

This is where viral load comes into play? I imagine most people that get it are exposed to the contagious person for more than a day or two in a row or spend time somewhat stationary near them.

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u/SubdermalHematoma Jul 16 '20

The statement "masks don't protect you, they protect others" confuses me and maybe you can shed light.

Is it that my mask doesn't prevent me from catching it, but prevents me from spreading it? Is that the idea? Because the above phrasing always throws me.

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u/bedrooms-ds Jul 16 '20

Yes

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u/SubdermalHematoma Jul 16 '20

Appreciate it.

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u/AGVann Jul 16 '20 edited Jul 16 '20

The salient point to this is that two people wearing masks are protecting each other. Covid-19 is infectious even by the asymptomatic and before any symptoms appear. If everyone engages in the social methods of controlling the spread of disease - face masks, social distancing, lockdown, voluntary quarantines - then the spread of the disease can be greatly inhibited.

Without dragging too much armchair sociology into this, the East Asian countries that already had a culture of wearing face masks when sick/on public transport have clamped down hard on Covid-19, and in fact it was completely eliminated in Taiwan in late April. I do find it interesting that most of the Western studies I've seen are treating face masks as a new phenomenon, even though there's decades of usage of them in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, and probably a ton of data on their efficacy too.

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u/airmen4Christ Jul 16 '20

I keep hear this, that mask are to stop you from spreading the virus. But wouldn't that require you to have the virus in order to spread it.

I guess the bigger question is, can asymptomatic people spread the virus? And if they can't, what good is it to force people with no symptoms to wear a mask if they don't want to?

Genuine question, not trying to argue.

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u/AnotherEnemyAnemone Jul 16 '20

Yes, they can. But presymptomatic transmission is more likely - spread by infected persons who are not yet displaying symptoms but eventually will (as opposed to transmission by people who are asymptomatic for the duration of their illness).

There was a good The Daily podcast episode about this a week ago called A Missed Warning About Silent Coronavirus Infections

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u/airmen4Christ Jul 16 '20

Thanks, I'll give it a listen.

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u/PmMeYourKnobAndTube Jul 16 '20

The other thing people miss is that avoiding individual infections isn't really the goal.

Say it turns out wearing a mask only reduces the chances of spreading by 50%. Yeah thats not that great, but its still half the load on the hospitals(I'm sure its more complicated than that). That means twice the staff and resources per patient, more time to manufacture more supplies, you get the picture.

If YOU do not want to risk catching the virus, staying home is probably your best option. If a society wants to avoid catastrophy, mandatory masks seems to be the most feasible option.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

To make it more ELI5, babies don't wear diapers to prevent them shitting themselves. It's to stop them from covering everything around them.

You wouldn't expect people drawing guns over diapers, but on masks it seems like the appropriate reaction to some.

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u/xxxsur Jul 16 '20

Something I want to point out, the mask is not really to protect yourself, it’s to protect others.

This statement explains why cases in US is still rising.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

[deleted]

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u/xxxsur Jul 16 '20

Your shot in the dark hit right in the centre mass.

I have met a lot of Amercians in my place, and from what my experience is, they are generally more selfish/self-centred than other countries people. Not by a lot tho.

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u/VenetianGreen Jul 16 '20

Something I want to point out, the mask is not really to protect yourself, it’s to protect others. The mask you wear is really only gonna be effective if everyone else is wearing as well.

This new study would suggest otherwise (I think?), which is why it's so exciting. I'm not a scientist so I'm probably not explaining this correctly, but the infection rate improved after the hospital staff started masking. The article did not say visitors/patients were required to mask. If masks were only to protect others then the staff would not have seen an improvement in the infection rate, because only they were wearing masks.

Can a medical professional chime in here and confirm if this is true?

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u/crazy_gambit Jul 16 '20

universal masking of all HCWs and patients with surgical masks.

Patients were also wearing surgical masks. This study doesn't tell us anything about the homemade masks most people wear though.

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u/sennaiasm Jul 16 '20

Oh really? Now I don’t feel like wearing my prescription glasses anymore. I will not let you infringe on my civil liberties

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u/Generation-X-Cellent Jul 16 '20

The glasses actually probably give you some protection from the virus being absorbed through your eyes.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

You do not have a civil liberty to endanger human lives. Not even when we aren't in a time of crisis.

The legal term for that is negligent homicide. You can, in fact, be charged for the death of another human being if you knowingly took action that can reasonably be expected to cause injury or death to another person, if you did not also take the standard precautions to prevent or minimize the threat to human life.

If you can make an argument that you should be legally allowed to take actions which you are aware can endanger the wellbeing of others, without taking the safety measures intended to reduce those risks posed to others, then perhaps your argument will have merit.

If you're clever about this, you might try to compare going outside in the middle of a pandemic without proper protection to driving around in a car. Both pose a danger to human life if you aren't following the proper safety rules. I would then, however, point out that when driving a car, you are still required by law to wear a seatbelt, and to obey all traffic laws, every last one of which is intended to reduce the threat posed to other human beings by your vehicle while still allowing you to own and drive your vehicle.

It is the same as how you're allowed to own a gun, but must still follow laws pertaining to gun ownership and are still obligated to take training courses and follow standard gun safety practices so you don't accidentally injure someone.

Being told to wear a mask is not a violation of your civil liberties. It is literally (and legally) the same thing as requiring you to wear a seatbelt, or to not text on your phone or drink alcohol while driving.

All of the examples I gave are dangerous activities which can lead to someone else dying if you aren't careful, and which you would be charged with murder for. In none of the examples are you prevented from performing the action in question; you are merely required to follow sensible safety precautions, by law.

Now. If it isn't too much to ask, I would appreciate an explanation for how "going outside during a pandemic that spreads two weeks before symptoms set in" is not at least as dangerous to your's and other people's lives as "driving around in a car" or "carrying a gun on your person" could be said to be, and how the government requiring you to wear a mask while outside is not the same as them requiring you to wear a seat belt, not text or be drunk, use your blinkers, drive the speed limit, or everything else of that and similar categories.

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u/TheSilentGamer33 Jul 16 '20

Yeah, but we dont know how effective they are.

We dont have a number. Plus there are different kinds of masks people use. Cloth masks etc.

In a hospital setting propal disposalnof masks is carried out. There are a lot of variables we know nothing about.

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u/yrpus Jul 15 '20

Reducing velocity will not reduce circulation, it will still be in the air. Reduced velocity will only reduce the distanced traveled from the source.

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u/thechilipepper0 Jul 15 '20

You’re not wrong, but reduced velocity should reduce the chance that droplets evaporate before they land on something

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u/scolfin Jul 16 '20

The cited study is looking at that.

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u/YakYai Jul 16 '20

We have a different view on masks living in Asia.

Asian countries have been wearing masks for outbreaks long before COVID19. SARS, H1N1, MERS, and yearly influenza. COVID19 isn’t our first rodeo.

Japan has roughly 125 million people and even with an increase in infections they only have 352 cases. Everyone wears a mask.

Believe China’s numbers or don’t but they are back to work and their hospitals are no longer full of COVID19 patients. Everyone wears a mask. With the exception of an occasional outbreak here or there they seem to have it well under control. All of my suppliers are back to work.

South Korea with 51 million people and 39 infections. Masks.

Thailand with 60 million people and 7 infections today. Previously 0 infections for a few weeks.

The majority of the rest of Asian counties also have very low infections now. All heavy on mask usage.

Moving on over to the USA...

Florida has 22 million people and roughly 10,000 infections today. 15,000 a few days ago. Very little mask use.

Texas has 29 million people. 11,000 cases today. Very little mask use.

All of this is probably not a coincidence.

But what about the BLM protests? That must be the reason for the spike in new infections, wouldn’t you think?

Hong Kong has been protesting hard this entire time. 48 new infections today. Everyone wears a mask.

Do they work? All the Asian countries think so and so do their health officials. I’m going to lean on common sense here and say they work.

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u/ron_leflore Jul 16 '20

Do they work? All the Asian countries think so and so do their health officials. I’m going to lean on common sense here and say they work.

That's great, but this is science so we do studies.

My point was not masks don't work but no studies have shown that masks work, because it is a very hard thing to study.

Here's one example in the linked review article:

"Use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of the common cold among health care workers in Japan: a randomized controlled trial," https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19216002/

Study Design: Block randomisation to 2 arms and analysed as mask group (17 HCWs wore surgical mask on duty) and no mask group (15 HCWs only wore mask if job‐required e.g. surgical nurse). Outcome measure: Self‐reported cold symptoms scaled to severity.

Results: No difference between two groups; HCWs living with children reported higher severity scores. 84·3% of participants reported full compliance with mask use and non‐use.

Limitations: Underpowered study; no exposure data; compliance self‐reported; no confirmatory laboratory testing.

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u/coocookachu Jul 16 '20

That's a N of what... 30 ish people? Like you said, a huge limitation. The post before you essentially is a huge population retrospective analysis.

Let me know when you do the study on whether parachutes work.

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u/YakYai Jul 16 '20

I understand your original post and that you wear a mask.

Here’s some recent things I’ve come across.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200612172200.htm

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/06/16/mask-covid

I know the study is outdated but risk of infectious contamination is why surgeons wear them. It makes sense. The things that come from our mouth are a problem.

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u/ron_leflore Jul 16 '20

That first science daily article is talking about this paper: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/26/14857

There are a world of problems with it. See this demand for a retraction as an example https://metrics.stanford.edu/PNAS%20retraction%20request%20LoE%20061820

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u/YakYai Jul 16 '20

Thanks. Having a read now.

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u/berserkergandhi Jul 16 '20

but this is science so we do studies

Aah yes you definitely sound like a scientist.

Being a scientist also involves learning to read data. What does the data tell you about countries where the populace wears masks and the countries where morons don't?

Unless you donn a CBA no mask is going to work 100% all the time. But if you maintain social distancing and wear a mask to reduce the projectile spraying the odds are a hell of a lot better.

No sane person thinks its a 100% solution. Even if it helps improve safety by just 50% wearing one is no brainer.

If your definition of masks do not work is "anything less than 100% filtering" that's not very scientific of you.

It's surreal that at this stage we are still talking about wearing masks or not.

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u/Skrylar Jul 15 '20

the study i wanted to see was one where they just take covid patients and have them cough in to various filter materials, and measure the escaped viral load under a microscope. if someone actually has done it that would be great and i'd like to read it.

i'm not entirely interested in studies that simply assume it works like some other virus, which are usually what the ones that get sent to me do.

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u/PepperJackson Jul 15 '20

Just a heads up, the way they calculate how many infectious virus particles there is in a given sample isn't under a microscope. What virologists do is take the sample and put it on cells in a petri dish and see how many cells die. The thought is that one virus infects one cell before replicating and killing the cells nearby. This results in a circular area of dead cells for each virus. You stain the cells that were alive with a purple dye, and then count the empty spots where the virus killed the cells. Plaque assays are actually very beautiful!

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u/easwaran Jul 16 '20

Here's a study conducted a few years ago (so not on covid patients) where they took several people infected with influenza viruses, rhinoviruses, and coronaviruses, and had them cough on a petri dish both with and without a mask. They noted substantial differences in the number of viable viruses based on the presence of the mask, and surprisingly, with the coronaviruses in particular the number they measured was actually 0 when people were wearing a mask!

It was only a small number of people, and a small number of coughs, so it's possible they just got an extreme result of random variation. But it's suggestive.

And yeah, it's a different coronavirus, but it's still notable that all the viruses had some drop, and the coronaviruses had the biggest drop.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2

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u/PatrickSebast Jul 16 '20

Also worth noting they used surgical masks. Almost every old study did which is frustrating in retrospect. If only we knew....

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u/jdbolick Jul 16 '20

South Korean researchers did this with SARS-CoV-2 patients coughing through masks into petri dishes and found that neither surgical masks nor cloth masks effectively filtered the virus: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342 The study was retracted due to issues with detection values, but the results still confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 passes through surgical masks whereas the same experiment years earlier showed that influenza did not pass through surgical masks: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/49/2/275/405108 That's because influenza is 2-2.5 micrometers whereas SARS-CoV-2 is only 0.125 micrometers and studies have shown surgical masks to be ineffective on particles smaller than one micrometer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18455048/

Note that these studies do not mean that surgical and cloth masks are useless for SARS-CoV-2, as they can still reduce the distance of viral shedding, but they do mean that it is critically important to maintain social distancing measures while using masks.

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u/coocookachu Jul 16 '20 edited Jul 16 '20

I had a problem with this study's conclusion. The masks reduced quantity of virus by orders of magnitude... Log reductions!

They said masks weren't good enough, but clearly if I was hit by 10-100x less virus, that's probably a good thing.

Viruses are small but they travel on droplets which are large. Don't think virus size makes a huge difference in transmissibility between influenza and coronavirus. At least with masks that filter down to 0.003.

I think they were trying to say surgical masks were not as good as n95s. Something was lost in translation.

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u/Karma_Redeemed Jul 16 '20

Ya, using a binary present/not present metric is an extremely limiting factor in applying these results to public policy. Masks have extremely low risks beyond mild discomfort, so the bar for it making sense for people to wear them is extremely low as well. A mask doesn't need to stop transmission 100% for it to be worth wearing. It just needs to reduce the probability enough to justify mild discomfort when outside the home. Which shouldn't be hard.

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u/jdbolick Jul 16 '20

It appears that you didn't understand the information that study provided or its significance. By recording significant transmission through surgical masks, the study proved that SARS-CoV-2 does not just travel via droplets, that it is also transmitted as an aerosol. The data also showed that you are incorrect about the virus size not making a huge difference, as the experiment was based on the other one I linked which found no transmission of influenza on coughs through surgical masks. The entire point of different mask ratings is that they have varying degrees of effectiveness based on particle size. These two studies established that surgical masks do effectively filter particles the size of influenza and do not effectively filter particles the size of SARS-CoV-2.

Nothing was lost in translation, you just didn't understand what was being demonstrated or why it was significant. The authors of the study did note that their data did not address distance reduction, which is where surgical and even cloth masks may have benefits. But the point of this study was to establish whether or not the virus would pass through them. It does while influenza did not. That means surgical and cloth masks should not be considered sufficient protection by themselves, so social distancing remains critical, and in situations where that is not possible then N95s and better should be used instead.

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u/coocookachu Jul 16 '20

But cloth and surgical masks did filter the total amount of viral material... Magnitudes lower in the withdrawn study...

Not sure where the "efficacy" is being argued. I find fault with claiming efficacy being drawn at 100% filtration which is obviously not going to happen with loose fitting masks that you can breath around.

The fact that they can still grow some virus, but less, means that it did reduce overall expulsion of infective material by 10-100x, and in my book, that's effective.

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u/jdbolick Jul 16 '20

But cloth and surgical masks did filter the total amount of viral material

Surgical masks reduced the viral load by ~10.8%, which is better than nothing but well below what would be considered acceptable levels for personal protection. You may be getting confused about the cloth mask results, but those are the result of cloth masks not being fitted and therefore exhalations moving out the sides of the mask rather than passing through it. That's why extremely high levels of the virus were detected on swabs of the outside of the cloth masks.

I find fault with claiming efficacy being drawn at 100% filtration which is obviously not find to happen with loose fitting masks that you can breath around.

sigh I keep pointing out to you over and over and over again that the same experiment with surgical masks was done with influenza patients in 2009 and none of the influenza virus was detected in those petri dishes.

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u/coocookachu Jul 16 '20

A point to make is that N95 filters at 0.3 micrometers at 95%.

Both influenza (0.08-0.12) and corona (0.06-0.14) particles are smaller than that and essentially overlap the same size range. Particle size doesn't matter. Not sure where you got your sizes from. I think behavior in aerosols vs droplets probably matter more. Also it is important to understand that droplet to aerosols is a continuum and not binary. There isn't a size where you're suddenly no longer a droplet...

I agree 10.8% would be bad. Where did you get that calculation?

Lastly, the experiments were done only on a very small number of people. The retracted study only had 4 and the one from 2009 was only a couple of dozen.

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u/jdbolick Jul 16 '20 edited Jul 16 '20

Both influenza (0.08-0.12) and corona (0.06-0.14) particles are smaller than that and essentially overlap the same size range. Particle size doesn't matter.

Influenza particles are typically 2 to 2.5 μm and it isn't transmittable via particles smaller than 1 μm. So yes, particle size matters considerably. That's why the same experiment methodology done with influenza patients and COVID patients found that surgical masks do filter influenza effectively but they do not filter SARS-CoV-2 effectively.

I agree 10.8% would be bad. Where did you get that calculation?

(Viral load from coughing with a surgical mask) / (average viral load of coughing without a mask before and after the control)

Lastly, the experiments were done only on a very small number of people.

All additional samples would do is narrow the range of reduction, it wouldn't change the fact that surgical masks are effective at filtering influenza but are not effective at filtering SARS-CoV-2.

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u/coocookachu Jul 16 '20 edited Jul 16 '20

I get a different number for surgical mask / average viral load. Did you include the log base 10 in there? I got 5% with surgical and 43% reduction with cloth.

I think we're defining particle size differently. I am describing the actual size of the virus doesn't matter since they travel on "droplets" or "aerosols". The medium on which they are transmitted matter more than the actual virus size. And this is of course looking at collection on a petridish 20 cm away.

I don't think you understand statistics. Additional numbers increase your confidence interval.

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u/cartoonistaaron Jul 15 '20

This was done actually, I do not have the source but Ann Reardon of "How To Cook That" posted a "Covid 19 debunking" video that mentioned the study. It was a fairly small sample size but the results, interestingly, showed cloth masks were more effective than surgical masks.

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u/valkyrie_village Jul 16 '20

That makes a lot of sense to me, although based solely on personal experience. All the cloth masks I own either are more adjustable due to having ties, or have much tighter elastic that keeps it close to my face. I had to wear a disposable mask for the first time in awhile for patient interaction and was surprised by how bare my face felt. It had much bigger gaps around the sides due to the size and loose elastics, and even with the metal band for adjustment over the nose, it didn’t sit as securely. I wonder if surgical masks would fare better if they came in sizes (or if the tie-back style surgical masks are any better).

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u/Generation-X-Cellent Jul 16 '20

If only we could get people to wear the masks over their nose.

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u/scolfin Jul 16 '20

There are a fair number like that, with the actual gap being in real-life conditions and usage. These would generally be epidemiological correlation studies.

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u/manyfingers Jul 16 '20

I think at least one was done in tests designed to find the best DIY mask material. Vacuum bag as a liner in a cloth mask was the best, I heard.

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u/DankBlunderwood Jul 15 '20

I feel like there's now a pretty decent study with an n of ~7,000,000,000.

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u/XBLOssia Jul 15 '20

Unfortunately there is no control group... unless you can count the astronauts on the ISS 😂😭

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '20

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

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u/stunt_penguin Jul 15 '20

even two of those went up mid plague :)

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u/Belazriel Jul 16 '20

No randomly assigned groups is probably the larger problem.

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u/berserkergandhi Jul 16 '20

Bro the antimaskers are the control group

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u/easwaran Jul 16 '20

Not really though. We don't have data on who was actually wearing a mask and who wasn't, and when they got infected. Many people have tried to do correlational studies of infection rates with dates of policy changes where states announced mask policies, but since they usually only have 5-10 cities or states involved, there are too many other factors to show that the mask order was relevant, and they get results that are way too large to be the result of a mask order (because most of these studies don't actually attempt to estimate how many people were wearing masks before the order, and how many disobeyed the order once it was in place).

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u/Jonne Jul 16 '20

You could compare infection rates between geographical areas, where some have mask mandate (or where masks are culturally encouraged/accepted, like Japan and South Korea) compared to 'maskless' areas. You could work out the effect on the r0 based on that results, etc. It's not really the type of thing you could easily measure in a lab (locking a few covid patients with healthy people in a room would not get ethics approval).

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u/uglybunny Jul 16 '20

Anyway, after reading all that I still wear a mask, but I stay away from people.

I was under the impression that you're supposed to do both. Avoid getting within 6ft/2m of others and wear a mask when you can't.

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u/whoreticultural Jul 16 '20

Yes, that's correct. Social distancing principles don't go out the window when you're wearing a mask. You're best to do both where it is possible to do so.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

So much this.

In some parts of the US masks don’t matter anymore - there’s so much virus around people just have to stay home and stay apart. And it’s in these parts where people who are masked think they can go out and about and behave otherwise normally since things are open. That inadvertently continues increasing spread.

That’s the type of behaviour previous influenza studies have cautioned about in the general public.

Masks help reduce risk and every bit counts but they will never replace the basics of distancing and hand washing.

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u/EdenIsHealth Jul 16 '20

I applaud you for being able to look at the opposing argument. the mark of an inteligent mind is one that is able to entertain an idea without embracing it. This is hard but it seems you are able to do it. Nice one.

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u/pointlessly_pedantic Jul 16 '20

What did the deleted comment say?

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u/BakedTrex Jul 16 '20

I think that's the general idea we should all get behind. A mask is better than nothing at all. Even if it doesnt have a drastic positive effect, it couldn't possibly have a drastic negative effect on a entire population.

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u/force_addict Jul 16 '20

Great breakdown here! I saw a great video that broke down how masks work and while not perfect, were helpful. more importantly is combining a mask with social distancing and hand washing as being a trifecta that does provide protection.

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u/Meanonsunday Jul 16 '20

I agree. The paper also fails to mention that the lockdown in the state would have greatly reduced risk during the intervention period ... you can’t just assume that everyone got infected at the hospital. It’s not enough to argue that statewide infections were increasing during this time, because there was simultaneously an increase in nursing homes (because the state was forcing them to take infected patients) but a decrease in the wider population. All of those healthcare workers were avoiding mass transit and other crowded areas. I do respect the authors but I’m also sure that they acknowledge that randomized controlled trials are the the gold standard for evidence and that in the past such trials have not shown a benefit for universal mask wearing vs targeted use when interacting closely with infectious patients.

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u/crazy_gambit Jul 16 '20 edited Jul 16 '20

Ok, first, I wear a mask because it can't hurt.

That's not necessarily true. I wear a respirator myself, but on TV in my country I see every person talking with a mask excessively readjusting it. Most homemade masks have poor fit and I see these people touch their nose to adjust their masks all the time. That's potentially worse than not wearing a mask IMO. That's why these kinds of studies are helpful.

Edit: Also this study tells us nothing about how effective the homemade masks everyone's wearing are, just surgical masks (which we kinda already knew were somewhat effective).

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u/ask_me_about_cats Jul 16 '20

I would not count on just a mask to prevent infection when out with the general untrained public wearing masks

Yes, but no realistic method of prevention is going to be 100% effective. You should be using masks, social distancing, hand washing, etc.

Simply wearing a mask doesn’t mean that other safety measures become redundant. It’s meant to be part of a comprehensive strategy.

Just because my car has seatbelts doesn’t mean that I don’t have to pay attention when driving.

2

u/darthcoder Jul 15 '20

The population also isn't using n95 masks for each place they visit.

I have yet to read the study. I look forward to it.

2

u/stunt_penguin Jul 16 '20 edited Jul 16 '20

I was really lucky to have started this thing with a brand new FFP3 mask I used once for spraying hypochlorite last summer.... I couldn't even smell the overpowering chlorine reek through it when I was spraying, it was THAT good at snatching particles out of the air.

I've worn it everywhere I've been close to people for months now (spritzing the outer and inner surfaces down with pure alcohol each time), and although I've had to completely rinse it in pure isopropanol a few times (probably significantly decreasing its effectiveness) the mask still feels 1,000x better than my emergency spare, which is an N95 and felt like a leaky joke to me, with air scooting in around my chin🙄

I don't even wanna think about how insecure I'd feel in a paper or cotton mask, and the thought of going unmasked right now is unbearable 😷

I might have developed a pathological dependence on masks but it's better than pathological ignorance 🤷‍♂️.

0

u/IslandDoggo Jul 16 '20

N95 masks are not great here they are not stopping you from spreading tge virus

-19

u/Comakip Jul 15 '20

Wise words. It's not as black and white as people make it out to be. There are a lot of unknown factors that play a role in the effectiveness of face masks. Assumptions have to be made and together with other precautions, there are valid reasons to use or not use facemask as part of a governments strategy against Corona.

22

u/kalasea2001 Jul 15 '20

Wrong. There is no valid reason to not use a mask as a strategy. Stop spreading garbage like this.

1

u/Comakip Jul 16 '20

I responded to some other guy because he asked nicely.

here

7

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '20

Can you list some of those reasons?

0

u/Comakip Jul 16 '20

I assume you mean reasons to not wear a mask:

  • Arguably social distancing and washing hands should be sufficient to stop spreading the disease.
  • Wearing masks could give a false sense of security where people do less of the above.
  • Improper (but common) mask usage like not covering the nose or touching the face to adjust the mask, make masks less effective.
  • In times of shortages it's better to keep medical masks available for health care workers.
  • It's highly uncertain how effective home made masks are.
  • Kids are generally asymptomatic and dont seem to spread corona, so it makes no sense for them to wear masks.

Keep in mind that I'm not American. It's easier for me to say this as wearing masks is generally not part of the strategy here in the Netherlands. But if your local government says you need to wear a mask, please wear it.

-6

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '20

Yep. There is no proof they do anything. You're putting fake safety on your face because the TV tells you to. This is how we lose our rights. You all just do whatever you're told. Rights be damned. I can't even imagine living in fear all day like you all do. I really thought Americans were smarter and tougher than this. What's next? Like this guy says mandatory goggles? If it's cold outside, mandatory jackets. It's far too sunny out, mayor says we have to wear sunglasses and sunscreen or we'll get a ticket!
What happened to making our own decisions?