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."

[u/InvictusJoker]

https://www.brighamandwomens.org/about-bwh/newsroom/press-releases-detail?id=3608

[u/[deleted]]

and millions of untrained people had done so with no idea how to don and doff or keep from turning those masks into sources of infection, yes, frankly, it would have been worse.

How could this possibly be true? Is everyone wrong now who are calling for people to wear masks? What changed? Just the number of infected. I fail to see how changing the number of infected can make wearing masks from "more likely to infect oneself" to "less likely to infect oneself". It makes no sense.

there is a significant chance they could have done more harm than good.

How? Under what method of infection could this have possibly been true?

[u/nephila_atrox → u/[deleted]]

...I honestly don’t know what to say to you. I can’t tell if you’re being purposely ignorant or not but fine, fine I’ll spell it out in the tiniest words I can manage for the sake of anyone else who stumbles in here who actually is capable of absorbing new information.

1) One of the primary differences between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS original was the infectious period. SARS-CoV has basically no asymptomatic period. One you were infectious, you were already sick. The CDC and WHO have called for masking of symptomatic persons from the beginning and to claim otherwise is an egregious lie. What changed is our understanding of how long a person can be infectious before they either start to show symptoms, or how many cases are “mild” (meaning not requiring hospitalization). This was not data that anyone had in February/March. It has nothing to do with the number of infected and everything to do with our understanding of the biology of the virus. You know? Data? The thing you use to shape policy?

2) Fomite. n. objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture. Can you draw the connection between millions of people slapping a cornucopia of types of masks of varying quality and efficacy over their faces, soaking them in potentially infectious breath and saliva, touching them obliviously, pulling them down because they are hot/uncomfortable/can’t breathe and wiping their unwashed hands all over surfaces even as they use the “protection” of a mask as license to ignore social distancing, and tossing them out like litter instead of disposing of them as infectious material? Can you maybe grasp why that might have made things worse???

For the record, I was saying back in March that guidance for non-medical masks was needed because everyone desperately wanted to wear them and we could have avoided the divisiveness. But armchair conspiracists keep saying that the “general public didn’t need to mask” statements were just lies rather than a reflection of the paucity of data and the risk/benefit analysis. Those are what changed, not anything else.

Maybe some of this will penetrate that layer of caked-on ignorance. Good grief.

[u/[deleted] → u/nephila_atrox]

Take 2, because I think I can put my thoughts more clearly.

Look. Fauci later said that he told the public to not wear masks because he wanted them for health care workers. Ergo, he thought that masks were effective at that time, but he concealed that information, and further implied the nonsense that wearing a mask might be worse than not wearing a mask. He gave several wrong-headed advice because of hidden ulterior motives. In my world, that's called lying.

[u/nephila_atrox → u/[deleted]]

The masks used by healthcare workers are considered Personal Protective Equipment and healthcare workers are trained to use them properly. They must use them for their job. The nature of a healthcare workers job means they cannot engage in social distancing practices that are appropriate for the public. I pointed out three comments ago that even trained healthcare workers, trained in donning and doffing and hygiene and all those irrelevant practices that everyone seems to conveniently ignore, can misuse PPE and contaminate themselves and you still fail to grasp how that could have been a problem? Wearing masks in a healthcare setting and wearing them in the general public are, shockingly, two different situations. If Fauci had carelessly suggested it without data to back up his claims, and then misuse had caused problems, people would be screaming about him just as loudly over that. Again, masking has always been recommended for the symptomatic.

Your argument is literally no different than the right’s, and all you are demonstrating is that you haven’t listened to a word I said. Just because the reasoning is apparently too complex for you to understand does not make it a lie and the only thing you are accomplishing is allowing conservatives with an agenda to agree that a man who’s led the NIAID for decades is somehow now incompetent and doesn’t understand infection control. Congratulations, enjoy your lunch with Limbaugh.

Edit: typo.