3 ms·

It's not airborne. It's spread by droplets and fomites.

• AndrewBissell 6y ago
  This is definitely a distinction which WHO should rely upon its Twitter followers to parse accurately. /s Any mention of masks is conspicuously absent from their "what you should do to protect yourself" list. More than that, they stamped a giant "INCORRECT" over a social media image which, although it probably did get some details wrong, was much more on the right track than WHO with "Wear a mask everywhere!"
  • DanBC 6y ago
    Can you link to a meta-analysis or a well run RCT that shows benefits to mask wearing? There are a few that don't show any benefit to wearing masks. What should CDC / WHO / etc do then? They have evidence, it's good quality, but it doesn't show any benefits to masks wearing. Should they tell people to wear masks? We didn't know at the time whether this would cause people to drop social distancing or not. There was a real risk that people would wear masks, but drop isolation.
    • zeroimpl 6y ago
      Wearing a mask can’t increase your risk of infection. Unless it blocks 0% of droplets, it can’t possibly have no net improvement. And if they really were that useless, why do we keep getting doctors to wear them? I feel you should be linking to a study showing that telling people they must wear masks to go out would reduce social distancing. To me, the requirement to wear a mask only reinforces the danger.
      • joshuamorton 6y ago
        Your first claim isn't true. A mask worn with good hygiene practices won't increase your risk. But taking a mask off, touching it, and then doing other things before washing your hands can.
        • zeroimpl 6y ago
          If your mask got infected while wearing it, then you would have gotten infected had you not been wearing it anyways. So even if your poor hand hygiene renders the mask unhelpful, wearing the mask doesn’t overall increase your risk.