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What confuses me is why so much scrutiny is being placed on the practice of wearing a mask. It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. And common sense

What confuses me is why so much scrutiny is being placed on the practice of wearing a mask. It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. And common sense dictates pretty convincingly that it must have some benefit, however small. So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not? I suppose there are two answers to that question. One, health officials want to know if masks give a false sense of security so they can spend their time promoting measures that will actually make a difference. Two, folks just want a reason to avoid the minor inconvenience or, worse, have been led to believe that mask mandates seriously impinge upon their rights. My concern is that the most common answer is the second and articles like this only serve to confuse people at a time when we need to accept that we must make small sacrifices to solve this problem.

kencausey 6y ago
Just in response to your comment "It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience.": I suspect that means you are not out of shape or live in a hot humid place. I wear a mask on those very few occasions when I leave my home but it takes a while to acclimate to it each time and often when I take it off my face is wet. And don't even get me started on the pain of wearing both a mask and glasses in a humid environment. Is it a valid excuse for not wearing one? No it isn't. Edit: logic correction, I think... Edit 2: I proofread poorly.
- lkxijlewlf 6y ago
  I'm in Fl. When I walk out of a grocery store my glasses fog up. Is that a big enough inconvenience to ask them to turn off the AC? Nah... My glasses don't fog up nearly so much as that by simply wearing a mask; little bit on some exhales. So, given the benefits to others, I'm okay with it.
krapp 6y ago
>So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not? FUD around masks and their effectiveness is being deliberately spread by people and groups with a political agenda, primarily through disinformation campaigns on social media. This isn't an entirely organic phenomenon.
- standardUser 6y ago
  Even the CDC was against mask use by the general public at first, so while much of the naysaying is now political, there was also seemingly legitimate information being pushed by prominent organizations that encouraged people to ignore masks. Also, there's no character limit here, you can write the entire phrase instead of using obscure acronyms.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >Also, there's no character limit here, you can write the entire phrase instead of using obscure acronyms. FUD is no more an obscure acronym than CDC. FFS this is a programming and tech forum, people throw acronyms around all the time.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    ...the CDC was against mask use by the general public at first And they too admitted to spreading FUD about masks, in the misguided belief that stopping average people from using masks would leave more masks for the health care providers. That should reinforce the important point that we're dealing with unqualified, clown-show/amateur-hour political appointees in multiple levels of government, making critical decisions, at this point, a point in time, unlike most points, where leadership or it's lack matters. And I know that FUD is just a long-standing acronym for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and I too could just write that. But being so long-standing, the term not is only convenient but has come mean a particular kind of fear, uncertainty and doubt, that spread through a particular of public relations system.
    - jariel 6y ago
      It's not clownish, just the opposite. There was a severe shortage of N95's at the time, and if the public thought masks were important, there would have been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community would have had squat. Given that masks, particularly N95s are actually effective in a Healthcare environment ... it was the exactly the right call to make. Get the masks to those who it will actually help, not the public for whom it will make a smaller difference. Once production is ramped, or we have enough PPE, then it makes sense to have a pro-mask policy for the public. From a communications perspective, it's obviously problematic, but in terms of equipment triage, it's highly rational and we actually want our leaders making these kinds of tough decisions. The WHO and various governments should have been more efficient in their messaging however.
auslegung 6y ago
I have interacted with some people who insist being "forced" to wear a mask impinges their rights. My response is, you're right it does impinge your rights. Just like your right to drink a lot of alcohol and drive your vehicle has been impinged because it was decided that my right to live is greater than your right to drink and drive. I'm a huge proponent of individual rights, but what often gets overlooked in these conversations is that my right to do something often conflicts with someone else's right to do something else.
- xellisx 6y ago
  I just post this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts
- ryandrake 6y ago
  The people I’ve seen who have a problem with masks are just mad that they are being told to do it. They even acknowledge that there is a good reason but won’t do it because authority figures are telling them to wear them. Total eight-year-old mentality in an adult.
  - pbourke 6y ago
    Why was this downvoted? It’s exactly right. The mask opponents have a toddlers’ conception of freedom: “Mommy told me to do it so I’m going to throw a tantrum”
  - thu2111 6y ago
    No, I hate mask wearing because it's illogical and being presented as "fact based", "caring for others" etc when this has no basis in reality. COVID-19 has turned out to be no more deadly than any other seasonal respiratory disease. Lockdowns were ineffective. The data on this is clear and gets clearer every day (though you won't find it reading the stories on HN of course). That means we should not be doing things any differently to other years. Which includes masks.
    - 6y ago
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. Not arguing that any of this is a good enough reason to not wear a mask right now, but, I find them pretty darn inconvenient. It's very uncomfortable. It fogs up my glasses when I’m inside, and covers up a large part of my field of view even when I’m outside. I can't ride my scooter at all because with that field of view loss, I'm worried I'll crash into something. Talking is more difficult, both projecting enough to be heard through the mask and straining to hear others. I've tried several different masks at this point, so I don't think that's it.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  When I'm doing construction, I often wear a form-fitting N95 mask (for dust protection) and safety glasses. The top of the mask, and the nose-bridge of the safety glasses, compete for the same location on the bridge of my nose. If I layer them so that the mask touches my skin, and the eye glasses rest on the mask, I have no problem with fogging. If I layer them the other way: the eye glasses' bridge directly on my skin, and the top of the mask resting on the eye glasses' bridge, I get fog. Maybe you're experiencing this? I usually avoid this simply by putting my eye glasses on after my mask is in place.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    It's almost completely dependent on the masks construction. I never had problems with my n95 from 3m, but the kn95 I have is impossible to wear with glasses no matter how I fit it. The surgical mask a friend got for me in March looks near identical to the pack of masks I got recently besides the color but the one she got me fogs up my glasses while the pack I have now never does.
    - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
      FWIW, the mask I was referring to in the GP is the GVS SPR457 Elipse P100 [0]. (As a side note, I haven't tried many masks, but I find this one extremely comfortable and effective.) [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013SIIBFQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013SIIBFQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
erik_seaberg 6y ago
Mask effectiveness determines how much of the economy we have to abandon and redesign and how much we can restart before it falls apart. Personally I don't have a lot of hope that modest reductions with loose cloth masks change many outcomes; viral load is extremely nonlinear.
noir_lord 6y ago
> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. It's not (for the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time) but the benefit is to other people not you and well acting in other peoples self interest seems to be seen as weakness in parts of the world (including sadly mine). FWIW I always wear either a mask or a bandana over my mouth/nose when I'm out and about these days not because I expect it to protect me but because it might protect someone else. I expect my opinion is swayed by my best friend having Cystic Fibrosis for which Covid19 is essentially a death sentence and a mother who has chronic health issues. From my perspective alongside all the other advice wearing a mask seems sensible. Same reason I wear heavy duty motorcycle gear and a helmet when I ride my motorbike - I don't plan for the crash but as the saying goes, you don't wear it for the ride, you wear it for the slide.
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  There's a video on Youtube of some guy blowing vape smoke through various filter types. Pretty much all of them pass it, up to HEPA filter types for vacuums and medical respirators. Some filters I tested will filter particles down to the size of smoke, but Corona-19 is 1/10th of a micron across, which is smaller. It does get filtered by various materials, but those materials need to use static cling to filter. If they don't, the virus will pass through, given the hole size of the material. If you are hanging around and talking to someone at a fairly close distance, masks simply won't do anything other than visually signal distance is required to others. And, in the unlikely event someone sneezes or coughs, it probably prevents widespread contamination of the surrounding area. The Seattle choir episode and some studies out of China in restaurant air handling systems seems to indicate the virus is airborne and can be spread to others within a fairly large area, with time and proper airflow. This will happen with or without a mask in place, in my opinion. I'm super nervous about sharing indoor space with people I don't know, so I don't. The more time we can buy ourselves, the better the outcome.
  - tlb 6y ago
    Masks do a great deal to reduce transmission of Covid-19. (This isn't true of every disease.) Covid-19 is mostly acquired by inhaling droplets of water+virus exhaled by carriers, so masks work quite well. A large amount of evidence for this is collected at https://masks4all.co/facts/ https://masks4all.co/facts/
zajio1am 6y ago
> What confuses me is why so much scrutiny is being placed on the practice of wearing a mask. It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. In my experience it is a big inconvenience. The air is not properly mixed, so one breathes back part of breathed-out air. With (cloth) facemask, i have shortness of breath after running up a staircase, and after 15 min of regular walk i start hyperventilating. While i wear facemasks and consider it a reasonable measure, the government mandate was sometimes excessive. For example, at the start of the pandemic, the government mandated wearing facemasks everywhere outside of home, even in nature far from other people. I stopped to do recreational walks in nature, as it was just too burdensome to do that with facemask. Fortunately, after several weeks, the government noticed that mandating masks in nature far from other people is nonsense and made some exceptions.
- jasonpeacock 6y ago
  Wearing masks do not affect oxygen intake. If what you say is true, all healthcare workers who are wearing masks 8-12hrs a day would be collapsing - and most of them are double-masking with cloth masks on top of N95 masks.
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    First, it is not an issue of oxygen intake, more an issue of CO_2 elimination. The fact that non-rigid cloth facemasks at least partially block air exchange is obvious just from how they are inflating during exhalation. Second, i also wondered how healthcare workers could use that for full shifts. Perhaps my experience is related to my health issues (asthma in the past). Or perhaps improvised cloth facemasks are just much worse in this regard than surgical face masks or N95 respirators. Cloth facemasks could have just bigger air 'buffer'. N59 respirators with valve and coth mask on top could be much better, as they would have partially separated in- and out- airflow.
    - jasonpeacock 6y ago
      CO2 elimination is also not an issue: https://twitter.com/MurseWordsworth/status/1276799020673888258 https://twitter.com/MurseWordsworth/status/12767990206738882... And those with chronic health issues also see no problem with masks, despite having existing pulmonary conditions: https://twitter.com/G17Esiason/status/1277249837059264512 https://twitter.com/G17Esiason/status/1277249837059264512 Basically, the volume of air that your lungs can move, in addition to the force of exhaling/inhaling, easily overcomes any air "trapped" in the mask.
nickthemagicman 6y ago
Because laws are being made based on weak science. Like lead paint or Thalidomide masks may only seem to be positive on the surface. Without proper science it's wrong to make laws about it.
aliante 6y ago
> So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not? A lot of members of society view not wearing one as an act of courage. A friend's mother will tell anyone she encounters who is wearing one that they are a ninny and a coward. So for some people it is also an indicator of courage/weakness. A study lets me tell her she is an idiot. Preventing others from being called also cuts into the "ninny" narrative.
- bsder 6y ago
  In addition, the science has changed over time. It seems like skin contact isn't quite so likely to spread the virus but breathing in exhaled droplets is. Incidental interaction doesn't seem to spread the virus that well, so wearing a mask significantly reduces the risk to people like your grocery clerk. It seems like general contagiousness isn't the primary mode of transmission, but instead the vast majority of cases come from superspreaders. All of those indicate that mask wearing is probably more beneficial than expected. If skin contact were the primary mode, then masks would likely have downsides as they tend to provide a warm, wet spot for the virus to hang out until you touch it.
- pbourke 6y ago
  Surely she’ll sit down to read that NEJM paper and be appropriately chastened.
  - aliante 6y ago
    No, but she generally isn't willing to call the doctor who did the study an idiot or fraud.
DanBC 6y ago
> And common sense dictates Evidence based medicine doesn't exist to protect us against crystal healing (the bullshit that we know cannot work). It exists to protect us against things that sound plausible, against things that sound convincing. The problem with the "wear a mask" message is how lazily anti-science it is, and how it distracts from the more important message of "keep your distance" and "wash your hands". People who promote mask wearing say three things: 1) Masks work 2) They work well 3) We have good evidence for this In healthcare good evidence would be a well run meta analysis of well run RCTs, or well run RCTs. We have lots of randomised controlled trials for mask wearing to prevent spread of respiratory disease. If masks were so strongly effective it would be easy to see the benefit in these RCTs. So why don't we see these benefits in the RCTs? We have lots of good quality evidence around masks, and it doesn't show a benefit. For use to be able to see a benefit we have to drop the quality of the evidence, and then we start to see some marginal benefits of FFP3 type masks, but not for fluid-resistant surgical masks, and certainly not for cloth face coverings. The message could have been "we don't know if they work, we don't have the evidence yet, but you should wear one anyway". Instead we've got this bloke... > “Back in March, it was difficult to even have anybody take you seriously when the CDC and WHO said the opposite,” said Jeremy Howard, a data scientist and entrepreneur who has become a major advocate of universal mask requirements. In response to the lack of support, he launched a bipartisan campaign called Masks4All that lobbied for widespread mask-wearing and argued that masks were a crucial, if not the most important, part of the COVID-19 response. ...ignoring the science around handwashing and distancing and focusing on mask wearing.
- xtiansimon 6y ago
  > “The problem with the "wear a mask" message is...it distracts from the more important message of "keep your distance" and "wash your hands" I don’t get this impression at all. In fact, I was thinking that if someone wears a mask, then they are more likely to be doing the other things (more or less reliably)
bamboozled 6y ago
I agree, I was in Tokyo at the beginning of this and every one just put a mask on, the subway, everyone wearing a mask, no questions asked. I believe people there know that it's for the benefit of others but they understands that if everyone does it, everyone benefits? Unusually, this can be hard for people to understand.
- davesque 6y ago
  Yes, this! Japan's population is 38% of the US population. And yet they have seen about only 1000 coronavirus deaths to date. I have to believe this is because they just do what they're told without defiantly rejecting the advice of health officials or otherwise doing a bunch of armchair sciencing that leads nowhere.
  - brigandish 6y ago
    Why trust the figures coming out of Japan? Were the lies around Fukushima not enough to bring a hint of scepticism? Or maybe this blog article[1] which was on the front page of HN[2] a while back? Japan has a culture of conformism enforced by social pressure, and many places are now mandating that they be worn, that's why the masks are worn en masse of late, but often they're worn for privacy when you've little personal space. People still don't do what they're told and there's basically zero social distancing even where there's markings to guide people. [1] https://stdio.sangwhan.com/wtf-japan-covid-19-report/ https://stdio.sangwhan.com/wtf-japan-covid-19-report/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728674
vl 6y ago
Just notice that this particular article managed to say nothing in so many words.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
eyelidlessness 6y ago
I think it's mostly a variation of your second option. It's not so much that the people in question are concerned with the minor inconvenience (as discussed in the article, and many of us saw early in the pandemic choosing of sides, they were in favor of masks when it was contrary to the recommendations from experts), and it's not so much that they've been led to believe something unwittingly. The reason it's such a controversy, is because opposing the other side has become reflexive.
- pbourke 6y ago
  Exactly - it’s become an in-group signal due to Donald Trump politicizing mask wearing.
redis_mlc 6y ago
Masks slow down herd immunity. How can you possibly support that?
mirimir 6y ago
> ... have been led to believe that mask mandates seriously impinge upon their rights. This is vastly amusing. Before late 2019, folks like me complained about laws against wearing masks in public. At protests, for example. While mailing stuff, or buying money orders. To circumvent facial recognition. So now when I go out, and everyone is masked, it feels like such a bloody victory! Except that it is uncomfortable, when it's hot and humid. But hey.
Semaphor 6y ago
> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. For me, some who has been wearing masks since before it became government mandated (though I recently stopped outdoors unless it’s crowded, as we barely have any cases; and it’s not as if more than 1 in 100 wear one outdoors anyway), masks are the single biggest inconvenience of the whole Sars-CoV-2 pandemic. I become slightly more claustrophobic (when in a store) and it feels like I have slight trouble breathing properly. As I said, I’m a mask proponent, but I feel like all those statements of "wear a mask, it’s nothing" are hurting credibility.
seesawtron 6y ago
All of that being true, I would like to add that in pursuit of being rational and scientific, I would really like to know to what fraction of spread of virus is affected by any measure that we take (here: wearing masks, when we wear them or where we wear them). For me it's a matter of satisfying my scientific curiousity. Of course one shouldn't stop taking those measures seriously in that pursuit.
giardini 6y ago
Masks don't halt aerosol transmission of the virus. Every breath you exhale is an aerosol. What you feel passing through the gaps in you mask when you exhale is aerosol and, if you have Covid-19, it is Covid-19 infected aerosol. Nothing except an airtight seaal can stop it.

kencausey 6y ago

Just in response to your comment "It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience.": I suspect that means you are not out of shape or live in a hot humid place. I wear a mask on those very few occasions when I leave my home but it takes a while to acclimate to it each time and often when I take it off my face is wet. And don't even get me started on the pain of wearing both a mask and glasses in a humid environment. Is it a valid excuse for not wearing one? No it isn't. Edit: logic correction, I think... Edit 2: I proofread poorly.

lkxijlewlf 6y ago
I'm in Fl. When I walk out of a grocery store my glasses fog up. Is that a big enough inconvenience to ask them to turn off the AC? Nah... My glasses don't fog up nearly so much as that by simply wearing a mask; little bit on some exhales. So, given the benefits to others, I'm okay with it.

krapp 6y ago

>So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not? FUD around masks and their effectiveness is being deliberately spread by people and groups with a political agenda, primarily through disinformation campaigns on social media. This isn't an entirely organic phenomenon.

standardUser 6y ago
Even the CDC was against mask use by the general public at first, so while much of the naysaying is now political, there was also seemingly legitimate information being pushed by prominent organizations that encouraged people to ignore masks. Also, there's no character limit here, you can write the entire phrase instead of using obscure acronyms.
- krapp 6y ago
  >Also, there's no character limit here, you can write the entire phrase instead of using obscure acronyms. FUD is no more an obscure acronym than CDC. FFS this is a programming and tech forum, people throw acronyms around all the time.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  ...the CDC was against mask use by the general public at first And they too admitted to spreading FUD about masks, in the misguided belief that stopping average people from using masks would leave more masks for the health care providers. That should reinforce the important point that we're dealing with unqualified, clown-show/amateur-hour political appointees in multiple levels of government, making critical decisions, at this point, a point in time, unlike most points, where leadership or it's lack matters. And I know that FUD is just a long-standing acronym for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and I too could just write that. But being so long-standing, the term not is only convenient but has come mean a particular kind of fear, uncertainty and doubt, that spread through a particular of public relations system.
  - jariel 6y ago
    It's not clownish, just the opposite. There was a severe shortage of N95's at the time, and if the public thought masks were important, there would have been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community would have had squat. Given that masks, particularly N95s are actually effective in a Healthcare environment ... it was the exactly the right call to make. Get the masks to those who it will actually help, not the public for whom it will make a smaller difference. Once production is ramped, or we have enough PPE, then it makes sense to have a pro-mask policy for the public. From a communications perspective, it's obviously problematic, but in terms of equipment triage, it's highly rational and we actually want our leaders making these kinds of tough decisions. The WHO and various governments should have been more efficient in their messaging however.

auslegung 6y ago

I have interacted with some people who insist being "forced" to wear a mask impinges their rights. My response is, you're right it does impinge your rights. Just like your right to drink a lot of alcohol and drive your vehicle has been impinged because it was decided that my right to live is greater than your right to drink and drive. I'm a huge proponent of individual rights, but what often gets overlooked in these conversations is that my right to do something often conflicts with someone else's right to do something else.

xellisx 6y ago
I just post this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts
ryandrake 6y ago
The people I’ve seen who have a problem with masks are just mad that they are being told to do it. They even acknowledge that there is a good reason but won’t do it because authority figures are telling them to wear them. Total eight-year-old mentality in an adult.
- pbourke 6y ago
  Why was this downvoted? It’s exactly right. The mask opponents have a toddlers’ conception of freedom: “Mommy told me to do it so I’m going to throw a tantrum”
- thu2111 6y ago
  No, I hate mask wearing because it's illogical and being presented as "fact based", "caring for others" etc when this has no basis in reality. COVID-19 has turned out to be no more deadly than any other seasonal respiratory disease. Lockdowns were ineffective. The data on this is clear and gets clearer every day (though you won't find it reading the stories on HN of course). That means we should not be doing things any differently to other years. Which includes masks.
  - 6y ago

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. Not arguing that any of this is a good enough reason to not wear a mask right now, but, I find them pretty darn inconvenient. It's very uncomfortable. It fogs up my glasses when I’m inside, and covers up a large part of my field of view even when I’m outside. I can't ride my scooter at all because with that field of view loss, I'm worried I'll crash into something. Talking is more difficult, both projecting enough to be heard through the mask and straining to hear others. I've tried several different masks at this point, so I don't think that's it.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
When I'm doing construction, I often wear a form-fitting N95 mask (for dust protection) and safety glasses. The top of the mask, and the nose-bridge of the safety glasses, compete for the same location on the bridge of my nose. If I layer them so that the mask touches my skin, and the eye glasses rest on the mask, I have no problem with fogging. If I layer them the other way: the eye glasses' bridge directly on my skin, and the top of the mask resting on the eye glasses' bridge, I get fog. Maybe you're experiencing this? I usually avoid this simply by putting my eye glasses on after my mask is in place.
- Larrikin 6y ago
  It's almost completely dependent on the masks construction. I never had problems with my n95 from 3m, but the kn95 I have is impossible to wear with glasses no matter how I fit it. The surgical mask a friend got for me in March looks near identical to the pack of masks I got recently besides the color but the one she got me fogs up my glasses while the pack I have now never does.
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    FWIW, the mask I was referring to in the GP is the GVS SPR457 Elipse P100 [0]. (As a side note, I haven't tried many masks, but I find this one extremely comfortable and effective.) [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013SIIBFQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013SIIBFQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

erik_seaberg 6y ago

Mask effectiveness determines how much of the economy we have to abandon and redesign and how much we can restart before it falls apart. Personally I don't have a lot of hope that modest reductions with loose cloth masks change many outcomes; viral load is extremely nonlinear.

noir_lord 6y ago

> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. It's not (for the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time) but the benefit is to other people not you and well acting in other peoples self interest seems to be seen as weakness in parts of the world (including sadly mine). FWIW I always wear either a mask or a bandana over my mouth/nose when I'm out and about these days not because I expect it to protect me but because it might protect someone else. I expect my opinion is swayed by my best friend having Cystic Fibrosis for which Covid19 is essentially a death sentence and a mother who has chronic health issues. From my perspective alongside all the other advice wearing a mask seems sensible. Same reason I wear heavy duty motorcycle gear and a helmet when I ride my motorbike - I don't plan for the crash but as the saying goes, you don't wear it for the ride, you wear it for the slide.

kordlessagain 6y ago
There's a video on Youtube of some guy blowing vape smoke through various filter types. Pretty much all of them pass it, up to HEPA filter types for vacuums and medical respirators. Some filters I tested will filter particles down to the size of smoke, but Corona-19 is 1/10th of a micron across, which is smaller. It does get filtered by various materials, but those materials need to use static cling to filter. If they don't, the virus will pass through, given the hole size of the material. If you are hanging around and talking to someone at a fairly close distance, masks simply won't do anything other than visually signal distance is required to others. And, in the unlikely event someone sneezes or coughs, it probably prevents widespread contamination of the surrounding area. The Seattle choir episode and some studies out of China in restaurant air handling systems seems to indicate the virus is airborne and can be spread to others within a fairly large area, with time and proper airflow. This will happen with or without a mask in place, in my opinion. I'm super nervous about sharing indoor space with people I don't know, so I don't. The more time we can buy ourselves, the better the outcome.
- tlb 6y ago
  Masks do a great deal to reduce transmission of Covid-19. (This isn't true of every disease.) Covid-19 is mostly acquired by inhaling droplets of water+virus exhaled by carriers, so masks work quite well. A large amount of evidence for this is collected at https://masks4all.co/facts/ https://masks4all.co/facts/

zajio1am 6y ago

> What confuses me is why so much scrutiny is being placed on the practice of wearing a mask. It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. In my experience it is a big inconvenience. The air is not properly mixed, so one breathes back part of breathed-out air. With (cloth) facemask, i have shortness of breath after running up a staircase, and after 15 min of regular walk i start hyperventilating. While i wear facemasks and consider it a reasonable measure, the government mandate was sometimes excessive. For example, at the start of the pandemic, the government mandated wearing facemasks everywhere outside of home, even in nature far from other people. I stopped to do recreational walks in nature, as it was just too burdensome to do that with facemask. Fortunately, after several weeks, the government noticed that mandating masks in nature far from other people is nonsense and made some exceptions.

jasonpeacock 6y ago
Wearing masks do not affect oxygen intake. If what you say is true, all healthcare workers who are wearing masks 8-12hrs a day would be collapsing - and most of them are double-masking with cloth masks on top of N95 masks.
- zajio1am 6y ago
  First, it is not an issue of oxygen intake, more an issue of CO_2 elimination. The fact that non-rigid cloth facemasks at least partially block air exchange is obvious just from how they are inflating during exhalation. Second, i also wondered how healthcare workers could use that for full shifts. Perhaps my experience is related to my health issues (asthma in the past). Or perhaps improvised cloth facemasks are just much worse in this regard than surgical face masks or N95 respirators. Cloth facemasks could have just bigger air 'buffer'. N59 respirators with valve and coth mask on top could be much better, as they would have partially separated in- and out- airflow.
  - jasonpeacock 6y ago
    CO2 elimination is also not an issue: https://twitter.com/MurseWordsworth/status/1276799020673888258 https://twitter.com/MurseWordsworth/status/12767990206738882... And those with chronic health issues also see no problem with masks, despite having existing pulmonary conditions: https://twitter.com/G17Esiason/status/1277249837059264512 https://twitter.com/G17Esiason/status/1277249837059264512 Basically, the volume of air that your lungs can move, in addition to the force of exhaling/inhaling, easily overcomes any air "trapped" in the mask.

nickthemagicman 6y ago

Because laws are being made based on weak science. Like lead paint or Thalidomide masks may only seem to be positive on the surface. Without proper science it's wrong to make laws about it.

aliante 6y ago

> So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not? A lot of members of society view not wearing one as an act of courage. A friend's mother will tell anyone she encounters who is wearing one that they are a ninny and a coward. So for some people it is also an indicator of courage/weakness. A study lets me tell her she is an idiot. Preventing others from being called also cuts into the "ninny" narrative.

bsder 6y ago
In addition, the science has changed over time. It seems like skin contact isn't quite so likely to spread the virus but breathing in exhaled droplets is. Incidental interaction doesn't seem to spread the virus that well, so wearing a mask significantly reduces the risk to people like your grocery clerk. It seems like general contagiousness isn't the primary mode of transmission, but instead the vast majority of cases come from superspreaders. All of those indicate that mask wearing is probably more beneficial than expected. If skin contact were the primary mode, then masks would likely have downsides as they tend to provide a warm, wet spot for the virus to hang out until you touch it.
pbourke 6y ago
Surely she’ll sit down to read that NEJM paper and be appropriately chastened.
- aliante 6y ago
  No, but she generally isn't willing to call the doctor who did the study an idiot or fraud.

DanBC 6y ago

> And common sense dictates Evidence based medicine doesn't exist to protect us against crystal healing (the bullshit that we know cannot work). It exists to protect us against things that sound plausible, against things that sound convincing. The problem with the "wear a mask" message is how lazily anti-science it is, and how it distracts from the more important message of "keep your distance" and "wash your hands". People who promote mask wearing say three things: 1) Masks work 2) They work well 3) We have good evidence for this In healthcare good evidence would be a well run meta analysis of well run RCTs, or well run RCTs. We have lots of randomised controlled trials for mask wearing to prevent spread of respiratory disease. If masks were so strongly effective it would be easy to see the benefit in these RCTs. So why don't we see these benefits in the RCTs? We have lots of good quality evidence around masks, and it doesn't show a benefit. For use to be able to see a benefit we have to drop the quality of the evidence, and then we start to see some marginal benefits of FFP3 type masks, but not for fluid-resistant surgical masks, and certainly not for cloth face coverings. The message could have been "we don't know if they work, we don't have the evidence yet, but you should wear one anyway". Instead we've got this bloke... > “Back in March, it was difficult to even have anybody take you seriously when the CDC and WHO said the opposite,” said Jeremy Howard, a data scientist and entrepreneur who has become a major advocate of universal mask requirements. In response to the lack of support, he launched a bipartisan campaign called Masks4All that lobbied for widespread mask-wearing and argued that masks were a crucial, if not the most important, part of the COVID-19 response. ...ignoring the science around handwashing and distancing and focusing on mask wearing.

xtiansimon 6y ago
> “The problem with the "wear a mask" message is...it distracts from the more important message of "keep your distance" and "wash your hands" I don’t get this impression at all. In fact, I was thinking that if someone wears a mask, then they are more likely to be doing the other things (more or less reliably)

bamboozled 6y ago

I agree, I was in Tokyo at the beginning of this and every one just put a mask on, the subway, everyone wearing a mask, no questions asked. I believe people there know that it's for the benefit of others but they understands that if everyone does it, everyone benefits? Unusually, this can be hard for people to understand.

davesque 6y ago
Yes, this! Japan's population is 38% of the US population. And yet they have seen about only 1000 coronavirus deaths to date. I have to believe this is because they just do what they're told without defiantly rejecting the advice of health officials or otherwise doing a bunch of armchair sciencing that leads nowhere.
- brigandish 6y ago
  Why trust the figures coming out of Japan? Were the lies around Fukushima not enough to bring a hint of scepticism? Or maybe this blog article[1] which was on the front page of HN[2] a while back? Japan has a culture of conformism enforced by social pressure, and many places are now mandating that they be worn, that's why the masks are worn en masse of late, but often they're worn for privacy when you've little personal space. People still don't do what they're told and there's basically zero social distancing even where there's markings to guide people. [1] https://stdio.sangwhan.com/wtf-japan-covid-19-report/ https://stdio.sangwhan.com/wtf-japan-covid-19-report/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728674

vl 6y ago

Just notice that this particular article managed to say nothing in so many words.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

eyelidlessness 6y ago

I think it's mostly a variation of your second option. It's not so much that the people in question are concerned with the minor inconvenience (as discussed in the article, and many of us saw early in the pandemic choosing of sides, they were in favor of masks when it was contrary to the recommendations from experts), and it's not so much that they've been led to believe something unwittingly. The reason it's such a controversy, is because opposing the other side has become reflexive.

pbourke 6y ago
Exactly - it’s become an in-group signal due to Donald Trump politicizing mask wearing.

redis_mlc 6y ago

Masks slow down herd immunity. How can you possibly support that?

mirimir 6y ago

> ... have been led to believe that mask mandates seriously impinge upon their rights. This is vastly amusing. Before late 2019, folks like me complained about laws against wearing masks in public. At protests, for example. While mailing stuff, or buying money orders. To circumvent facial recognition. So now when I go out, and everyone is masked, it feels like such a bloody victory! Except that it is uncomfortable, when it's hot and humid. But hey.

Semaphor 6y ago

> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. For me, some who has been wearing masks since before it became government mandated (though I recently stopped outdoors unless it’s crowded, as we barely have any cases; and it’s not as if more than 1 in 100 wear one outdoors anyway), masks are the single biggest inconvenience of the whole Sars-CoV-2 pandemic. I become slightly more claustrophobic (when in a store) and it feels like I have slight trouble breathing properly. As I said, I’m a mask proponent, but I feel like all those statements of "wear a mask, it’s nothing" are hurting credibility.

seesawtron 6y ago

All of that being true, I would like to add that in pursuit of being rational and scientific, I would really like to know to what fraction of spread of virus is affected by any measure that we take (here: wearing masks, when we wear them or where we wear them). For me it's a matter of satisfying my scientific curiousity. Of course one shouldn't stop taking those measures seriously in that pursuit.

giardini 6y ago

Masks don't halt aerosol transmission of the virus. Every breath you exhale is an aerosol. What you feel passing through the gaps in you mask when you exhale is aerosol and, if you have Covid-19, it is Covid-19 infected aerosol. Nothing except an airtight seaal can stop it.