3 ms·
Where are the studies that your base your assumption upon?
by Tepix 6y ago
Where are the studies that your base your assumption upon?
- dehrmann 6y agoFair question. We've never done this before to this extent, so there just aren't studies, and this is just a hypothesis. It reminded me a lot of antibiotic resistance, though.
- blackoil 6y agoNone of the virus build resistance to masks. what exactly is the hypothesis? Masks just reduce the transmission rate, so it shouldn't have any correlation with virality. A 10x more viral variant will still be 10x more with masks, just that overall transmission for all variants will be reduced by 90%
- penteract 6y agoI've had thoughts on similar lines to the top level comment, by the following line of reasoning: In US and Europe, policies and behavior (such as mask-wearing and social distancing) have become stricter as the number of cases rise and more lenient as the number of cases fall. This means that the reproduction number hovers around 1. If we imagine that R_0 for Covid-19 is 2.0, no measures are taken, and a variant which is twice as infectious appears when there are 10^6 cases (in a population of 10^9), then the variant will have only infected ~10^6 people by the time we have herd immunity (a very rough estimate). On the other hand, if measures halving the spread rate are imposed when 10^6 cases are reached and the variant appears, then the variant will still spread exponentially while the original strain is curtailed, resulting in most people catching the highly infectious variant. I have no background in medicine or epidemiology, so I'm keen for people to point out flaws. Edit: I am not advocating that no measures to stop or slow the spread of Covid should have been taken.