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> First, he clearly has too much skin in the game to be credibly neutral about it. I think this is a general and important point (and sadly not at all discusse

> First, he clearly has too much skin in the game to be credibly neutral about it. I think this is a general and important point (and sadly not at all discussed in his post). When an expert publicly says something that seems wrong, my default explanation is that they have a vested interest that consciously or unconsciously forces them to consider the implications of what they say and alter the message accordingly. Recent case in point: public health authorities telling the public that masks are useless and even harmful during the pandemic (presumably to avoid shortages) and then reversing their stance when masks became abundant. This is especially true for public statements. If I were a friend of pg and we would go to a pub and he would not stop talking about how awesome one of the startups he invested in are, that would be a strong signal for me. But if he shills for one of his investments on twitter and on his blog just like some influencer-investor would do, I don't find this especially strong evidence that said startup is revolutionary even though he is an undisputed expert on startups.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
>>"Recent case in point: public health authorities telling the public that masks are useless and even harmful during the pandemic (presumably to avoid shortages) and then reversing their stance when masks became abundant." I agree with your general point, but my interpretation of those events has additional axis: 1. Masks are in shortage, and may not protect you, and public doesn't know how to use them and will probably do more harm than help by reusing and handling and touching their masks Then as time passed and we learned more 2. This is getting bad; even if masks don't save the person wearing them, if it helps others, we are at a point where we need all the help we can get. Please wear masks to help slow the overall spread. While there's definitely part of the complex factoring of the recommendation that masks became more abundant, I feel initial message was "Crappy masks won't save you" and later message "Crappy masks won't save you, but may save others from yourself" 98% of people I talk to don't understand that surgical mask / cloth mask will do extremely poor job of protecting them; but may protect others. (it also adds an axis of complexity for those who don't want to wear masks because they feel they have the right not to protect themselves, because that's not what mainstream masks are for; it's not about wearing a helmet or not to protect your own head; it's about protecting heads of those around you)
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  And then, when they finally got around to actually applying some science to the question, the message became, "Surgical and (decent) cloth masks will protect others from yourself, and may also protect you." I can't track down papers atm, but, on a more anecdotal level, there have been quite a few case studies of superspreader events where the people who were wearing masks were much less likely to contract the illness than people who weren't. Given the specific details at play, it's hard to explain how that could happen if cloth or surgical masks don't protect oneself as well. The big problem here was that, early on, nobody knew exactly how the virus spread. So, in the interest of caution, they picked the worst case scenario, aerosol transmission, and speculated based on that assumption. And a cloth or surgical mask probably won't protect the wearer very well in that case. But it turns out that droplet transmission seems to be the better model.
  - __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    > The big problem here was that, early on, nobody knew exactly how the virus spread. So, in the interest of caution, they picked the worst case scenario, aerosol transmission, and speculated based on that assumption. And a cloth or surgical mask probably won't protect the wearer very well in that case. But it turns out that droplet transmission seems to be the better model. So close but so far. At a minimum please give https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00869-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... a read. The real story is that SARS-2 does spread through aerosols whereas droplet transmission is pure unproven dogma. The paper I linked goes into some reasons why that is the case (for ex the fact that transmission is more likely close to someone doesn’t actually provide strong evidence for droplet xmission) EDIT: I should add that even if it were primarily droplet transmission - which I very much doubt - masking would likely still fail for the stated goal (source control) in a community setting due to improper usage. And improper usage doesn't just mean "the mask is below your nose", it means "you're not changing out the mask the moment it gets damp", "you're touching your mask with unwashed hands", "you're touching your hands with unwashed mask", "you're standing closer to your conversational partner to compensate for the fact that masks muffle hearing" (<--this last one isn't "improper usage" so much as an inevitable result but I digress). And this is all without discussing any of the various negatives of mask-wearing that it's become trendy to pretend literally don't exist. But to your point, you already correctly hinted at the fact that if aerosol transmission is the dominant transmission mode, then masks don't work even in theory, let alone in practice.

NikolaNovak 5y ago

>>"Recent case in point: public health authorities telling the public that masks are useless and even harmful during the pandemic (presumably to avoid shortages) and then reversing their stance when masks became abundant." I agree with your general point, but my interpretation of those events has additional axis: 1. Masks are in shortage, and may not protect you, and public doesn't know how to use them and will probably do more harm than help by reusing and handling and touching their masks Then as time passed and we learned more 2. This is getting bad; even if masks don't save the person wearing them, if it helps others, we are at a point where we need all the help we can get. Please wear masks to help slow the overall spread. While there's definitely part of the complex factoring of the recommendation that masks became more abundant, I feel initial message was "Crappy masks won't save you" and later message "Crappy masks won't save you, but may save others from yourself" 98% of people I talk to don't understand that surgical mask / cloth mask will do extremely poor job of protecting them; but may protect others. (it also adds an axis of complexity for those who don't want to wear masks because they feel they have the right not to protect themselves, because that's not what mainstream masks are for; it's not about wearing a helmet or not to protect your own head; it's about protecting heads of those around you)

mumblemumble 5y ago
And then, when they finally got around to actually applying some science to the question, the message became, "Surgical and (decent) cloth masks will protect others from yourself, and may also protect you." I can't track down papers atm, but, on a more anecdotal level, there have been quite a few case studies of superspreader events where the people who were wearing masks were much less likely to contract the illness than people who weren't. Given the specific details at play, it's hard to explain how that could happen if cloth or surgical masks don't protect oneself as well. The big problem here was that, early on, nobody knew exactly how the virus spread. So, in the interest of caution, they picked the worst case scenario, aerosol transmission, and speculated based on that assumption. And a cloth or surgical mask probably won't protect the wearer very well in that case. But it turns out that droplet transmission seems to be the better model.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  > The big problem here was that, early on, nobody knew exactly how the virus spread. So, in the interest of caution, they picked the worst case scenario, aerosol transmission, and speculated based on that assumption. And a cloth or surgical mask probably won't protect the wearer very well in that case. But it turns out that droplet transmission seems to be the better model. So close but so far. At a minimum please give https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00869-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... a read. The real story is that SARS-2 does spread through aerosols whereas droplet transmission is pure unproven dogma. The paper I linked goes into some reasons why that is the case (for ex the fact that transmission is more likely close to someone doesn’t actually provide strong evidence for droplet xmission) EDIT: I should add that even if it were primarily droplet transmission - which I very much doubt - masking would likely still fail for the stated goal (source control) in a community setting due to improper usage. And improper usage doesn't just mean "the mask is below your nose", it means "you're not changing out the mask the moment it gets damp", "you're touching your mask with unwashed hands", "you're touching your hands with unwashed mask", "you're standing closer to your conversational partner to compensate for the fact that masks muffle hearing" (<--this last one isn't "improper usage" so much as an inevitable result but I digress). And this is all without discussing any of the various negatives of mask-wearing that it's become trendy to pretend literally don't exist. But to your point, you already correctly hinted at the fact that if aerosol transmission is the dominant transmission mode, then masks don't work even in theory, let alone in practice.