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> no convincing evidence This MIT study [0] was pretty convincing. They conclude that "face masks can be an extremely effective indoor safety measure". For e

> no convincing evidence This MIT study [0] was pretty convincing. They conclude that "face masks can be an extremely effective indoor safety measure". For example: If an infected person was riding on a commercial airline with 100 other people, other passengers would be at risk of infection within 70 minutes. If all of the passengers wore masks, however, that space could be safe for up to 54 hours. [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2018995118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2018995118

nradov 5y ago
How can a model be convincing if it hasn't been extensively tested in the real world?
- astrange 5y ago
  The model of wearing masks has been extensively tested in Asia. Meanwhile US doctors were telling me that putting on a mask would actually cause you to get infected faster because you'd do it wrong. (Then the CDC announced mask orders the next day and they mumbled something about new evidence to me.) And we can see who's done better in the last year.
  - makomk 5y ago
    It's looking more and more like a whole bunch of Asian countries just got lucky. Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam have all currently got uncontrolled community spread again (possibly China too), and whilst the Taiwan outbreak could maybe be blamed on them getting sloppy Singapore has been aggressively enforcing mask wearing the whole time. There was already good reason to suspect this was the case over a year ago too. The early outbreaks mostly seemed to be a gradient emanating outwards from Italy, with genetic testing suggesting that even the US had done reasonably well at halting spread from China and its big outbreaks came from Europe; Asia is obviously a long way from Italy and it was suspicious that a bunch of countries that in reality had widely varying policies on things like masks, testing, etc showed such similar results. Including countries like Australia and New Zealand that were more or less western in terms of culture but were geographically close to the rest.
beagle3 5y ago
Basically all convincing evidence for mask use is models (like the linked article) and in vitro unrealistic tests; whereas in real world data, the best I could find wrt covid is 2% reduction. Bacteria are a different matter, and possibly other viruses. But real world data about covid is that masks make very little difference either way, and are possibly harmful.

nradov 5y ago

How can a model be convincing if it hasn't been extensively tested in the real world?

astrange 5y ago
The model of wearing masks has been extensively tested in Asia. Meanwhile US doctors were telling me that putting on a mask would actually cause you to get infected faster because you'd do it wrong. (Then the CDC announced mask orders the next day and they mumbled something about new evidence to me.) And we can see who's done better in the last year.
- makomk 5y ago
  It's looking more and more like a whole bunch of Asian countries just got lucky. Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam have all currently got uncontrolled community spread again (possibly China too), and whilst the Taiwan outbreak could maybe be blamed on them getting sloppy Singapore has been aggressively enforcing mask wearing the whole time. There was already good reason to suspect this was the case over a year ago too. The early outbreaks mostly seemed to be a gradient emanating outwards from Italy, with genetic testing suggesting that even the US had done reasonably well at halting spread from China and its big outbreaks came from Europe; Asia is obviously a long way from Italy and it was suspicious that a bunch of countries that in reality had widely varying policies on things like masks, testing, etc showed such similar results. Including countries like Australia and New Zealand that were more or less western in terms of culture but were geographically close to the rest.

beagle3 5y ago

Basically all convincing evidence for mask use is models (like the linked article) and in vitro unrealistic tests; whereas in real world data, the best I could find wrt covid is 2% reduction. Bacteria are a different matter, and possibly other viruses. But real world data about covid is that masks make very little difference either way, and are possibly harmful.