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But masks work (at least N95) at completely stopping transmission. The covid shot does not. If you have a breakthrough case you’re just as infectious. So man

But masks work (at least N95) at completely stopping transmission. The covid shot does not. If you have a breakthrough case you’re just as infectious. So mandate better masks. Incentivize contact tracing and properly following quarantine measures. Governments around the world are picking the most authoritarian, least effective option out of mitigation policies. ACLU should be ashamed supporting it.

timr 5y ago
> But masks work (at least N95) at completely stopping transmission. The covid shot does not. If you have a breakthrough case you’re just as infectious. No part of this sentence is true. Masks (even N95) do not "completely stop transmission". We don't have great evidence that they work at all. The evidence for vaccines, on the other hand, is incredibly strong, and we know they are very effective at preventing transmission -- on the order of 70% against the Delta variant -- and much better than that at preventing severe illness (>90%). If you have a symptomatic breakthrough infection -- a huge if, as this isn't common -- all current evidence is that the vaccines will reduce your overall infectiveness. This study out of Singapore is an excellent example of the advantages conferred by vaccination on breakthrough infections: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v... They found that vaccination reduced severe disease (>90% reduction) and caused cycle counts to increase faster than in unvaccinated people. The vaccines work, and work well. Masks...are maybe better than nothing.
- spfzero 5y ago
  Recent data is pretty clear that the vaccines, while certainly very effective at reducing severity, don't affect transmissibility. Which is logical since transmission occurs before antibody response can be brought to bear. Masks are barely helpful, preventing 1 or 2 transmissions out of a hundred. Makes a difference in large numbers, so if everyone wore one everywhere, some thousands of transmissions would fail to occur, and thus some lives would be spared. Mask wearing is mostly ineffective on an individual level, but at least you can see the benefit to society at large. It's small, and should be weighed against downsides with schoolchildren for instance, but as a minor inconvenience for adults I'm all for it.
- handoflixue 5y ago
  N95 masks... the masks that by definition result in a 95% reduction in viral load... you want to argue that those are "MAYBE better than nothing"? You shouldn't even need a study for that one - that's just basic common sense if you understand what an N95 mask is. I can understand skepticism about cloth masks (where the effect is more a statistical one), or maybe even surgical masks, but to assert that an N95 mask is ineffective is to assert that viral load doesn't matter AT ALL. We're talking a literal 20x difference, here! https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/epa-researchers-test-effectiveness-face-masks-disinfection-methods-against-covid-19 https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/epa-researchers-test-effe... if you really need some sort of citation for this claim.
  - timr 5y ago
    > N95 masks... the masks that by definition result in a 95% reduction in viral load ... you want to argue that those are "MAYBE better than nothing"? Yes. First, that's not what "N95" means. The material in an N95 mask is capable of filtering 95% of 0.3um particles. That's it. It has nothing to do with "viral load". If a virus travels in particles smaller than 0.3um? No good. If the concentration of larger particles in a space is enough that 5% can infect you? Same thing. Theoretical efficiency is not the same as real-world efficiency. But far more importantly, if you don't fit such a mask properly, then the air will leak around the gaps, and the filtration efficiency of the material is largely irrelevant. Everyone I see on the street wearing (K)N95 masks has massive gaps around their nose and chin. If I can see the gaps from 10 feet away, their fancypants masks aren't doing much of anything except deflecting the air back over their head. Can a well-fit, correctly worn N95 mask make a difference as PPI? Sure, I don't doubt it. But I guarantee that most people aren't getting close to either criterion. Illustrative anecdote: I've had really nasty hay fever for my entire life, and I went through a period of trying N95 masks to keep the pollen out whenever I did yard work. Didn't work at all. Want to guess how big pollen is?
    - handoflixue 5y ago
      > If a virus travels in particles smaller than 0.3um? No good. What does that have to do with Covid? > If the concentration of larger particles in a space is enough that 5% can infect you? Same thing. There is a huge body of evidence that viral load impacts severity, so if 5% of the viral load could infect you, then 20x that was going to put you on a ventilator. > if you don't fit such a mask properly, then the air will leak around the gaps There are actual real-world tests based on "average usage". We don't just have to make up our notion of efficiency based on your anecdotes. > Illustrative anecdote: I'll admit I prefer the overkill of a P100, but I've taught people how to use one in the course of 5 minutes and their reaction is "wow, this works so well". Maybe the extra filtering makes up for the air gaps, but they're really not hard to get real-world results from.

timr 5y ago

> But masks work (at least N95) at completely stopping transmission. The covid shot does not. If you have a breakthrough case you’re just as infectious. No part of this sentence is true. Masks (even N95) do not "completely stop transmission". We don't have great evidence that they work at all. The evidence for vaccines, on the other hand, is incredibly strong, and we know they are very effective at preventing transmission -- on the order of 70% against the Delta variant -- and much better than that at preventing severe illness (>90%). If you have a symptomatic breakthrough infection -- a huge if, as this isn't common -- all current evidence is that the vaccines will reduce your overall infectiveness. This study out of Singapore is an excellent example of the advantages conferred by vaccination on breakthrough infections: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v... They found that vaccination reduced severe disease (>90% reduction) and caused cycle counts to increase faster than in unvaccinated people. The vaccines work, and work well. Masks...are maybe better than nothing.

spfzero 5y ago
Recent data is pretty clear that the vaccines, while certainly very effective at reducing severity, don't affect transmissibility. Which is logical since transmission occurs before antibody response can be brought to bear. Masks are barely helpful, preventing 1 or 2 transmissions out of a hundred. Makes a difference in large numbers, so if everyone wore one everywhere, some thousands of transmissions would fail to occur, and thus some lives would be spared. Mask wearing is mostly ineffective on an individual level, but at least you can see the benefit to society at large. It's small, and should be weighed against downsides with schoolchildren for instance, but as a minor inconvenience for adults I'm all for it.
handoflixue 5y ago
N95 masks... the masks that by definition result in a 95% reduction in viral load... you want to argue that those are "MAYBE better than nothing"? You shouldn't even need a study for that one - that's just basic common sense if you understand what an N95 mask is. I can understand skepticism about cloth masks (where the effect is more a statistical one), or maybe even surgical masks, but to assert that an N95 mask is ineffective is to assert that viral load doesn't matter AT ALL. We're talking a literal 20x difference, here! https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/epa-researchers-test-effectiveness-face-masks-disinfection-methods-against-covid-19 https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/epa-researchers-test-effe... if you really need some sort of citation for this claim.
- timr 5y ago
  > N95 masks... the masks that by definition result in a 95% reduction in viral load ... you want to argue that those are "MAYBE better than nothing"? Yes. First, that's not what "N95" means. The material in an N95 mask is capable of filtering 95% of 0.3um particles. That's it. It has nothing to do with "viral load". If a virus travels in particles smaller than 0.3um? No good. If the concentration of larger particles in a space is enough that 5% can infect you? Same thing. Theoretical efficiency is not the same as real-world efficiency. But far more importantly, if you don't fit such a mask properly, then the air will leak around the gaps, and the filtration efficiency of the material is largely irrelevant. Everyone I see on the street wearing (K)N95 masks has massive gaps around their nose and chin. If I can see the gaps from 10 feet away, their fancypants masks aren't doing much of anything except deflecting the air back over their head. Can a well-fit, correctly worn N95 mask make a difference as PPI? Sure, I don't doubt it. But I guarantee that most people aren't getting close to either criterion. Illustrative anecdote: I've had really nasty hay fever for my entire life, and I went through a period of trying N95 masks to keep the pollen out whenever I did yard work. Didn't work at all. Want to guess how big pollen is?
  - handoflixue 5y ago
    > If a virus travels in particles smaller than 0.3um? No good. What does that have to do with Covid? > If the concentration of larger particles in a space is enough that 5% can infect you? Same thing. There is a huge body of evidence that viral load impacts severity, so if 5% of the viral load could infect you, then 20x that was going to put you on a ventilator. > if you don't fit such a mask properly, then the air will leak around the gaps There are actual real-world tests based on "average usage". We don't just have to make up our notion of efficiency based on your anecdotes. > Illustrative anecdote: I'll admit I prefer the overkill of a P100, but I've taught people how to use one in the course of 5 minutes and their reaction is "wow, this works so well". Maybe the extra filtering makes up for the air gaps, but they're really not hard to get real-world results from.