3 ms·

The addition of (from COVID) in the title actually made is mean something different than what the details say--I interpreted the revised title to mean 'masks wo

The addition of (from COVID) in the title actually made is mean something different than what the details say--I interpreted the revised title to mean 'masks worn protect against getting COVID', as 'from' indicates a direction, where all our data has historically been protects against transmitting it. Discussions about masks in headlines in this period is implicitly COVID-specific or related without having to say from/to/or-anything-else.

mdp2021 5y ago
First of all, it is the original title itself to create the doubt: it is «Masks protect...», and I am not sure it is a primary interpretation to understand 'protect' as "protect from doing harm". What would work to that interpretation is 'protect others from COVID' - but then, that is still "protection from COVID", hence the ambiguity is intrinsic. About the timeframe: the post is not meant to be an occasional drop-and-forget. HN is not the Soviet Pravda, or its successors Reddit and Twitter, a frantic magma of imprisoning present where the past (dystopically and horrifically) is largely unattainable. We have functions and direct enough ways to retrieve by period and explore the corpus, of submissions and comments, as a navigable block. Post 1 is the submission 'YCombinator' on Oct 9, 2006 - and it's the directmost query one could do. This only increases the weight of the already given value of clarity. This given, about the content and meaning: it seems the idea of the article in fact is, that 'Masks protect from COVID' in general, not just in one direction; only, the (extremely important, I would say) detail does not appear so clearly: > We find ... that social distancing alone [... etc]. If only the susceptible wears a face mask with infectious speaking at a distance of 1.5 m, the upper bound drops very significantly; that is, with a surgical mask, the upper bound reaches 90% after 30 min, and, with an FFP2 mask, it remains at about 20% even after 1 h. When both wear a… mask... -- Typical conversation of yore: Armageddon. -- Distancing, 3 meters: 90% risk in "just minutes". -- Infective no-mask vis-a-vis surgical: 90% risk in 30 minutes. -- Infective no-mask vis-a-vis FFP2: 20% risk in 60 minutes. [etc. This is how I read it.] This did not appear in the divulgative article (unless - it is clear from having written MaxPlanck without a 'c' that the writer is fighting falling on head bricks while trying to achieve decent posting), and I missed it completely from the abstract of the research article. Abridgements are a help, not a certified document - collaborative verification would be highly valuable.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  I was only stating an alternative, possibly common, misinterpretation. It makes no sense to argue that the misinterpretation is wrong, only whether people do or don't, of which we only have our two samples. HN and time+votes aggregators in general are inherently timely.

mdp2021 5y ago

First of all, it is the original title itself to create the doubt: it is «Masks protect...», and I am not sure it is a primary interpretation to understand 'protect' as "protect from doing harm". What would work to that interpretation is 'protect others from COVID' - but then, that is still "protection from COVID", hence the ambiguity is intrinsic. About the timeframe: the post is not meant to be an occasional drop-and-forget. HN is not the Soviet Pravda, or its successors Reddit and Twitter, a frantic magma of imprisoning present where the past (dystopically and horrifically) is largely unattainable. We have functions and direct enough ways to retrieve by period and explore the corpus, of submissions and comments, as a navigable block. Post 1 is the submission 'YCombinator' on Oct 9, 2006 - and it's the directmost query one could do. This only increases the weight of the already given value of clarity. This given, about the content and meaning: it seems the idea of the article in fact is, that 'Masks protect from COVID' in general, not just in one direction; only, the (extremely important, I would say) detail does not appear so clearly: > We find ... that social distancing alone [... etc]. If only the susceptible wears a face mask with infectious speaking at a distance of 1.5 m, the upper bound drops very significantly; that is, with a surgical mask, the upper bound reaches 90% after 30 min, and, with an FFP2 mask, it remains at about 20% even after 1 h. When both wear a… mask... -- Typical conversation of yore: Armageddon. -- Distancing, 3 meters: 90% risk in "just minutes". -- Infective no-mask vis-a-vis surgical: 90% risk in 30 minutes. -- Infective no-mask vis-a-vis FFP2: 20% risk in 60 minutes. [etc. This is how I read it.] This did not appear in the divulgative article (unless - it is clear from having written MaxPlanck without a 'c' that the writer is fighting falling on head bricks while trying to achieve decent posting), and I missed it completely from the abstract of the research article. Abridgements are a help, not a certified document - collaborative verification would be highly valuable.

karmakaze 5y ago
I was only stating an alternative, possibly common, misinterpretation. It makes no sense to argue that the misinterpretation is wrong, only whether people do or don't, of which we only have our two samples. HN and time+votes aggregators in general are inherently timely.