5 ms·

Part of it is the pre-Omicron, it took more virus to typically infect people. So the more typical masks helped a lot. Now even a tiny bit can easily infect, so

Part of it is the pre-Omicron, it took more virus to typically infect people. So the more typical masks helped a lot. Now even a tiny bit can easily infect, so aerosol (as opposed to droplets) was not nearly as big an issue.

GeekyBear 5y ago
Regular cloth masks do not filter virus floating in the air you breathe and they never did. Here's one of the scientists from President Biden's Covid advisory council being interviewed on PBS last year: > I have had concerns that date back to april of 2020 about the concept of masking. Needless to say it's a political hot button beyond anything I've ever seen in public health, and yet at the same time i think we've all done a disservice to the public. When you actually look at face cloth coverings, those cloth pieces of hang over your face, they actually only have very limited impact in reducing the amount of virus that you inhale in or exhale out. In fact in studies that have been done show that if an individual might get infected within 15 minutes in a room, by time and concentration of the virus in the room, add a face cloth covering you only get about five more minutes of protection. I've been really disappointed with my colleagues in public health for not being more clear about what can masking does or does not do. On the other hand if you use the n95 respirators and fit them tight to your face, you can actually spend 25 hours in that same room and still be protected. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/do-masks-provide-much-protection-we-think-bglhwy/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/do-masks...
- Misdicorl 5y ago
  A 33% efficacy improvement seems great to me for such a simple, easy, cheap, and accessible countermeasure.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    So when you send a child to school for the day, they are only going to be there five minutes? >Fitted particle-filtering masks like N95s are up to 75 times more effective at preventing infection with COVID-19 than surgical masks, according to a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://www.axios.com/n95-mask-protection-covid-958039c9-07f1-45a1-81e7-b7436707fee5.html https://www.axios.com/n95-mask-protection-covid-958039c9-07f...
    - Misdicorl 5y ago
      How in the world did you get to this retort from my statement? My child is too young to go to school. If my child was school age I'd likely unenroll this semester. If that somehow were not an option I'd send with an n95. Are you satisfied?
  - kcplate 5y ago
    Personally I think cloth masks are worthless for anything but the most casual exposure to the virus, and then for it to maintain any reasonable protective effect, you would need to remove and dispose of the mask as those luckily trapped virus particles can dislodge and infect. Continuing to wear a cloth mask that has accumulated virus particles in it just turns a chance casual exposure into a long term one. So one, you would need to know you were casually exposed (most folks don’t) And two, you would need to have a pretty good supply of masks carried with you at all times to replenish on every exposure.
    - Misdicorl 5y ago
      I think you are likely making up the exposure risk based on "conventional" wisdom. I imagine the actual efficacy gain of a simple cloth mask has nothing to do with "trapping" virus particles. My guess for where the actual efficacy comes from is 1) not being able to touch your mucus membranes with your hands anymore 2) limiting the amount of air circulating near your face by limiting induced currents due to your inhale/exhale cycle If I'm right, your conclusions about gaining the effectiveness of a simple cloth mask are completely off base. Definitely curious if you happen to know of a study that looks at the mechanisms of protection for a non filtering mask!
      - kcplate 5y ago
        Sure its CW, but my point was that any possible blocking of virus particles would be completely incidental/accidental, and because the mask is not effective at all at stopping those particles due to their size and weave of the cloth, anything incidentally blocked would not necessarily be blocked again but could still pass through even if you were no longer exposed to the initial source. If you can point me to a peer reviewed study extolling the virtues of cloth masking, I’ll read it. But pretty much all of the positive masking studies with any real statistical benefit of protection seem to be centered around n95 or surgical masks—worn correctly and disposed of after one use.
        Misdicorl 5y ago
        You can't have it both ways. Either simple cloth is not good at filtering the virus, and therefore we shouldn't care about retransmit risk from "trapped" virus. Or it is good at blocking them (like an n95) and you can start thinking/caring about second order effects like retransmission of trapped virus. I don't need a peer review study to tell me to ignore the epsilon squared term when the epsilon term is already being argued to be marginal. If an article comes through claiming the inverse, that is surprising and worth communicating at large.

GeekyBear 5y ago

Regular cloth masks do not filter virus floating in the air you breathe and they never did. Here's one of the scientists from President Biden's Covid advisory council being interviewed on PBS last year: > I have had concerns that date back to april of 2020 about the concept of masking. Needless to say it's a political hot button beyond anything I've ever seen in public health, and yet at the same time i think we've all done a disservice to the public. When you actually look at face cloth coverings, those cloth pieces of hang over your face, they actually only have very limited impact in reducing the amount of virus that you inhale in or exhale out. In fact in studies that have been done show that if an individual might get infected within 15 minutes in a room, by time and concentration of the virus in the room, add a face cloth covering you only get about five more minutes of protection. I've been really disappointed with my colleagues in public health for not being more clear about what can masking does or does not do. On the other hand if you use the n95 respirators and fit them tight to your face, you can actually spend 25 hours in that same room and still be protected. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/do-masks-provide-much-protection-we-think-bglhwy/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/do-masks...

Misdicorl 5y ago
A 33% efficacy improvement seems great to me for such a simple, easy, cheap, and accessible countermeasure.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  So when you send a child to school for the day, they are only going to be there five minutes? >Fitted particle-filtering masks like N95s are up to 75 times more effective at preventing infection with COVID-19 than surgical masks, according to a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://www.axios.com/n95-mask-protection-covid-958039c9-07f1-45a1-81e7-b7436707fee5.html https://www.axios.com/n95-mask-protection-covid-958039c9-07f...
  - Misdicorl 5y ago
    How in the world did you get to this retort from my statement? My child is too young to go to school. If my child was school age I'd likely unenroll this semester. If that somehow were not an option I'd send with an n95. Are you satisfied?
- kcplate 5y ago
  Personally I think cloth masks are worthless for anything but the most casual exposure to the virus, and then for it to maintain any reasonable protective effect, you would need to remove and dispose of the mask as those luckily trapped virus particles can dislodge and infect. Continuing to wear a cloth mask that has accumulated virus particles in it just turns a chance casual exposure into a long term one. So one, you would need to know you were casually exposed (most folks don’t) And two, you would need to have a pretty good supply of masks carried with you at all times to replenish on every exposure.
  - Misdicorl 5y ago
    I think you are likely making up the exposure risk based on "conventional" wisdom. I imagine the actual efficacy gain of a simple cloth mask has nothing to do with "trapping" virus particles. My guess for where the actual efficacy comes from is 1) not being able to touch your mucus membranes with your hands anymore 2) limiting the amount of air circulating near your face by limiting induced currents due to your inhale/exhale cycle If I'm right, your conclusions about gaining the effectiveness of a simple cloth mask are completely off base. Definitely curious if you happen to know of a study that looks at the mechanisms of protection for a non filtering mask!
    - kcplate 5y ago
      Sure its CW, but my point was that any possible blocking of virus particles would be completely incidental/accidental, and because the mask is not effective at all at stopping those particles due to their size and weave of the cloth, anything incidentally blocked would not necessarily be blocked again but could still pass through even if you were no longer exposed to the initial source. If you can point me to a peer reviewed study extolling the virtues of cloth masking, I’ll read it. But pretty much all of the positive masking studies with any real statistical benefit of protection seem to be centered around n95 or surgical masks—worn correctly and disposed of after one use.
      - Misdicorl 5y ago
        You can't have it both ways. Either simple cloth is not good at filtering the virus, and therefore we shouldn't care about retransmit risk from "trapped" virus. Or it is good at blocking them (like an n95) and you can start thinking/caring about second order effects like retransmission of trapped virus. I don't need a peer review study to tell me to ignore the epsilon squared term when the epsilon term is already being argued to be marginal. If an article comes through claiming the inverse, that is surprising and worth communicating at large.