4 ms·

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.
      - kcplate 5y ago
        No, I am not having it both ways. I don’t think cloth masks are effective at all. I’m responding to the “cloth masks are 5-33% effective” for incidental exposure commentary as a positive aspect of cloth masking. It’s a red herring that creates a false sense of security. My point is that if a cloth mask is only partially effective for an incidental exposure than it must have been somewhat effective at a given moment, but due to virus size and cloth weaving…every moment that the particle didn’t reach your nasal passages due to that momentary chance then that virus still has a 67%-95% of entering you and infecting you every moment it is near you. So any incidental exposure becomes non-incidental.
        Misdicorl 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.
    - kcplate 5y ago
      No, I am not having it both ways. I don’t think cloth masks are effective at all. I’m responding to the “cloth masks are 5-33% effective” for incidental exposure commentary as a positive aspect of cloth masking. It’s a red herring that creates a false sense of security. My point is that if a cloth mask is only partially effective for an incidental exposure than it must have been somewhat effective at a given moment, but due to virus size and cloth weaving…every moment that the particle didn’t reach your nasal passages due to that momentary chance then that virus still has a 67%-95% of entering you and infecting you every moment it is near you. So any incidental exposure becomes non-incidental.
      - Misdicorl 5y ago