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Personally I don't think any kind of mask works on people who don't want to wear them. I hypothesize the reason general population shows little or no benefit wi
by toolz 5y ago
Personally I don't think any kind of mask works on people who don't want to wear them. I hypothesize the reason general population shows little or no benefit with masks is because wearing masks effectively is significantly more tedious than just having one on most of the time where people require them.
People who don't want masks aren't getting fitted properly for n95's, they aren't shaving, they aren't behaving consciously in the many ways you can behave that render masking ineffective.
- tempnow987 5y agoAgreed. I laugh because folks have masks on their necks, off their noses etc, when eating, when drinking etc. I don't blame them, a lot of masks fog up glasses etc if they actually are restrictive and don't have an exhalation valve. I shave (this comes from scuba diving where shaving provides similar benefits). I have my own reasons not to want to get covid. So I like doing some things that I'm confident reduce my risk meaningfully. But I don't lecture others, I solve my own problem here.
- Kim_Bruning 5y agoN.95 without shaving does seem to still confer some additional protection, though arguably you're wasting over half the potential when you do.
- tempnow987 5y agoIts pretty noticeable, If I shave, I get a tight suction feel on an indrawn breath. This is same experience you get with a scuba mask. That's interesting there is some protection, I could believe still better than things like cloth and surgical because the strapping tends to be tighter.
- jimkleiber 5y agoDoes it render masks "ineffective" or "less effective"? I think I see so much absolutist language whereas I wish we would use more relative language.
- Laforet 5y agoA LOT less effective, especially for filtering sub-micrometer aerosols. https://imgur.com/a/Of4rDAu https://imgur.com/a/Of4rDAu Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.00375 https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.00375
- jimkleiber 5y agoI appreciate you sending the source. I guess I still have the same argument. A LOT less effective does not equal ineffective. Or maybe I just see certain words like "ineffective" as binary words, either it works or it doesn't, and have a reaction to that. It may be a lot less effective to have facial hair while wearing an n95 compared to no facial hair and a properly fit n95, but is that still much much more effective than not wearing any face mask?
- toolz 5y agoineffective is not binary - it depends on your endpoint, which is subjective. If your endpoint is to not catch covid and someone ineffectively wears their mask such that they would not have caught covid if they wore it correctly - then the mask was ineffective even if statistically they _maybe_ had lower chances of catching covid than without wearing a mask at all. and I say maybe very strongly here...we do not understand transmissible diseases nearly as well as many would like to think - there are plenty of observable datapoints that correlate mask usage with increased transmission...my gut feeling would be to explain those away with confounding variables, but my gut feeling is not science and no substitute for a testable understanding of the problem and solution
- jimkleiber 5y agoAh, yeah, I think it was just a misalignment on the word ineffective. I think when I hear many people use it, I assume they mean pointless, ineffective for all, whereas in you saying it, it sounds like you meant ineffective in that particular instance based on what the outcome was. I see you seem to have a lot more nuance in your perspective than I may had been assuming. I'm sorry. Thank you for clarifying.