6 ms·

We also did not have data on the types of masks being worn or on masking adherence rates in the two school districts It is known that this is an aerosolized pa

We also did not have data on the types of masks being worn or on masking adherence rates in the two school districts It is known that this is an aerosolized pandemic. Airborne. Cloth and surgical masks do not work. Source – there are many to choose from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673621008692?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362... The posted study on mandates has effectively no meaning. Closed FFP2/N95-style masks work. This is fact. A mandate does not make such masks magically appear on people’s faces. Therefore it is obvious that there is no effective correlation between the word “mandate” and what SARS-CoV-2 does.

throwoutway 4y ago
> Closed FFP2/N95-style masks work. Schools are not going to mandate this, and even if they do kids will wear them loose/wrong. So knowing that, where do school boards go from here?
- badtoro 4y ago
  - verve_rat 4y ago
    - toomim 4y ago
      Children age 2-5 are learning faces and how to speak. If they can't see each other's faces and mouths, they don't learn a basic part of human interaction. Think a little more broadly about "harm".
      - seba_dos1 4y ago
        Maybe they'll end up being more understanding and kind to autistic people who have troubles with reading faces or maintaining eye contact regardless of being raised up with masks or not. That would be nice.
        toomim 4y ago
        The upside of having a developmental disability is that you have compassion for other people with developmental disabilities? Ok.
        seba_dos1 4y ago
        Yes, obviously. A lot of trauma suffered by people on the spectrum does not come from their autism, but from how other people assume that everyone else is like them. Reading faces is not an essential skill that everyone needs to learn in order to operate in a healthy society, the only reason people who lack that skill have troubles is because it is expected from them by others to have it. If we raise a generation where a significant percentage of people don't develop this skill very well, we may end up with a society that doesn't expect others to rely on skills they haven't developed, making everyone's life easier.
        toomim 4y ago
        If I could choose between a society where 80% of people can read faces, vs. one where 90% can read faces, I'd choose the one where more people can read faces. It makes everyone's life easier when more people can read each other's faces.
    - MuchoMaas 4y ago
- amluto 4y ago
  Now? Strongly encourage everyone to get vaccinated (to protect themselves, not others — the current vaccines don’t provide substantial protection to others any more). Encourage people who feel the need for extra personal protection to wear N95 masks and feel comfortable doing so. Encourage anyone who is sick to stay home (which was good sense before COVID anyway). Try to improve ventilation (which is also a good idea regardless of COVID). Encourage students to spend more time outside (again, a good idea regardless of COVID). And accept that outbreaks are going to happen. There is, currently, no magic bullet available that will work in a school setting.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  ventillation, air purifiers and upper-room UV sterilisation are all cheap and practical solutions that shoukd be installed in every public building. the fact thats uts still nit obvious, 2 years on us absurd
glerk 4y ago
This has been known since 2020. From the beginning, the public health message could have been "protect yourself using a N-95 mask", but for some reason they went with "protect others using a cloth/surgical mask". The only reasonable explanation I can find for this is that N-95 masks were in short supply at the time and they had to be saved for medical professionals. We needed a distraction to prevent the general public from hoarding N-95 masks. But here we are, 2 years later, still debating whether masks with holes orders of magnitude larger than the airborne virus particles they are supposed to stop are effective.
- bsilvereagle 4y ago
  > whether masks with holes orders of magnitude larger than the airborne virus particles they are supposed to stop are effective N95 masks work due to a dipole charge, not necessarily because of the mechanical filtration size. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7724761/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7724761/
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    They've also got a substantially better seal around the edges.
    - taf2 4y ago
      Which makes them super comfortable
  - nerfhammer 4y ago
    minutephysics has a nice video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Errr, the linked study directly contradicts your point: > In both respirators, large decreases in the dipole charge density were observed after several heat treatments. However, there was no significant drop in filtration efficiency because multiple parameters (i.e., mechanical filtration) were involved in the filtration performance.
MuchoMaas 4y ago
Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects, why is it so difficult to discern any reduction in community transmission from Germany's N95 mandates?
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects... There are professions that've been doing this for decades without any apparent negative impacts.
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    Which profession requires constant 8-10hr a day use of an N95 mask?
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Some forms of mining, asbestos remediation, industrial work, etc. They've been used extensively by enough people the burden of proof lies on the folks claiming they're somehow dangerous at this point.
      - avar 4y ago
        If you look at EU standards for asbestos removal [1] this really isn't the case. Ditto for the other examples you cite. Almost nobody doing industrial work with comparable PPE doesn't spend at least 1-2 hours of a typical workday out of the PPE. The linked PDF has an example of a typical workday when removing asbestos, note how many times it involves putting on or taking off the PPE. I'm not making any claim about COVID mask mandates, other than your examples seeming irrelevant to "chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s". https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=7478&langId=en https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=7478&langId=en
        4y ago
gruez 4y ago
>Source – there are many to choose from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362... control-f for "mask": 1 match, and it's in a sentence talking about how mask quality and fit is important to preventing infection, but doesn't elaborate on the effectiveness of cloth/surgical vs n95 masks. On the other hand there are also studies that show it working, eg. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(03)13168-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... >The surgical and N95 masks were both effective in significantly reducing the risk of infection, which together with the finding that 30% of non-infected staff did not use masks (table 2) supports that transmission is not airborne. Do you have better a better study for this, preferably some sort of meta-study?
tzs 4y ago
That's awfully binary. With SARS-CoV-2 it is a probabilistic thing, where your chances of actually getting an infection depends on how much SARS-CoV-2 you are exposed to and for how long. Even a cloth or surgical mask does lower that probability. Not enough that it is likely to make a difference if you are going to be exposed for a long time, such as spending hours in room with infected people like might happen at school. But if you are say going to just do say a quick trip to the grocery store and you only have a surgical mask available, wearing it will lower your chances of getting COVID at the grocery store compared to going maskless. Some sources: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 , https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm .
- clairity 4y ago
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  Do note that at least that first source is just people theorizing it should work, not people checking if it actually does work.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
Source? How about the CDC? They came out on this as well and that science has been completely ignored. There's been no massive public health push, etc. Nothing. Makes ya wonder.
senectus1 4y ago
>Cloth and surgical masks do not work. this sort of statement really bugs me. anything that slows the airspeed/spread is helpful. and there for "works". A cloth mask is definitely better than no mask... its has a much higher chance of catching larger droplets than no mask, it has a much higher chance of rate limiting even smaller droplets than no mask. if 100% of the population worse cloth masks you would get a significant reduction of spread just because of the rate limiting. N95 masks are not 100% effective.. so do we claim that they "Dont Work" as well? no we dont. Nothing is black and white. nothing is works or doesn't work... every little step on the way every little effort all helps and by extension "Works".
- josephcsible 4y ago
  If we banned all access to beaches, that would be helpful and "work" to reduce the number of people who get killed by sharks. If we should mandate cloth masks, then why shouldn't we do that too?
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Your argument, like many people made at the time this started, is purely technical. It only considers the virus itself to be the thing needing to be solved, rather than considering second-order effects.
russellbeattie 4y ago
JFC. Masks stop your spit from flying. It's about protecting others, not you.

throwoutway 4y ago

> Closed FFP2/N95-style masks work. Schools are not going to mandate this, and even if they do kids will wear them loose/wrong. So knowing that, where do school boards go from here?

badtoro 4y ago
- verve_rat 4y ago
  - toomim 4y ago
    Children age 2-5 are learning faces and how to speak. If they can't see each other's faces and mouths, they don't learn a basic part of human interaction. Think a little more broadly about "harm".
    - seba_dos1 4y ago
      Maybe they'll end up being more understanding and kind to autistic people who have troubles with reading faces or maintaining eye contact regardless of being raised up with masks or not. That would be nice.
      - toomim 4y ago
        The upside of having a developmental disability is that you have compassion for other people with developmental disabilities? Ok.
        seba_dos1 4y ago
        Yes, obviously. A lot of trauma suffered by people on the spectrum does not come from their autism, but from how other people assume that everyone else is like them. Reading faces is not an essential skill that everyone needs to learn in order to operate in a healthy society, the only reason people who lack that skill have troubles is because it is expected from them by others to have it. If we raise a generation where a significant percentage of people don't develop this skill very well, we may end up with a society that doesn't expect others to rely on skills they haven't developed, making everyone's life easier.
        toomim 4y ago
        If I could choose between a society where 80% of people can read faces, vs. one where 90% can read faces, I'd choose the one where more people can read faces. It makes everyone's life easier when more people can read each other's faces.
  - MuchoMaas 4y ago
amluto 4y ago
Now? Strongly encourage everyone to get vaccinated (to protect themselves, not others — the current vaccines don’t provide substantial protection to others any more). Encourage people who feel the need for extra personal protection to wear N95 masks and feel comfortable doing so. Encourage anyone who is sick to stay home (which was good sense before COVID anyway). Try to improve ventilation (which is also a good idea regardless of COVID). Encourage students to spend more time outside (again, a good idea regardless of COVID). And accept that outbreaks are going to happen. There is, currently, no magic bullet available that will work in a school setting.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
ventillation, air purifiers and upper-room UV sterilisation are all cheap and practical solutions that shoukd be installed in every public building. the fact thats uts still nit obvious, 2 years on us absurd

glerk 4y ago

This has been known since 2020. From the beginning, the public health message could have been "protect yourself using a N-95 mask", but for some reason they went with "protect others using a cloth/surgical mask". The only reasonable explanation I can find for this is that N-95 masks were in short supply at the time and they had to be saved for medical professionals. We needed a distraction to prevent the general public from hoarding N-95 masks. But here we are, 2 years later, still debating whether masks with holes orders of magnitude larger than the airborne virus particles they are supposed to stop are effective.

bsilvereagle 4y ago
> whether masks with holes orders of magnitude larger than the airborne virus particles they are supposed to stop are effective N95 masks work due to a dipole charge, not necessarily because of the mechanical filtration size. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7724761/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7724761/
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  They've also got a substantially better seal around the edges.
  - taf2 4y ago
    Which makes them super comfortable
- nerfhammer 4y ago
  minutephysics has a nice video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Errr, the linked study directly contradicts your point: > In both respirators, large decreases in the dipole charge density were observed after several heat treatments. However, there was no significant drop in filtration efficiency because multiple parameters (i.e., mechanical filtration) were involved in the filtration performance.

MuchoMaas 4y ago

Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects, why is it so difficult to discern any reduction in community transmission from Germany's N95 mandates?

ceejayoz 4y ago
> Setting aside for a moment the fact that chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s has never been studied for potential ill effects... There are professions that've been doing this for decades without any apparent negative impacts.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  Which profession requires constant 8-10hr a day use of an N95 mask?
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Some forms of mining, asbestos remediation, industrial work, etc. They've been used extensively by enough people the burden of proof lies on the folks claiming they're somehow dangerous at this point.
    - avar 4y ago
      If you look at EU standards for asbestos removal [1] this really isn't the case. Ditto for the other examples you cite. Almost nobody doing industrial work with comparable PPE doesn't spend at least 1-2 hours of a typical workday out of the PPE. The linked PDF has an example of a typical workday when removing asbestos, note how many times it involves putting on or taking off the PPE. I'm not making any claim about COVID mask mandates, other than your examples seeming irrelevant to "chronic, day-in-day-out long term use of N95s". https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=7478&langId=en https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=7478&langId=en
      - 4y ago

gruez 4y ago

>Source – there are many to choose from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362... control-f for "mask": 1 match, and it's in a sentence talking about how mask quality and fit is important to preventing infection, but doesn't elaborate on the effectiveness of cloth/surgical vs n95 masks. On the other hand there are also studies that show it working, eg. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(03)13168-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... >The surgical and N95 masks were both effective in significantly reducing the risk of infection, which together with the finding that 30% of non-infected staff did not use masks (table 2) supports that transmission is not airborne. Do you have better a better study for this, preferably some sort of meta-study?

tzs 4y ago

That's awfully binary. With SARS-CoV-2 it is a probabilistic thing, where your chances of actually getting an infection depends on how much SARS-CoV-2 you are exposed to and for how long. Even a cloth or surgical mask does lower that probability. Not enough that it is likely to make a difference if you are going to be exposed for a long time, such as spending hours in room with infected people like might happen at school. But if you are say going to just do say a quick trip to the grocery store and you only have a surgical mask available, wearing it will lower your chances of getting COVID at the grocery store compared to going maskless. Some sources: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 , https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm .

clairity 4y ago
tinus_hn 4y ago
Do note that at least that first source is just people theorizing it should work, not people checking if it actually does work.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

Source? How about the CDC? They came out on this as well and that science has been completely ignored. There's been no massive public health push, etc. Nothing. Makes ya wonder.

senectus1 4y ago

>Cloth and surgical masks do not work. this sort of statement really bugs me. anything that slows the airspeed/spread is helpful. and there for "works". A cloth mask is definitely better than no mask... its has a much higher chance of catching larger droplets than no mask, it has a much higher chance of rate limiting even smaller droplets than no mask. if 100% of the population worse cloth masks you would get a significant reduction of spread just because of the rate limiting. N95 masks are not 100% effective.. so do we claim that they "Dont Work" as well? no we dont. Nothing is black and white. nothing is works or doesn't work... every little step on the way every little effort all helps and by extension "Works".

josephcsible 4y ago
If we banned all access to beaches, that would be helpful and "work" to reduce the number of people who get killed by sharks. If we should mandate cloth masks, then why shouldn't we do that too?
nathanaldensr 4y ago
Your argument, like many people made at the time this started, is purely technical. It only considers the virus itself to be the thing needing to be solved, rather than considering second-order effects.

russellbeattie 4y ago

JFC. Masks stop your spit from flying. It's about protecting others, not you.