5 ms·

Bacterial and fungal isolation from face masks under the Covid-19 pandemic

34 points by danboarder 4y ago

slowmovintarget 4y ago
Study examines bacterial and fungal exposures from repeated or prolonged mask usage. "..we found [increases in] several pathogenic microbes; Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Aspergillus, and Microsporum..." "We propose that immunocompromised people should avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection." Nothing too alarming, but kind of what you'd expect putting something on your face. tl;dr - Wear a fresh mask.
wellthatsawrap1 4y ago
- standardUser 4y ago
  COVID has killed 6 million or so people in a few years, so "non lethal" seems like a stretch.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    You are correct, if you are overweight or obese it can definitely be a lethal disease (78% of hospitalizations are overweight and obese). So if you fall into that category, I can for understand continued concern. If you're young, healthy, in good shape, it's just a bad flu, though (had it in May). The lesson here for America, who is a unique outlier in how badly this went here, should've been "lose weight, get in shape". It's not too late to do that! https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughly-78percent-of-people-hospitalized-were-overweight-or-obese.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...
    - markdown 4y ago
      I'm young, healthy, and in good shape, and it's much worse than a bad flu.
      - nomel 4y ago
        That depends on the person, and vaccination/previous natural infection status. My 89 year old grandpa has tested positive twice, no symptoms. My J&J vaccine was significantly worse than the two later infections (one 6 months after vaccine, before boosters were available, one a few weeks ago, no boosters). Both were like a mild, longer, cold, with some extra muscle aches and fatigue.
        markdown 4y ago
        Yup, so since it kills some people and is a really terrible illness for others, those who like you who had it easy need to be a little more considerate in how you talk about it. Just because it was "like a cold" to you doesn't mean we shouldn't care about it. I am double vaccinated (Astra-Zenaca) and have had a single booster (Moderna). I was on the floor in the foetal position at my worst, while my spouse just had a cough and very bad headaches.
        spants 4y ago
        it is speculated that having many vaccinations actually increase your chance of a bad reaction to the virus (and other infections/diseases).
        markdown 4y ago
        Speculation like that isn't useful. My spouse and I had the same vaccination history, yet her experience with covid was much milder.
        nomel 4y ago
        Stating a fact that it depends on the person, and giving my experience, just as you did, doesn’t mean I’m being inconsiderate or don’t care about it. I don’t understand how you could have come to that completely irrational, ridiculous, conclusion. I have family members who are unable to get vaccinated. I worry about them every day. Touch grass.
    - acjohnson55 4y ago
      You're right that the vast majority of healthy people are recovering. But keeping infection levels down and continuing to mask in high transmission environments helps keep the disabled and immunocompromised safe. Also, long COVID is nothing to play with.
      - nradov 4y ago
        People can take protective measures when appropriate, but there's really no way to keep the disabled and immunocompromised safe. The latest variants are so contagious that everyone will be exposed eventually. The virus is here to stay and there will be no significant herd immunity effect. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
      - remarkEon 4y ago
        Don’t the vaccines do this? And aren’t the immunocompromised already taking extra steps (like not hanging out in high transmission environments)? I’m not really convinced “long Covid” is something to worry about for people that aren’t already at risk for having bad outcomes from the disease in the first place. I’m open to reading something to convince me that it’s different from being tired for a week or two after getting other respiratory viruses. This [1] is from May. I’m not entirely convinced it’s even real. [1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/search-long-covid https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/search-long-covid
      - junofan 4y ago
        There’s a continent with tons of immunocompromised people with no masking and very limited public health resources that seems to be doing okay. I’d be thrilled with the outcomes they’re getting, actually.
    - p1necone 4y ago
      https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm According to this 73.6% of adults over 20 in the US are classified as overweight or obese, so 78% of Covid hospitalizations being overweight or obese is not at all surprising. This means that overweight and obese people are roughly 5.8% more likely to be hospitalized with Covid than people who are not overweight or obese. Hardly the slam dunk you're implying it is. (Of course I'm potentially making a mistake by excluding under 20s without knowing if the covid hospitalization statistic you're mentioning also excludes them, but taking that into account is too much research/math for today - what percentage of the US pop is < 20 years old?). (As a side note, that article is awful (and I assume the source of your mistake) - it seems to imply that "obese" and "overweight or obese" are the same thing, except the former is 41.9% of the population and the latter is 73.6%. Not sure if intentional misuse of statistics, or just incompetence).
      - remarkEon 4y ago
        >According to this 73.6% of adults over 20 in the US are classified as overweight or obese My God. I did not think it was that high. I had thought “ehh 50%” based simply on who I see walking around at Costco, and you’re right shame on me for not looking up the relevant statistics to fact check CNBC. That’s a legit public health catastrophe. We’re slow walking into a health case disaster if this doesn’t change.
        p1necone 4y ago
        To be fair I think the threshold for 'overweight' is pretty low (and based on BMI which isn't a super great measure at least on an individual level), but yes it's definitely a problem.
        remarkEon 4y ago
        Yeah BMI is a very crude metric. Half the guys I was in the Army with would be “overweight” if you only used BMI (these guys were not overweight, they were yoked).
      - 4y ago
    - _6hmp 4y ago
      "Lose weight, get in shape" is good advice that would lower all cause mortality if it reliably resulted in such a change. The advice that we ought be perfect to avoid mortality doesn't take into account reality. I agree with your statement in the small (yes, get fit, try to motivate friends and family to do the same), but it's not useful to moralize about what-if on a population level in my opinion, and it is tantamount to blaming the victims of the pandemic for bad outcomes. Especially before the vaccines, many young and healthy people died or experienced very bad outcomes, and it still happens, though the vaccines have helped a ton in this regard.
      - remarkEon 4y ago
        Well, I obviously don’t mean to blame the victims here. Sorry if you or anyone took it that way. Obviously it’s tragic when anyone has a bad time or dies from this. To be more clear, my ire is directed at public health officials who would do a lot of good by simply encouraging more physical activity and for other political leaders who don’t use their power to advocate for infrastructure changes in the US that get people to be more physically mobile (more mass transit, and so on).
    - metadat 4y ago
      Long-covid can happen to anyone. Not just a flu.
    - standardUser 4y ago
      Dude, that is just how illnesses work. Almost all of them. You make it sounds like a "gotcha", but obviously older people, unhealthy people and immune compromised people are always the ones to die most frequently from illnesses. Duh.
      - remarkEon 4y ago
        And do we reorder all of society for these other illnesses, for these vulnerable people, because of this truism about how being unhealthy is bad? No? Okay then.
  - anonygler 4y ago
    Indeed, COVID has devastated the Alzheimer’s Community. The COVID response however has devastated the young, robbing children of socialization. Not to mention how it’s impacted young adults with inflation and lack of in person networking. The collateral damage is immense and will take many years to shake out still. The avg age of death from COVID is higher than your life expectancy. The biggest factor in having “long COVID” is a prior history of anxiety disorders.
- markdown 4y ago
shusaku 4y ago
> Natto is a traditional Japanese fermented food that is sticky when eaten and clings to the mouth and chopsticks (Fig. 3c). Natto is made by fermenting soybeans with the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which can survive dry conditions. As expected, in this study, we observed the large white colonies formed by B. subtilis. According to the questionnaire, 9% and 27% of the participants have eaten natto daily and weekly, respectively; 19% of the participants ate natto during the experimental period. The participants who ate natto had a significantly higher incidence of large white B. subtilis colonies on both sides of the masks than those who did not. The authors have this bizarre obsession with reminding us of all the Japanese things going on in the study, and it culminates in borderline parody here.
- p1necone 4y ago
  I'm confused, would you rather they didn't explain any of this? It seems like the fact that the bacteria is originating from this specific food in this part of the study is important, I'm not sure how they could describe this adequately without explaining what Natto is, and that it contains B. subtilis specfically.
  - shusaku 4y ago
    I don’t want to come off as mean spirited here, it’s not meant as criticism. But when the article is full of “Japan this, Japan that”, and then you even include an experiment involving natto, it’s funny because it comes off as stereotypical.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Note this study points to the importance of continuing with handwashing routines, which reduce the transmission of a wide variety of infectious diseases. > "We detected B. cereus, a foodborne pathogen, on the outer-side of masks in 5% of the participants (Fig. 4c), suggesting that B. cereus might adhere to the face masks through hands from feces. Intensive handwashing is recommended, since handwashing is effective in reducing the incidence of diarrhea."

34 points by danboarder 4y ago

Study examines bacterial and fungal exposures from repeated or prolonged mask usage. "..we found [increases in] several pathogenic microbes; Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Aspergillus, and Microsporum..." "We propose that immunocompromised people should avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection." Nothing too alarming, but kind of what you'd expect putting something on your face. tl;dr - Wear a fresh mask.

wellthatsawrap1 4y ago

standardUser 4y ago
COVID has killed 6 million or so people in a few years, so "non lethal" seems like a stretch.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  You are correct, if you are overweight or obese it can definitely be a lethal disease (78% of hospitalizations are overweight and obese). So if you fall into that category, I can for understand continued concern. If you're young, healthy, in good shape, it's just a bad flu, though (had it in May). The lesson here for America, who is a unique outlier in how badly this went here, should've been "lose weight, get in shape". It's not too late to do that! https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughly-78percent-of-people-hospitalized-were-overweight-or-obese.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...
  - markdown 4y ago
    I'm young, healthy, and in good shape, and it's much worse than a bad flu.
    - nomel 4y ago
      That depends on the person, and vaccination/previous natural infection status. My 89 year old grandpa has tested positive twice, no symptoms. My J&J vaccine was significantly worse than the two later infections (one 6 months after vaccine, before boosters were available, one a few weeks ago, no boosters). Both were like a mild, longer, cold, with some extra muscle aches and fatigue.
      - markdown 4y ago
        Yup, so since it kills some people and is a really terrible illness for others, those who like you who had it easy need to be a little more considerate in how you talk about it. Just because it was "like a cold" to you doesn't mean we shouldn't care about it. I am double vaccinated (Astra-Zenaca) and have had a single booster (Moderna). I was on the floor in the foetal position at my worst, while my spouse just had a cough and very bad headaches.
        spants 4y ago
        it is speculated that having many vaccinations actually increase your chance of a bad reaction to the virus (and other infections/diseases).
        markdown 4y ago
        Speculation like that isn't useful. My spouse and I had the same vaccination history, yet her experience with covid was much milder.
        nomel 4y ago
        Stating a fact that it depends on the person, and giving my experience, just as you did, doesn’t mean I’m being inconsiderate or don’t care about it. I don’t understand how you could have come to that completely irrational, ridiculous, conclusion. I have family members who are unable to get vaccinated. I worry about them every day. Touch grass.
  - acjohnson55 4y ago
    You're right that the vast majority of healthy people are recovering. But keeping infection levels down and continuing to mask in high transmission environments helps keep the disabled and immunocompromised safe. Also, long COVID is nothing to play with.
    - nradov 4y ago
      People can take protective measures when appropriate, but there's really no way to keep the disabled and immunocompromised safe. The latest variants are so contagious that everyone will be exposed eventually. The virus is here to stay and there will be no significant herd immunity effect. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      Don’t the vaccines do this? And aren’t the immunocompromised already taking extra steps (like not hanging out in high transmission environments)? I’m not really convinced “long Covid” is something to worry about for people that aren’t already at risk for having bad outcomes from the disease in the first place. I’m open to reading something to convince me that it’s different from being tired for a week or two after getting other respiratory viruses. This [1] is from May. I’m not entirely convinced it’s even real. [1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/search-long-covid https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/search-long-covid
    - junofan 4y ago
      There’s a continent with tons of immunocompromised people with no masking and very limited public health resources that seems to be doing okay. I’d be thrilled with the outcomes they’re getting, actually.
  - p1necone 4y ago
    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm According to this 73.6% of adults over 20 in the US are classified as overweight or obese, so 78% of Covid hospitalizations being overweight or obese is not at all surprising. This means that overweight and obese people are roughly 5.8% more likely to be hospitalized with Covid than people who are not overweight or obese. Hardly the slam dunk you're implying it is. (Of course I'm potentially making a mistake by excluding under 20s without knowing if the covid hospitalization statistic you're mentioning also excludes them, but taking that into account is too much research/math for today - what percentage of the US pop is < 20 years old?). (As a side note, that article is awful (and I assume the source of your mistake) - it seems to imply that "obese" and "overweight or obese" are the same thing, except the former is 41.9% of the population and the latter is 73.6%. Not sure if intentional misuse of statistics, or just incompetence).
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      >According to this 73.6% of adults over 20 in the US are classified as overweight or obese My God. I did not think it was that high. I had thought “ehh 50%” based simply on who I see walking around at Costco, and you’re right shame on me for not looking up the relevant statistics to fact check CNBC. That’s a legit public health catastrophe. We’re slow walking into a health case disaster if this doesn’t change.
      - p1necone 4y ago
        To be fair I think the threshold for 'overweight' is pretty low (and based on BMI which isn't a super great measure at least on an individual level), but yes it's definitely a problem.
        remarkEon 4y ago
        Yeah BMI is a very crude metric. Half the guys I was in the Army with would be “overweight” if you only used BMI (these guys were not overweight, they were yoked).
    - 4y ago
  - _6hmp 4y ago
    "Lose weight, get in shape" is good advice that would lower all cause mortality if it reliably resulted in such a change. The advice that we ought be perfect to avoid mortality doesn't take into account reality. I agree with your statement in the small (yes, get fit, try to motivate friends and family to do the same), but it's not useful to moralize about what-if on a population level in my opinion, and it is tantamount to blaming the victims of the pandemic for bad outcomes. Especially before the vaccines, many young and healthy people died or experienced very bad outcomes, and it still happens, though the vaccines have helped a ton in this regard.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      Well, I obviously don’t mean to blame the victims here. Sorry if you or anyone took it that way. Obviously it’s tragic when anyone has a bad time or dies from this. To be more clear, my ire is directed at public health officials who would do a lot of good by simply encouraging more physical activity and for other political leaders who don’t use their power to advocate for infrastructure changes in the US that get people to be more physically mobile (more mass transit, and so on).
  - metadat 4y ago
    Long-covid can happen to anyone. Not just a flu.
  - standardUser 4y ago
    Dude, that is just how illnesses work. Almost all of them. You make it sounds like a "gotcha", but obviously older people, unhealthy people and immune compromised people are always the ones to die most frequently from illnesses. Duh.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      And do we reorder all of society for these other illnesses, for these vulnerable people, because of this truism about how being unhealthy is bad? No? Okay then.
- anonygler 4y ago
  Indeed, COVID has devastated the Alzheimer’s Community. The COVID response however has devastated the young, robbing children of socialization. Not to mention how it’s impacted young adults with inflation and lack of in person networking. The collateral damage is immense and will take many years to shake out still. The avg age of death from COVID is higher than your life expectancy. The biggest factor in having “long COVID” is a prior history of anxiety disorders.
markdown 4y ago

shusaku 4y ago

> Natto is a traditional Japanese fermented food that is sticky when eaten and clings to the mouth and chopsticks (Fig. 3c). Natto is made by fermenting soybeans with the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which can survive dry conditions. As expected, in this study, we observed the large white colonies formed by B. subtilis. According to the questionnaire, 9% and 27% of the participants have eaten natto daily and weekly, respectively; 19% of the participants ate natto during the experimental period. The participants who ate natto had a significantly higher incidence of large white B. subtilis colonies on both sides of the masks than those who did not. The authors have this bizarre obsession with reminding us of all the Japanese things going on in the study, and it culminates in borderline parody here.

p1necone 4y ago
I'm confused, would you rather they didn't explain any of this? It seems like the fact that the bacteria is originating from this specific food in this part of the study is important, I'm not sure how they could describe this adequately without explaining what Natto is, and that it contains B. subtilis specfically.
- shusaku 4y ago
  I don’t want to come off as mean spirited here, it’s not meant as criticism. But when the article is full of “Japan this, Japan that”, and then you even include an experiment involving natto, it’s funny because it comes off as stereotypical.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Note this study points to the importance of continuing with handwashing routines, which reduce the transmission of a wide variety of infectious diseases. > "We detected B. cereus, a foodborne pathogen, on the outer-side of masks in 5% of the participants (Fig. 4c), suggesting that B. cereus might adhere to the face masks through hands from feces. Intensive handwashing is recommended, since handwashing is effective in reducing the incidence of diarrhea."