5 ms·

From the editorial: "It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory v

From the editorial: "It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive. Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask-wearing itself reduces people's risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses." Whether you think the editorial was them caving or not, they also issued it under their own name with the same weight as their other reviews, so they must have thought enough of it to do so. Given that there's ample laboratory evidence of the filtering capacity of a good N95 or even a KN95 mask, and having worked with an N95 respirator in tuberculosis control settings for 17 years and never converted my TB test, I think I'll stick with the mask in future and I have no hesitation recommending winter masking to others who believe they are at risk of complications. I've liked not being sick for the last three years.

LorenPechtel 3y ago
Yup, we lead lives where it's simply not that big an issue to protect ourselves. While I think my chance of dying from getting it would be very low the issue of long term damage is another matter--it certainly looks to me like it damages everybody, just not always to the point they notice. The damage is probably cumulative.
timr 3y ago
> they also issued it under their own name with the same weight as their other reviews, so they must have thought enough of it to do so. Data is data. Editorials are editorials. The fact that they're published on the same website doesn't change the data. If the Higgs boson was published in the same issue of Physics Letters B as another letter that claimed uncertainty of the result, would you treat them with equal weight? > and having worked with an N95 respirator in tuberculosis control settings for 17 years and never converted my TB test I mean...that's fine? Nobody is telling you what to believe or do. Most of what we do comes without evidence. But let's be slightly rigorous thinkers for a moment: there's a fairly obvious difference between a fit-tested n95 mask in a laboratory setting, where there are lots of other interventions happening at the same time (negative pressure labs, hoods, etc.), and putting on a loose surgical mask on a bus. We should be able to talk about that rationally, and not resort to superstition. > I've liked not being sick for the last three years. I haven't worn masks and I haven't gotten sick either. Other than Covid -- which I got when we were all wearing masks. "post hoc, ergo propter hoc."
- classichasclass 3y ago
  That's drawing an unnecessarily sharp description. To a first approximation all Cochrane pieces are editorials. They're interpreting what's actually out there. > But let's be slightly rigorous thinkers for a moment: there's a fairly obvious difference between a fit-tested n95 mask in a laboratory setting, where there are lots of other interventions happening at the same time (negative pressure labs, hoods, etc.), and putting on a loose surgical mask on a bus. We should be able to talk about that rationally, and not resort to superstition. No one's resorting to superstition. You're the one saying there's no value in an intervention that has empiric laboratory evidence to support it. The argument here is what matters at the population level. If the problem is performance, then we train people to select and use masks better, not simply say that there's no point to it at all.
PathOfEclipse 3y ago
Seriously, what's the difference between what OP wrote: " [Cochrane] found there was no reliable evidence that masks worked against COVID/" And the editorial: "the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive" How is "inconclusive" functionally different from "there was no reliable evidence?" Seriously, how do you justify this pedantry while ignoring and obfuscating the truth? People do much evil by focusing on the wrong facts, the wrong stories, and the wrong lessons learned, while ignoring the right ones. That you are willing to focus on apparently frivolous pedantry while ignoring the fact that so many were forced to use masks without any high-quality scientific evidence that they actually did anything, including children, and all the lessons that should derive from this, is in my opinion, very representative of this type of evil.
- sfn42 3y ago
  We may not be sure that masks help, but we're completely sure that they don't hurt so I don't see the problem personally.
  - dllthomas 3y ago
    I'm completely sure masks hurt my pocketbook and my ability to keep my car tidy, and that forcing people to mask has additional costs. There are cost/benefit questions that aren't as trivial as you imply, and they should be made based on reliable data.
    - hdior 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dllthomas 3y ago
        Your existence is valuable to me for, if nothing else, potentially interesting Hacker News discussion. I wish your comment was a better example of that. I am engaging in the hopes you can do better. Throughout the pandemic, my family and I have been careful about being around others. We have masked with N95 or KN95 masks when we couldn't stay home. I cut my beard for a better fit. We got vaccinated as we were able, and enrolled one of our children in a vaccine trial (he wound up in the control group). We have tested pretty often, and as best we know none of us has contracted the virus. I'm meeting my responsibilities to society around not spreading coronaviruses. I'm also trying to meet my responsibilities to society around engaging with issues honestly. It's disheartening to see people who probably share my position on an issue behaving poorly. Pretending that downsides don't exist is more likely to lose you the argument than win it. Spouting abuse and insults means people stop listening. Please do better.
mike_hearn 3y ago
The review found very few studies into the effectiveness of N95/respirators against ILIs, and from those studies they concluded "wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference". Bear in mind a possible source of confusion here: TB bacterium are ~3 microns in size, but viruses are about 0.2 microns. The Cochrane review I mentioned is only about respiratory viruses. So it's possible that they may work against TB but not against flu or COVID.
- classichasclass 3y ago
  I'm pretty aware of how large a TB bacillus is, thanks. The NIOSH definition for an N95 is a device able to filter at least 95% of airborne particles that have a mass median aerodynamic diameter of 0.3 micrometers. While SARS-CoV-2 is around 0.1 microns in size, naked COVID-19 viruses in air are rare as they would be torn up nearly immediately, so they are almost always within aerosols. Typical respiratory aerosol range is around half a micron or so [0], and as the aerosol particle size gets smaller, so necessarily must be the amount of virus that is present. Is this perfect filtration? No, but no one gets sick from a single virus they inhaled either, even with as communicable as the current Omicron variants are. There's a minimum infective dose and they help keep exposure under it. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00103-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00103-w
- vibrio 3y ago
  The size of the single virus is a false metric here. There is a wide range of respiratory droplets containing virions. Those droplets can range from visible (way bigger than a mycobacterium ) to only large enough to hold one virion. The size distribution of those particles is the metric.

LorenPechtel 3y ago

Yup, we lead lives where it's simply not that big an issue to protect ourselves. While I think my chance of dying from getting it would be very low the issue of long term damage is another matter--it certainly looks to me like it damages everybody, just not always to the point they notice. The damage is probably cumulative.

timr 3y ago

> they also issued it under their own name with the same weight as their other reviews, so they must have thought enough of it to do so. Data is data. Editorials are editorials. The fact that they're published on the same website doesn't change the data. If the Higgs boson was published in the same issue of Physics Letters B as another letter that claimed uncertainty of the result, would you treat them with equal weight? > and having worked with an N95 respirator in tuberculosis control settings for 17 years and never converted my TB test I mean...that's fine? Nobody is telling you what to believe or do. Most of what we do comes without evidence. But let's be slightly rigorous thinkers for a moment: there's a fairly obvious difference between a fit-tested n95 mask in a laboratory setting, where there are lots of other interventions happening at the same time (negative pressure labs, hoods, etc.), and putting on a loose surgical mask on a bus. We should be able to talk about that rationally, and not resort to superstition. > I've liked not being sick for the last three years. I haven't worn masks and I haven't gotten sick either. Other than Covid -- which I got when we were all wearing masks. "post hoc, ergo propter hoc."

classichasclass 3y ago
That's drawing an unnecessarily sharp description. To a first approximation all Cochrane pieces are editorials. They're interpreting what's actually out there. > But let's be slightly rigorous thinkers for a moment: there's a fairly obvious difference between a fit-tested n95 mask in a laboratory setting, where there are lots of other interventions happening at the same time (negative pressure labs, hoods, etc.), and putting on a loose surgical mask on a bus. We should be able to talk about that rationally, and not resort to superstition. No one's resorting to superstition. You're the one saying there's no value in an intervention that has empiric laboratory evidence to support it. The argument here is what matters at the population level. If the problem is performance, then we train people to select and use masks better, not simply say that there's no point to it at all.

PathOfEclipse 3y ago

Seriously, what's the difference between what OP wrote: " [Cochrane] found there was no reliable evidence that masks worked against COVID/" And the editorial: "the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive" How is "inconclusive" functionally different from "there was no reliable evidence?" Seriously, how do you justify this pedantry while ignoring and obfuscating the truth? People do much evil by focusing on the wrong facts, the wrong stories, and the wrong lessons learned, while ignoring the right ones. That you are willing to focus on apparently frivolous pedantry while ignoring the fact that so many were forced to use masks without any high-quality scientific evidence that they actually did anything, including children, and all the lessons that should derive from this, is in my opinion, very representative of this type of evil.

sfn42 3y ago
We may not be sure that masks help, but we're completely sure that they don't hurt so I don't see the problem personally.
- dllthomas 3y ago
  I'm completely sure masks hurt my pocketbook and my ability to keep my car tidy, and that forcing people to mask has additional costs. There are cost/benefit questions that aren't as trivial as you imply, and they should be made based on reliable data.
  - hdior 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dllthomas 3y ago
      Your existence is valuable to me for, if nothing else, potentially interesting Hacker News discussion. I wish your comment was a better example of that. I am engaging in the hopes you can do better. Throughout the pandemic, my family and I have been careful about being around others. We have masked with N95 or KN95 masks when we couldn't stay home. I cut my beard for a better fit. We got vaccinated as we were able, and enrolled one of our children in a vaccine trial (he wound up in the control group). We have tested pretty often, and as best we know none of us has contracted the virus. I'm meeting my responsibilities to society around not spreading coronaviruses. I'm also trying to meet my responsibilities to society around engaging with issues honestly. It's disheartening to see people who probably share my position on an issue behaving poorly. Pretending that downsides don't exist is more likely to lose you the argument than win it. Spouting abuse and insults means people stop listening. Please do better.

mike_hearn 3y ago

The review found very few studies into the effectiveness of N95/respirators against ILIs, and from those studies they concluded "wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference". Bear in mind a possible source of confusion here: TB bacterium are ~3 microns in size, but viruses are about 0.2 microns. The Cochrane review I mentioned is only about respiratory viruses. So it's possible that they may work against TB but not against flu or COVID.

classichasclass 3y ago
I'm pretty aware of how large a TB bacillus is, thanks. The NIOSH definition for an N95 is a device able to filter at least 95% of airborne particles that have a mass median aerodynamic diameter of 0.3 micrometers. While SARS-CoV-2 is around 0.1 microns in size, naked COVID-19 viruses in air are rare as they would be torn up nearly immediately, so they are almost always within aerosols. Typical respiratory aerosol range is around half a micron or so [0], and as the aerosol particle size gets smaller, so necessarily must be the amount of virus that is present. Is this perfect filtration? No, but no one gets sick from a single virus they inhaled either, even with as communicable as the current Omicron variants are. There's a minimum infective dose and they help keep exposure under it. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00103-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-022-00103-w
vibrio 3y ago
The size of the single virus is a false metric here. There is a wide range of respiratory droplets containing virions. Those droplets can range from visible (way bigger than a mycobacterium ) to only large enough to hold one virion. The size distribution of those particles is the metric.