3 ms·

> Cloth masks also outperformed both KN95 and surgical masks. Milton theorizes that cloth variants were the second-most effective masks tested because of greate

> Cloth masks also outperformed both KN95 and surgical masks. Milton theorizes that cloth variants were the second-most effective masks tested because of greater coverage that wraps around the face and gives a better seal than either KN95 or surgical masks. Flow resistance is also lower, allowing breath to pass through rather than around the filter. I'm always baffled by the people who went around arguing masks did nothing. They don't seem to have any problem accepting that a sneeze guard at a salad bar does something, or that a surgeon should put something on their face to prevent them from coughing into your open body cavity. We can argue all day about specific masks under specific settings, or when it is worth it to bother, but "putting something in front of your face prevents you from breathing out particles" is in the category of "things that are pretty f&%*ing obvious".

dboreham 2y ago
Also something that medical practitioners have been doing on a daily basis for 100+ years.
candiddevmike 2y ago
Trump didn't want to wear masks because it smudged his bronzer: https://newrepublic.com/post/175706/cassidy-hutchinson-trump-masks-covid-bronzer-makeup https://newrepublic.com/post/175706/cassidy-hutchinson-trump... It was never about science, it was about convenience.
- hartator 2y ago
  Isn’t the sole goal of engineering to use science and make nature convenient for humans?
- legitster 2y ago
  > It was never about science, it was about convenience. There was an inverse problem coming from the other side though. There was also a large and vocal group who argued that the masks did nothing as a way to create unnecessary anxiety and force unnecessarily inconvenient lockdown restrictions - like banning people with "inferior" masks.
legitster 2y ago
I think the important thing is - the strongest benefit of masks are always for other people. But I think certain people cannot accept a selfless reason to do something.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Hey pal, those people are willing to do anything for their country because they're not cowards like us... except wear a mask.
- swed420 2y ago
  > I think the important thing is - the strongest benefit of masks are always for other people Not getting COVID in the first place seems like a huge benefit, and if you find yourself surrounded by people who no longer mask (most countries in 2024), then wearing an N95 respirator for your own protection is more personally beneficial compared to, say, being up to date on vaccination (since COVID vaccines don't prevent transmission, and repeated infections increase chances of acquiring long COVID). I've consistently worn an N95 in all public spaces and have not contracted COVID (to my knowledge). Meanwhile, most of the people I know (some vaccinated, some not) are either often sick due to weakened immune systems and/or have gained one or more severe health issues since the pandemic began.
xattt 2y ago
The argument against mask efficacy by members of the general population was never done in good faith. It was about less-educated people who were in arrested development and never moved past teenager rebellion. Their rebellion was egged on by malicious state actors through social media in order to sow large-scale chaos by unmitigated viral spread.
- FooBarWidget 2y ago
  Anti-mask sentiment is amplified by state actors? You have to tell me more about that theory.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    It's not a particularly insane claim; at one point China was claiming the virus originated in a US bioweapons facility. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/20/china-revives-conspiracy-theory-of-us-army-link-to-covid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/20/china-revives-... Here's someone specifically espousing the theory: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-russia-china-1.5583961 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-russia-ch... > China is trying to rewrite the narrative, he said, by suggesting that U.S. army officers brought the virus to Wuhan during military games in December — but Kremlin-controlled media outlets appear to be trying to prolong the pandemic outside of Russia. > "We saw articles ... claiming that handwashing has no impact on stemming the spread of the virus, that smokers do not get coronavirus, that ginger can be used to prevent contracting the disease," said Nehring. "Tons of false information that's never been corrected, never been retracted and is still online today, being put out by the Russians." Kneecapping a geopolitical enemy by spreading disinformation would hardly be a first.
  - legitster 2y ago
    I think it is pretty widely accepted at this point that foreign actors regularly jump into online topics to fan flames and domestic distractions. Russia pays for massive botfarms doing... something. China funds massive social media investments into western markets for... something. The topics don't even have to be relevant to anything geopolitical. As an example, the East Palestine train derailment was a weeks old news story that the Chinese media pushed into social media as a response to their balloon being shot down: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64633990 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64633990
bee_rider 2y ago
I think it was mostly motivated reasoning by people who didn’t want to wear masks. Also a “gotcha” because of the early advice/request that people stop buying masks (because they were needed for medical professionals and also because it wasn’t known the extent to which they would help).
contravariant 2y ago
Can we all just acknowledge how weird the debate has gotten though? I mean clearly some types of masks are better than others, that's why there's standards for masks in the first place. This shouldn't be controversial. Worse by making it controversial the whole notion of doubting any kind of mask no matter how ill designed suddenly became a faux-pass. Severely obstructing any debate on the best way to make masks. Heck as the article points out surgical masks (not designed to prevent infection from respiratory disease) only block around 70%. Chances are some people now want to shout how 70% is still a lot but 70% fewer particles is a whole lot different from a 70% lower chance of infection. We could all have cooperated to figure out the best way to make masks, but somehow the debate was so heavily leaning towards whether masks were at all effective (which as you pointed out is really fucking obvious), that any notion of debating which masks were most effective and in which contexts was interpreted as a way to delegitimize masks as whole. Edit: And really the lazy attempts to cast doubt on the effectiveness of masks should have been recognized as disingenuous. The idea that no masks work is easily dismissed because we've been testing and designing masks for all kinds of purposes for ages, so at best it is an argument for a higher class of mask, never no mask at all.
- legitster 2y ago
  I hear ya, I'm with ya on every single point. Except... I would stake my fortune that the difference between 70% effectiveness and 99% effectiveness in a monitored study is going to be reduced into a rounding error in the real world. There are so many factors to control for when it comes to how they get used, how good they fit, how much they trap moisture over a long day, how much their performance degrades, etc. For the purpose of preventing most incidental exposures, I would think that at the end of the day anything that prevents direct airflow is going to perform practically the same. In my case, I was exclusively using N95s when I caught Covid back in the day, and it was probably for a myriad of ways that I was using the mask wrong or making other bad choices. The mask itself being 99% effective probably didn't significantly change my odds when I had to wear it 14 hours a day.
  - contravariant 2y ago
    Well there's also the issue of range, those 30% of particles might well have far less velocity. Which might be all that you need in a well ventilated area, or might be a meaningless difference in a busy room. Frankly I don't know, and I don't mind admitting I don't know. What worries me greatly though is that at some point saying you didn't know was misconstrued as an attack on ideology. I mean if I had to guess I'd go for something blocking 99% of the viruses at least 70% of the time over something blocking 70% of the particles at least 99% of the time. Of course it depends, but one of those works to some extent at least 70% of the time, while for the other it is unclear. But really it depends. If we're talking about umbrellas those two scenarios result in you getting roughly equally wet, yet if we're talking about bullet proof shields I'd take my chances with the shield stopping most bullets at least some of the time over the one stopping only 2 out of 3 bullets.
n8henrie 2y ago
Things seem "obvious" until the best available evidence doesn't support them. As a physician, I had a hard time understanding the ferocity with which some of my colleagues defended the "science" of masking when the Cochrane review(s) -- largely held to be the pinnacle of evidence-based-medicine -- were so underwhelming. I never had a problem with people arguing for them based on face validity (hehe), personal preference, that they "might" help, were "better than nothing," or any number of softer reasons. Don't get me wrong -- as a physician I wore an N95 every shift, because I believe that the odds that they might help were much greater than the odds that they might harm. (And because my hospital's N95s are much more comfortable for me than our surgical masks, and other trivial reasons.) But I had a hard time finding other physicians who were both steadfastly convinced of the incredible benefits of masking and also had taken any time to try to find or read the available literature on the topic. https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-inter... > Medical or surgical masks > > Seven studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 3005 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported, but included discomfort. > > N95/P2 respirators > > Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (5 studies; 8407 people) or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well reported; discomfort was mentioned.
- aredox 2y ago
  The Cochrane review is underwhelming because it is mediocre[0]. And its main author is far from dispassionate: "The study's lead author, Tom Jefferson of the University of Oxford, promoted the misleading interpretation. When asked about different kinds of masks, including N95s, he declared, “Makes no difference—none of it.” In another interview, he called mask mandates scientifically baseless." When the main author is misleading about the conclusions of his own report, you have to wonder how good his work was. But if you want just arguments over data rather than doubting Jefferson on a personal basis, this paper[1] makes a compelling argument that the RCTs in the Cochrane review itself are good enough to make the argument masking works. GAVI has also a good answer to Cochrane[2]. [0] https://archive.ph/FlApv https://archive.ph/FlApv [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10484132/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10484132/ [2] https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/yes-masks-reduce-risk-spreading-covid-despite-review-saying-they-dont https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/yes-masks-reduce-risk-spre...
guilhas 2y ago
Since 2020, the internet comment pages are full of virus experts telling us how obvious things are UK NHS had regarded surgical masks to be ineffective for virus transmission prevention, after several studies, before the field politization in 2020 > They don't seem to have any problem accepting that a sneeze guard at a salad bar does something... We just find disgusting other people saliva/touching our food. So we didn't accept that before 2020, but maybe we do now > ...or that a surgeon should put something on their face to prevent them from coughing into your open body cavity No doctor/nurse would use any kind of mask at the hospital, 90% of the time, before 2020 So not obvious

dboreham 2y ago

Also something that medical practitioners have been doing on a daily basis for 100+ years.

candiddevmike 2y ago

Trump didn't want to wear masks because it smudged his bronzer: https://newrepublic.com/post/175706/cassidy-hutchinson-trump-masks-covid-bronzer-makeup https://newrepublic.com/post/175706/cassidy-hutchinson-trump... It was never about science, it was about convenience.

hartator 2y ago
Isn’t the sole goal of engineering to use science and make nature convenient for humans?
legitster 2y ago
> It was never about science, it was about convenience. There was an inverse problem coming from the other side though. There was also a large and vocal group who argued that the masks did nothing as a way to create unnecessary anxiety and force unnecessarily inconvenient lockdown restrictions - like banning people with "inferior" masks.

legitster 2y ago

I think the important thing is - the strongest benefit of masks are always for other people. But I think certain people cannot accept a selfless reason to do something.

llamaimperative 2y ago
Hey pal, those people are willing to do anything for their country because they're not cowards like us... except wear a mask.
swed420 2y ago
> I think the important thing is - the strongest benefit of masks are always for other people Not getting COVID in the first place seems like a huge benefit, and if you find yourself surrounded by people who no longer mask (most countries in 2024), then wearing an N95 respirator for your own protection is more personally beneficial compared to, say, being up to date on vaccination (since COVID vaccines don't prevent transmission, and repeated infections increase chances of acquiring long COVID). I've consistently worn an N95 in all public spaces and have not contracted COVID (to my knowledge). Meanwhile, most of the people I know (some vaccinated, some not) are either often sick due to weakened immune systems and/or have gained one or more severe health issues since the pandemic began.

xattt 2y ago

The argument against mask efficacy by members of the general population was never done in good faith. It was about less-educated people who were in arrested development and never moved past teenager rebellion. Their rebellion was egged on by malicious state actors through social media in order to sow large-scale chaos by unmitigated viral spread.

FooBarWidget 2y ago
Anti-mask sentiment is amplified by state actors? You have to tell me more about that theory.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  It's not a particularly insane claim; at one point China was claiming the virus originated in a US bioweapons facility. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/20/china-revives-conspiracy-theory-of-us-army-link-to-covid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/20/china-revives-... Here's someone specifically espousing the theory: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-russia-china-1.5583961 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-coronavirus-russia-ch... > China is trying to rewrite the narrative, he said, by suggesting that U.S. army officers brought the virus to Wuhan during military games in December — but Kremlin-controlled media outlets appear to be trying to prolong the pandemic outside of Russia. > "We saw articles ... claiming that handwashing has no impact on stemming the spread of the virus, that smokers do not get coronavirus, that ginger can be used to prevent contracting the disease," said Nehring. "Tons of false information that's never been corrected, never been retracted and is still online today, being put out by the Russians." Kneecapping a geopolitical enemy by spreading disinformation would hardly be a first.
- legitster 2y ago
  I think it is pretty widely accepted at this point that foreign actors regularly jump into online topics to fan flames and domestic distractions. Russia pays for massive botfarms doing... something. China funds massive social media investments into western markets for... something. The topics don't even have to be relevant to anything geopolitical. As an example, the East Palestine train derailment was a weeks old news story that the Chinese media pushed into social media as a response to their balloon being shot down: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64633990 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64633990

bee_rider 2y ago

I think it was mostly motivated reasoning by people who didn’t want to wear masks. Also a “gotcha” because of the early advice/request that people stop buying masks (because they were needed for medical professionals and also because it wasn’t known the extent to which they would help).

contravariant 2y ago

Can we all just acknowledge how weird the debate has gotten though? I mean clearly some types of masks are better than others, that's why there's standards for masks in the first place. This shouldn't be controversial. Worse by making it controversial the whole notion of doubting any kind of mask no matter how ill designed suddenly became a faux-pass. Severely obstructing any debate on the best way to make masks. Heck as the article points out surgical masks (not designed to prevent infection from respiratory disease) only block around 70%. Chances are some people now want to shout how 70% is still a lot but 70% fewer particles is a whole lot different from a 70% lower chance of infection. We could all have cooperated to figure out the best way to make masks, but somehow the debate was so heavily leaning towards whether masks were at all effective (which as you pointed out is really fucking obvious), that any notion of debating which masks were most effective and in which contexts was interpreted as a way to delegitimize masks as whole. Edit: And really the lazy attempts to cast doubt on the effectiveness of masks should have been recognized as disingenuous. The idea that no masks work is easily dismissed because we've been testing and designing masks for all kinds of purposes for ages, so at best it is an argument for a higher class of mask, never no mask at all.

legitster 2y ago
I hear ya, I'm with ya on every single point. Except... I would stake my fortune that the difference between 70% effectiveness and 99% effectiveness in a monitored study is going to be reduced into a rounding error in the real world. There are so many factors to control for when it comes to how they get used, how good they fit, how much they trap moisture over a long day, how much their performance degrades, etc. For the purpose of preventing most incidental exposures, I would think that at the end of the day anything that prevents direct airflow is going to perform practically the same. In my case, I was exclusively using N95s when I caught Covid back in the day, and it was probably for a myriad of ways that I was using the mask wrong or making other bad choices. The mask itself being 99% effective probably didn't significantly change my odds when I had to wear it 14 hours a day.
- contravariant 2y ago
  Well there's also the issue of range, those 30% of particles might well have far less velocity. Which might be all that you need in a well ventilated area, or might be a meaningless difference in a busy room. Frankly I don't know, and I don't mind admitting I don't know. What worries me greatly though is that at some point saying you didn't know was misconstrued as an attack on ideology. I mean if I had to guess I'd go for something blocking 99% of the viruses at least 70% of the time over something blocking 70% of the particles at least 99% of the time. Of course it depends, but one of those works to some extent at least 70% of the time, while for the other it is unclear. But really it depends. If we're talking about umbrellas those two scenarios result in you getting roughly equally wet, yet if we're talking about bullet proof shields I'd take my chances with the shield stopping most bullets at least some of the time over the one stopping only 2 out of 3 bullets.

n8henrie 2y ago

Things seem "obvious" until the best available evidence doesn't support them. As a physician, I had a hard time understanding the ferocity with which some of my colleagues defended the "science" of masking when the Cochrane review(s) -- largely held to be the pinnacle of evidence-based-medicine -- were so underwhelming. I never had a problem with people arguing for them based on face validity (hehe), personal preference, that they "might" help, were "better than nothing," or any number of softer reasons. Don't get me wrong -- as a physician I wore an N95 every shift, because I believe that the odds that they might help were much greater than the odds that they might harm. (And because my hospital's N95s are much more comfortable for me than our surgical masks, and other trivial reasons.) But I had a hard time finding other physicians who were both steadfastly convinced of the incredible benefits of masking and also had taken any time to try to find or read the available literature on the topic. https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-physical-inter... > Medical or surgical masks > > Seven studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 3005 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported, but included discomfort. > > N95/P2 respirators > > Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (5 studies; 8407 people) or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well reported; discomfort was mentioned.

aredox 2y ago
The Cochrane review is underwhelming because it is mediocre[0]. And its main author is far from dispassionate: "The study's lead author, Tom Jefferson of the University of Oxford, promoted the misleading interpretation. When asked about different kinds of masks, including N95s, he declared, “Makes no difference—none of it.” In another interview, he called mask mandates scientifically baseless." When the main author is misleading about the conclusions of his own report, you have to wonder how good his work was. But if you want just arguments over data rather than doubting Jefferson on a personal basis, this paper[1] makes a compelling argument that the RCTs in the Cochrane review itself are good enough to make the argument masking works. GAVI has also a good answer to Cochrane[2]. [0] https://archive.ph/FlApv https://archive.ph/FlApv [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10484132/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10484132/ [2] https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/yes-masks-reduce-risk-spreading-covid-despite-review-saying-they-dont https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/yes-masks-reduce-risk-spre...

guilhas 2y ago

Since 2020, the internet comment pages are full of virus experts telling us how obvious things are UK NHS had regarded surgical masks to be ineffective for virus transmission prevention, after several studies, before the field politization in 2020 > They don't seem to have any problem accepting that a sneeze guard at a salad bar does something... We just find disgusting other people saliva/touching our food. So we didn't accept that before 2020, but maybe we do now > ...or that a surgeon should put something on their face to prevent them from coughing into your open body cavity No doctor/nurse would use any kind of mask at the hospital, 90% of the time, before 2020 So not obvious