Poll: Masks and Face Shields

[Wade]

Interesting...
So which it is?
1m = 3.281feet of six feet?
Amazing how the WHO and these "experts" can't find a level of consistency?
The WHO drops the ball yet once again...
No wonder people are not maintaining proper social distancing when the "experts" keep contradicting themselves...

[Bootstrap]

Interesting...
So which it is?
1m = 3.281feet of six feet?
Amazing how the WHO and these "experts" can't find a level of consistency?
The WHO drops the ball yet once again...
No wonder people are not maintaining proper social distancing when the "experts" keep contradicting themselves...

Nice catch - that's a problem. And particularly for exercise, which is like singing, you need a GREATER distance with all that breathing. I'm staying a lot further away than a meter. I won't use that image again - even with official sources, it's not always perfect.

Of course, some people aren't even interested in maintaining proper social distancing, and are being basically belligerent. And some people are intentionally undermining any sense that real expertise exists. So when behaving according to knowledge can really save lives, some people are doing their best to confuse the issue, flooding reliable information out with very questionable sources.

Suppose people did that for drunk driving or second hand smoke, insisting they can do whatever they want. It's pretty much the same kind of issue. As a community, we need to agree on some basic guidelines for how we keep each other safe. Belligerent individualism undermines the sense of being in this together and increases the risk for everyone.

[Josh]

Not wearing face coverings is not equivalent to drunk driving or second hand smoke.

[Bootstrap]

Not wearing face coverings is not equivalent to drunk driving or second hand smoke.

There's a pandemic. The medical community and the government are telling us that face masks save lives, protecting others if we get sick. If we get sick, we can infect other people before we develop symptoms. Those people might get very sick. They might die.

I have heard people question the experts on both second hand smoke and drunk driving. When I was growing up, the father of a family on our street regularly drove drunk, and insisted that he was a good driver even when he had been drinking. And somehow, he managed to avoid ever having an accident. Where I live now, my nextdoor neighbor would regularly put a 12-pack on the passenger seat of his pickup truck and go driving around, slowly. When he ran out of beer, he would buy more. I don't know if he ever had an accident, he died due to alcohol-related issues. Both of them insisted they were safe drivers.

Same thing with second hand smoke. In Europe or in the United States before we banned smoking in public places, people who smoked insisted that it wasn't endangering anyone. And of course, the tobacco lobby sponsored a whole lot of "scientific research" to prove it. Long after the science became clear.

I bet I could find resources on the internet that claim both drunk driving and second hand smoke are safe. I bet I could find people who sound like experts spouting that kind of nonsense.

And for some people, I think this is part of their basic attitude. "I know more than the experts. They don't know anything. I'm smarter than they are". For some people, trying to prove contrarian theories is an important part of who they are. When accurate knowledge is important for saving lives, that's a problem.

[Josh]

Boot, equating not wearing masks with driving drunk is not a way to win anybody to your side.

[Bootstrap]

Boot, equating not wearing masks with driving drunk is not a way to win anybody to your side.

In either case, the experts are telling you that someone else might be injured or die as a result of your decision. You seem to see these as significantly different - what do you see as the difference?

(Assuming, of course, that you are close to other people in a setting where spread is possible and that you are in an area where Covid-19 is spreading.)

[Josh]

Boot, equating not wearing masks with driving drunk is not a way to win anybody to your side.

In either case, the experts are telling you that someone else might be injured or die as a result of your decision. You seem to see these as significantly different - what do you see as the difference?

(Assuming, of course, that you are close to other people in a setting where spread is possible and that you are in an area where Covid-19 is spreading.)

There’s decades of experience for us to know drunk driving is harmful.

Six months ago, the experts told us not to wear masks. Conservative minded people do not change their mind just because (left wing) experts did so. If masks are proven to save lives (which so far they are not, in any meaningful sense of “prove”), conservative minded people will do differently. No meaningful medical study gets done in six months to the point you can prove anything.

There is significant harm to improper mask use, including people thinking they should work or go shopping when sick if they wear a mask (I just corrected someone for this yesterday); touching their face more often because of the mask; failing to wash the mask every day; taking off a mask which has been collecting germs (if you are contagious) and contaminating your hands and other surfaces. These are some of the reasons the CDC did not order mask wearing in January.

We also don’t know the long term health effects of restricting breathing, which is what any cloth mask that is remotely effective does, but we do know from occupational research on respirators that cloth masks all day aren’t a good idea. An N100 with replaceable filters is the best practice. I used to use these when I had a cabinet shop and used them for spraying. Not even an N95 offered enough protection, and would restrict breathing too much compared to a more sophisticated mask.

For some reason, this has become a political issue, and I’d love to see people like you quit treating it like one. I know you like facts and data - and there just isn’t a lot of data on masks doing much good. (There also isn’t for 6 feet of social distancing either; to make much of a difference a lot more distance is needed.)

You should stop and reflect that your opinion on this falls in with the current left wing political view, including demonising and dehumanising people who have legitimate objections to masks.

[silentreader]

Saw this on Facebook.

When I wear a mask in public:
-I want it to be known that I'm educated enough to know that I could be asymptomatic and still give the virus.
-No, I don't ′′ live in fear ′′ of the virus; I just want to be part of the solution, not the problem.
-I don't feel like the ′′ government is controlling me ". I feel like an adult contributing to society and I wish others would too.
-The world isn't about me. It's not just about me and my comfort.
-If we could all live thinking about others, the whole world would be a better place.
-Wearing a mask doesn't make me weak, scared, stupid or even ′′ controlled ". It makes me considerate.
-When you think about how you look, how uncomfortable it is or what other people think about you, imagine someone close - a child, a father, a mother, a grandfather, an aunt or uncle - wheezing to breathe, choking on a ventilator, alone, without any family allowed by their bedside.
-Ask yourself if at least you could have done it for them.

I do understand there are those who can not wear a mask for different reasons.

That's a really great summary.

On the science front: Someone recently asked "whom to trust". The answer is simple: trust groups of scientists who review the available evidence and come up with a consensus about what that evidence shows. Even if you were a scientist, that would generally be the answer. You can easily look up the current scientific consensus on a variety of sites. It does not take that much time. You can find links to the evidence and literature reviews if you want to go deeper. For instance, on face masks:

• CDC: CDC calls on Americans to wear masks to prevent COVID-19 spread JAMA editorial reviews latest science, while case study shows masks prevented COVID spread.
• CDC: Use of Cloth Face Coverings to Help Slow the Spread of COVID-19 Your cloth face covering may protect them. Their cloth face covering may protect you.

Choose summaries from sources that the scientific community trusts. Choose sources that people like Fauci and Birx recommend. If you spend your life watching every contrarian Youtube video instead, you probably have no idea what to believe or who to trust. And in a pandemic, that can cost lives.

Incidentally, I just found something on WHO that makes me feel better about not wearing a face mask and simply staying away from others when exercising:

Evidently the one worker infected the other, were they masked around each other?
Was the salon taking any other precautions than masking?
How effective were those precautions in preventing patron infection?
Of the major risk factors for infection: density of contacts, duration of contacts, proximity of contacts, force of exhalations, force of inhalations, how many would have been relevant in the salon setting?
Was anybody "puffing" during their interactions?
Is there a point where an infected person is no longer contagious?
What about the patrons who were not tested?

This report was dated July 14th, how soon should higher masking rates show a pronounced effect on the rates of new infections?

[Bootstrap]

You should stop and reflect that your opinion on this falls in with the current left wing political view,

And with the official positions of the Trump Administration, even though Trump himself is wildly inconsistent about what he says. On some days, I think this also agrees with what Trump says. An awful lot of extremely conservative people believe the science.

When it comes down to it, you seem to have a very hard time discussing this without political labels. I'm trying to keep political polarization out of it and focus on what reliable scientific resources are saying. The same ones that are trusted by the scientific experts in the Trump Administration.

including demonising and dehumanising people who have legitimate objections to masks.

I don't think so. I think I am encouraging people not to act in ways that endanger others, to follow the guidelines of the government, and to act for the good of the community.

We could be like those countries that are getting Covid-19 under control if we would behave like they do.

[Bootstrap]

Was anybody "puffing" during their interactions?

Is that a question about second hand smoke or about Covid-19? I don't know if they inhaled, either.

Evidently the one worker infected the other, were they masked around each other?
Was the salon taking any other precautions than masking?
How effective were those precautions in preventing patron infection?
Of the major risk factors for infection: density of contacts, duration of contacts, proximity of contacts, force of exhalations, force of inhalations, how many would have been relevant in the salon setting?
Was anybody "puffing" during their interactions?
Is there a point where an infected person is no longer contagious?
What about the patrons who were not tested?

This report was dated July 14th, how soon should higher masking rates show a pronounced effect on the rates of new infections?

I'm not sure that I follow all of your questions, but the level of information you are asking for can be found in the underlying JAMA article, which you can see here:

Universal Masking to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Transmission—The Time Is Now

For instance, I think these two quotes will answer the basic questions. For the hair salon, they tracked symptoms for two weeks after last contact:

Another report from investigators in Missouri found that adherence to universal masking for source control as mandated by city ordinance and company policy helped prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from 2 symptomatically infected stylists at a hair salon in Springfield, Missouri. Before they were diagnosed as having COVID-19, the hair stylists had served 139 clients but had been required to wear masks at all times while working with them. After public health contact tracing with the hair salon clients and after 2 weeks of follow-up, no symptoms of COVID-19 were identified among the exposed clients or their secondary contacts. Among 104 interviewed clients, 102 (98%) reported wearing face coverings for their entire appointment.13 In addition, another analysis published by Goldman Sachs Research suggests that expanding community masking by 15% could prevent the need to bring back stay-at-home orders that would otherwise cost an estimated 5% of gross domestic product, or a projected cost of $1 trillion.

Here are the underlying articles for the salon experience and the Goldman Sachs article estimating the effect on the economy:

MMWR: Absence of Apparent Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from Two Stylists After Exposure at a Hair Salon with a Universal Face Covering Policy

Face Masks and GDP

Here is a summary of the hospital findings:

In this issue of JAMA, Wang et al present evidence that universal masking of health care workers (HCWs) and patients can help reduce transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections.1 In the largest health care system in Massachusetts with more than 75 000 employees, in tandem with routine symptom screening and diagnostic testing of symptomatic HCWs for SARS-CoV-2 infection, leadership mandated a policy of universal masking for all HCWs as well as for all patients. The authors present data that prior to implementation of universal masking in late March 2020, new infections among HCWs with direct or indirect patient contact were increasing exponentially, from 0% to 21.3% (a mean increase of 1.16% per day). However, after the universal masking policy was in place, the proportion of symptomatic HCWs with positive test results steadily declined, from 14.7% to 11.5% (a mean decrease of 0.49% per day). Although not a randomized clinical trial, this study provides critically important data to emphasize that masking helps prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

The Wang article mentioned in that paragraph is here:

Association Between Universal Masking in a Health Care System and SARS-CoV-2 Positivity Among Health Care Workers