https://news.expats.cz/health-medical/breaking-face-covering...
If so, is there something the "outsiders" are missing (e.g. some political bs between the two countries) ? Or is it just plain old theft ?
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-czech-...
Czech authorities during a customs raid last Tuesday mistakenly seized 101,600 facemasks gifted by a branch of the Red Cross in eastern China to a Chinese community in Italy. Although Czech officials apologized for the mix-up, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Sunday published a bogus article claiming the Czech state had “stolen” that shipment – and much more.
Czechs would send 110,000 facemasks to Italy on Monday (March 23), dispatched along with an evacuation bus of 43 Italian nationals heading home, as agreed with the Italian Embassy in Prague.
--- My comment is that our goverment officials or those policemans are probably stupid...
Or they thought "better safe than sorry", given that smugglers aren't stupid and you can't just believe it was sent by Red Cross just because the courier says so.
If anything, I'd ask why La Repubblica published a bogus article.
Seasons come and go, but click bait is eternal
The masks were sent to Italy within a few days.
Agree it sounded confrontational, but it probably wasn't.
The government even made an exception so the sewing supplies shops could open.
Sometimes, quite stylishly: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/president-slovakia-coronaviru...
But of course, you may not know that you're sick... so wear a mask.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
By using even a very rudimentary mask, the infected droplets have it much harder to get out to other people and to contaminate surfaces. Also you are less likely to touch your face, so less hand contamination & thus less surface contamination.
Of course this only works if everyone has a mask, but given how easy it is to make simple cloth masks I think this is a fully reasonable requirement.
I'd be surprised if that worked at all. At least one Chinese ecommerce website is preventing foreign IPs from even viewing item listings for masks. When you try to view the item from the search results, it gives you an error saying something like export is prohibited.
Also China has pretty much shut down air travel to the country to prevent "imported cases," so air freight capacity from is greatly reduced: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/world/asia/china-virus-tr...:
> The halt to almost all international passenger flights in and out of China will make it even harder for other countries to import N95 respirators, disposable surgical masks and other personal protection gear from China for their own doctors and nurses. About half the world’s airfreight typically moves in the bellies of passenger aircraft, while the rest travels aboard air freighters.
> Previous, large-scale cancellations of passenger air services to China have already created an acute shortage of air cargo capacity over the past two weeks.
Turns out we can just keep those passenger aircraft flying.
https://www.wired.com/story/airlines-use-empty-passenger-jet...
> But Monday afternoon, Delta said it’s putting an unspecified number of passenger jets back in the air, flying out of 13 American airports and to 70 destinations overseas. Delta’s not selling any tickets for those planes, however. Rather, they’ll be operated by Delta’s cargo arm, running charter flights to cater to anyone who needs to move a package or pallet.
For this reason our media seems to be under strict orders to de-emphasize masks and just talk about distancing and hand washing.
It is very regrettable that we have a completely incompetent federal government that did not stock up on masks even though they had plenty of warning but these are the facts. If we ever make enough masks so that all the health care workers are covered, then yes all civilians should wear masks. I am sure then the media will start talking about masks.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/8149292...
All in all, there is in my opinion no excuse to not to have everyone wear government provided masks, even though they don't offer complete protection. That would make it culturally the norm and hence many of the people who start coughing, but aren't sure do they have the virus, would at least have the mask covering their mouths to catch most of the escaping droplets. And also it would make it a little more difficult for everyone to rub their facial areas with their hands.
So it's sorta like "herd immunity": if everyone is wearing a mask to keep everyone else from catching whatever they might have, it makes it much harder for diseases to spread around and everyone benefits.
And N95 is a respirator, which is different from mask as it protects the wearer better from airborne particles?
https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1794572O/surgical-n95-vs...
Surgical masks: 1. keep the wearer from infecting the patient 2. keep fluid spray (e.g. bleeding) from getting in the face
N95 respirators are meant to protect the wearer from airborne particles, which surgical masks don't really do at all, since they don't form a seal and air and particles still go around the mask into the mouth. Many N95 masks have an ubobstructed one-way output valve for easier breathing that will not protect the patient from the wearer.
And as it mentions, surgical N95 masks (the blue respirators many medical professionals wear in news photos lately) do both.
* Edit: Another 3M brochure shows that many of their non-N95 masks are also tested for filtration efficiency, even though not certified by NIOSH.
http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/312703O/masks-and-respira...
Surgical masks mainly prevent droplets from entering your nose and mouth, and your breath/sneezes/coughs from affecting others.
There is no reason why Mask's supply problem could not be solved when you are looking at a comparatively speaking trillion of dollars package not to save the economy, but barely holding it up so it doesn't fall.
I am still baffled at the insistence that mask are useless, surgical or not. When there are ample of evidence to suggest it is the best tool to help and stop virus from spreading.
WHO currently says that healthcare professionals in non-AGP areas who aren't doing AGP should wear surgical mask, gloves, apron, and do a risk assessment for eye protection. All of that PPE is single use. This is the current practice in English NHS settings. See here: https://twitter.com/OutbreakJake/status/1242020875328684038
If aerosol generating procedures are happening the healthcare professional needs a fit-tested FFP3, gown, gloves, and eye protection. https://twitter.com/OutbreakJake/status/1242233685392396289?...
Surgical masks are fluid resistant, and this is an important part of their protective property. Home made cotton masks tend not to be fluid resistant.
Why would you buy safety critical equipment from China? There are good reasons those hospitals have such strict requirements.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/12/c_138870714.htm
> A joint law enforcement operation by government agencies including the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) was launched in early February, with over 80 million defective face masks and 370,000 other faulty PPE items seized, SAMR official Yang Hongcan told a press conference Thursday.
https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-25/los-test-rapidos-de-c...
(350,000 tests supposed to have 80% specificity but actually have something like 30%).
Hospitals have done this for decades.
1) Because that's where it's made
2) Because they're obviously a lot more competent at public health than we are. We don't know WTF we are doing.
No, for the most part they won't stop coming to work, for better or worse. My wife is an RN in charge of a critical unit caring for confirmed covid-19 patients. They were asked to reuse masks and gowns a week ago due to lack of supply. As far as I know none of them has refused to go to work, and she in particular will be on 4 12-hour shifts this week.
So while masks may have some effect, it hasn't been enough to give different graphs to Asian nations in general.
[1] https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...
Thailand looks straightforwardly exponential so far and has fairly heavy mask use, agreed. But Singapore, Taiwan, and arguably Malaysia seem too early to call: they're still plausibly on either of a European curve or South Korea's ramp-then-flatline.
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, and Burma all seem to be below the line for meaningful data. And Hong Kong isn't broken out. So I guess my questions are: do Indonesia and the Philipines have "mask cultures" to a level comparable to South Korea and Japan, and are their testing regimes wide enough to rely on those curves?
I don't know the answer to that. And I agree that the "masks work" graph/meme circulating is questionable. But unless I'm missing something/somewhere, this data just looks like "too soon to call"?
They do a good job collecting all the data but a seriously bad job visualising them.
Singapore resident here. Not enough people are wearing masks in Singapore, and the government has only distributed a token 4 masks per household (family members living at the same address), with no further measures to allow a family to replenish their mask supply.
A lot of us can't buy new ones at reasonable prices even if we want to.
The population is completely confused and feel righteous anger now telling people off when they wear professional (medical disposable, or ffp3/n95) masks to go shopping or elsewhere. It's insane.
They should've instead:
* Banned sales of masks to the public until healthcare and other essential workers had enough stock.
* Honestly conveyed the reasons for the above ban, in WWII-style "do your part" advertisements etc.
* Encouraged homemade cloth masks, bandannas, etc. to reduce the spread of droplets.
* Ramped up surgical mask production to get supply to the general public as soon as possible.
(another 1/3 don't care because the system doesn't affect them, until it does)
And I guess the opposing 1/3 just don't understand the difference between positive and negative rights?
Healthcare, as a matter of fact, does represent a collection of products and services, and access to those products and services represent a positive right because it requires somebody else to provide something for you.
It is only negative rights, those which define what other people can not do to you, that should be considered inalienable. The right to free spreech doesn't require somebody else to go to school for 20 years so that you can express yourself, they just aren't allowed to prevent you from doing so.
Intentionally or not, people like you confuse the issue by treating both positive and negative rights as the same, and actually do not seem to understand, or are avoiding acknowledgment of the fact, that treating a positive right as some kind of natural right carries the high potential that you will be demanding access to another human being's labor or resources against their will, and in America, 1/3 of use are against the enslavement of others.
And then in many Asian cultures it's considered a moral failure to not wear a mask in these times, yet hospitals function. This problem clearly isn't universal, or inherent in capitalist functioning.
It's propaganda. It is reasonable propaganda as having to have actual PSAs on how to sew your own masks or make them out of materials at home would really start ramping up the general anxiety.
But trust is hard to gain and easily lost. A real compounding factor in this crisis is also that our leaders have lost all credibility. In many, if not most, countries, the citizens just know that actions that were and are being taking are neither competent nor in their best interest. The specific implementations of democracy we implemented never selected for reason, precaution nor long term benefits or well-being for all.
So most of us have a political 'leadership' (and I do not mean a specific country or party, it's mostly across the board, with few exceptions) that has lost all credibility, trust and moral authority long before this happened, leaving the population already at best confused, but mostly mistrusting and (justifiably) cynical.
For scientists to go 'on message', telling obvious non-truths, just further undermines the already shaky ground they were on after decades of anti-science propaganda.
I really, really hoped they would refrain from this, but, judging by what is happening in my own country and what the science community is publicly communicating (privately it is a completely opposite discourse), I sadly must say that the opposite is true.
First there was the cult in Daegu, where believers are not allowed to cover their faces because apparently their god can't see through fabric. Mass infections also occurred in churches where people took off their masks to eat or sing together, or tried to "sanitize" one another's mouths with a folk remedy. A gym in Cheonan was responsible for the majority of cases in that province, and recently there was a small burst of cases in an insurance company call center in Seoul.
Meanwhile, the subway in Seoul is just as packed with people as always, but I haven't heard of a single case that was conclusively traced to the subway. Why? Everyone wears a mask when riding the subway and sanitize their hands afterward.
Masks have been so effective that the Korean government has even stopped publishing locations that were visited by infected people if they are known to have worn a mask while visiting them. Yes, they still track down each and every case outside of the Daegu area.
The closest thing to a comprehensive source about the distribution of infections in South Korea that I can find is [1], which still contains too much Korean-in-a-canvas that can't be automatically translated:
54.6% of cases are related to the Shincheonji cult
0.5+0.7+0.5% various other churches and religious groups
1.3% Daenam Hospital (almost all cases occurred in the psychiatric ward, as well as the attached funeral home where the Shincheonji cult leader held his brother's funeral)
1.2% related to gyms
1.2% related to the call center in Guro-gu
3.6% nursing homes
6.3% related to other mass infections (this includes other call centers, nursing homes, etc.)
11.3% contact with people infected from one of the other sources
3.3+0.6% infected overseas
14.9% other/unknown
Of course this doesn't say anything about masks. But you can clearly see that unlike in many other countries, ~70% of cases in Korea are concentrated in a handful of clearly delineated groups, with relatively little spillover into the general public. It takes a bit of familiarity with the religious landscape of Korea and the workplace culture to recognize that most of these groups are where people don't wear a mask. (As for nursing homes, the elderly often have difficulty breathing through a mask, not to mention they're together 24/7.)
Some people still got infected while wearing a mask, though, so it's not bulletproof. But it seems that the effect becomes visible as a kind of herd immunity when aggregated over a large population.
As for the government not publishing locations visited with a mask on, here's an example from my city's official Instagram account [2]. It says that the infected person's movements on some days are redacted because she wore a mask on those days (among other precautions) and therefore didn't make any epidemiologically significant contact with other people. You can compare this with other press releases by the same account that contain a lot more location data for other people.
“The masks don’t do anything” story was just something floated around to prevent runs on hospital supplies. A better strategy would’ve have been to say “everyone make and wear your own masks and it will afford us some additional amount of protection.”
"A T-shirt is 79% as effective as a surgical mask. So if someone is coughing next to you and you can't escape, breathe through your shirt sleeve. Any filtration is better than none."
[1] https://twitter.com/michaelzlin/status/1241052444798279680
> Other potential considerations being explored include:
> Limiting use of N95 masks to only procedures where respiratory secretions can be aerosolized, including intubation for PUI or COVID+ individuals. Use loop surgical masks for all other encounters. Read the latest guidelines on keeping the coronavirus from infecting health care workers.
> Limiting use of loop masks to only encounters with patients on droplet precautions such as PUI or COVID+ or other flu like illness investigations.
It sounds like their department has implemented this second recommendation. I feel like that's sub-optimal.
Wondering what the reasoning is for this?
Family member works in a similar dept at large hospital and they have stopped seeing patients.
The rejection of masks looks to me like a similar prioritization of law enforcement's preferences over public health.
But then you have Vietnam, also pervasive mask usage. Shares landborder with China which is leaky at best. They were also very proactive like the other countries but have a fraction of the resources. I don't think it's an answer for containment, many that cracked down early are seeing record case levels now, but I wonder if it's enough to reduce spread and severity.
But the rationale that made sense to me is that covid19 spread via respiratory particles, and mask reduce the viral load over time, which reduces risk of infection and severity since your body will have more time to recognize the infection and ramp up antibody production much earlier in the virus’s exponential growth cycle. Reduces R0 when ubiquitous. Maybe it spreads the curve and crushes it at the same time by reducing severe cases.
Seems like a cheap experiment short experiment to run honestly. Give one group of essential workers masks vs control. Test in 7 days and collage symptom severeness etc. Giving everyone surgical or home made masks is cheaper and less damaging than what's happening now. The HK SARS tsar who was also part of the Wuhan investigation team endorse public mask usage.
Advising people to not wear mask is the biggest disservice the American government (and the CDC) did to its people. Just asking people to cover their mouths with bandanas and scarfs would've helped a lot.
I shudder when I see reporters in a breakout zone reporting without masks on. Man.
Yesterday I was in a shop and saw 2 different people with a scarf over their mouth. You would think this is no problem, but they both had to keep this scarf up with their hands... . Seems like the most effective way to spread and receive germs.
Govermnent needs to be clear what the protocol is.
People misrepresenting this study are doing tremendous harm, it has to stop.
> medical masks, cloth masks or a control group (usual practice, which included mask wearing).
Yes, the cloth mask group had more infections than the medical mask group and the control group. But the control group included wearing masks as usual. It does NOT say cloth masks are less effective than nothing. "No mask" was not studied. Cloth masks might be less effective than wearing no mask (I personally doubt that), but this study didn't say anything about that hypothesis.
People misrepresenting this study are doing tremendous harm, it has to stop.
From where I stand, the countries that have a culture of wearing masks are doing better with regards to coronavirus. At the very least, it seems like a good hypothesis.
Do you have any evidence to back up you talk of masks?
(And if YOU are infected you should not be out anyway)
Edit: I was thinking of non-medical situations. @j7ake below, clearly pointed out they work in medical situations, something I was not contesting at all but did not make clear. The original post talked of "wearing masks in public" which was clearly not in medical situations and I was following through that.
The evidence very much shows that wearing masks can reduce community transmission rates of SARS-like viruses -- up to 70% even with just plain surgical masks[2]. And even if you don't buy that, everyone wearing a mask means that asymptomatic carriers (who have no idea they're sick) cannot spread it as effectively.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-... [2]: https://medium.com/@adrien.burch/whats-the-evidence-on-face-...
There's nothing noble about it. This is extremely short-sighted. What is easier to solve, shortage of masks, or shortage of ICU beds and medical personnel?
I would imagine that a face mask is a relatively low-tech good that can be mass-produced at scale. You cannot ramp up production of ICU beds and nurses and doctors. If this is true, then the consequences of this "noble" decision will make Chernobyl blush.
I am not. My point is that solving the problem of mask shortage by allowing the infection to spread at full speed is like setting your home on fire to deal with a clogged pipe.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Here's evidence and list of 34 science papers backing up the utility of masks in slowing down a viral epidemic:
Thread with charts, articles, link to paper summaries: https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1242894378441506816
ADDED: Just the list of papers & their brief summaries: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4p...
Does this link work for you?
https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/124289437844...
Happens I proxy through squid - it might have something to do with that. If I go direct (no proxy) it works. Interesting.
At least I can get to it, and will read your link this evening. Thank you.
The problem is that you can have COVID19 and be contagious without showing symptoms. Mandating everybody to wear some sort of mask should reduce transmissions because it should reduce the viral load in the air. By how much? It is not clear, but it's not worth waiting for results from a randomized double blind clinical trial during a global pandemic. I would put money that the effect of putting on a mask will be at least as effective as washing hands.
The danger to be careful of is if wearing mask can make you more sick, but the current actions from healthcare workers around the world suggests it is not the case.
Another point some people argue is that wearing a mask in public means one less mask for health care workers. This is false on two fronts, one because mask supplies will soon flood the market and there are DIY solutions to masks that can reduce transmissibility; two because what's best for health care workers is not to get sick at all.
You dont know for first ~5-6 days whether you are infected or not.
https://www.businessinsider.com/people-are-making-diy-face-m...
Don't worry too much about effectiveness of DIY face masks - in few months Respilon and other Czech companies will put on market face masks made from nanomaterials which filters virus much more effectively ;)
OK, I think that the mask over your own face is to prevent viral spread in largish water particles caused by coughs and sneezes, not general breathing (I'm not sure general breathing spreads much virus anyway, but I don't know).
So if you are infected and not showing symptoms ie. not coughing/sneezing then arguably the mask is not doing anything.
Arguably not, but we need more data - can anyone comment with sources?
It prevents you from touching your mouth and your nose and thus getting it on your hands.
There is an excellent video visualising the spreading of germs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5-dI74zxPg
How To See Germs Spread (Coronavirus) by Marc Tober
Maybe that convinces you.
People cough and sneeze all the time even if they're not sick.....
How do I know I'm not infected? There are a lot of asymptomatic carriers, that's the main problem.
A lot of people still think that no symptomps = not infected = no mask needed but that's totally wrong
If someone sneezes at you, even most simple mask will stop at least 50% of viruses. If someone was far away and only a small load reached you, that may be enough to keep you safe.
> (And if YOU are infected you should not be out anyway)
The big problem is to know when you're infected. Mask keeps others safe if you're not aware that you're infected.
Some reports say that you start distributing viruses pretty much immediately after getting it yourself. Even if all contacts (which is far from guaranteed) get traced and you get checked and/or isolated in a day or two, you'd be already spreading viruses for that timeframe.
Good point!
> If someone sneezes at you, even most simple mask will stop at least 50% of viruses
sounds plausible, but any reference for that figure?
FFP2 / N95 respirators - 90-something percent, medical "blue" masks - 80 percent, home-made piece-of-cloth style ~ 50%.
Wearing sunglasses is encouraged too. Both to stop the load if someone sneezes at you and discourage from touching your eyes.
Medical mask - 96,4%.
Home made mask - 60-96% (depends on cloth and sewing).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0080/6830/0851/products/6_...
https://www.123rf.com/photo_138981777_stock-vector-person-we...
https://phonetub.com/products/100-disposable-face-surgical-m...
The main problem with blue masks and home made is that they tend to get wet from breath and their effectiveness go down the drain.
Right. No one has ever studied contagions among the community at large and the effect of masks. When you hear people say there is no evidence, this is what they are referring.
"is not thought to be any more protective than not wearing one"
This is taking that claim too far, and is seldom what they're saying. Or rather never what they are saying.
Early on there were PDAs that discouraged masks because a) there is a weird social effect in much of the West where people get panicky, and somehow view someone else wearing a mask as increasing the odds, or at least the reality, that they instead will get sick, b) to discourage personal buyers competing with medical buyers, c) because the odds of coming into contact with a SARS-CoV-2 carrier was very low, whereas it's high to very high for medical professionals.
We need to discard with that bullshit. We know with overwhelming evidence that masks work -- that's why medical professionals wear them -- and even the lowly surgical mask has the same effectiveness blocking pathogens in as they do out, especially aerosol pathogens like this one.
And of course we know that people can be spreading this without symptoms, so it would be a massive win just for that.
As supplies normalize and manufacturers ramp up, we're quickly going to be at a place where most in the West will be wearing a mask of some fashion, and it will be officially encouraged. This whole weird anti-mask paranoia will have cost lives.
Masks aren't a panacea, of course, They should be properly worn and rotated. Add that they increase the effort the lungs have to exert, especially N95 masks, so in a unfortunate irony people with compromised lungs -- the most vulnerable to COVID-19 -- have the most difficulty using masks.
Definitely experienced the stigma of wearing one in public. Have had reactions ranging from stares to hurriedly moving away from me.
> We need to discard with that bullshit. We know with overwhelming evidence that masks work
To add, why else would NY ask older folks to wear masks when going outside?
Also, this NIH study adds to support that masks are effective.
People can be deeply illogical when it comes to personal protection. I did a summer stint during college with a factory, assembling some part of an air conditioner system for cars. This was done with huge, incredibly loud machines. Fiberglass. Etc.
The company offered ear plugs, eye protection and masks. No one used them. There was a 0% utilization rate. It was bizarre. I did, however, and earned snarky comments, critical suggestions, and lots of sideways glances. People really seemed to feel that my concern for myself made the threats more real.
I'd like to say that when I left everyone had followed the path I blazed, but it was the same as it always was. People still sabotaged their own health and hearing to avoid looking "paranoid".
I used to work as an intern at a shipbuilding company making aircraft carriers. People wore stuff when they were required to, so hard hats were always worn, and the attached earmuffs seemed to be generally worn when someone was working with something very loud.
However, at one point I was helping an inspection in a tank and there was a noxious odor, and I couldn't breathe in it. The shipyard worker with me went ahead and went in and did the test, but after this I tried to procure a respirator and they refused to get me one, saying it wasn't necessary for the work I was doing.
Music concerts are another place where you don't see people using personal protection much, though I will say that's changed in the last 10 years from what I've seen. I do see a minority (but a growing one) of people wearing earplugs, and we now have a lot of choices for "musician's earplugs" being sold which are designed to have a neutral frequency attenuation.
> why else would NY ask older folks to wear masks when going outside?
I don't know. Is there any evidence that significant proportion of experts are recommending this practice, and why BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I'M ASKING FOR.
It's been studied. There has not been a randomized controlled trial because performing one would be extremely unethical.
There is plenty of study evidence to support their use, just nothing meeting the gold standard of a RCT and there never will be one against a true live fire contagious disease.
The irony with all this is that the US administration really want to get people back to work as soon as possible. Massive deployment and mandatory usage would be the safest way to do that the soonest.
Too bad they already foreclosed that option by materially misleading the public.
Actually, they have[1,2]. According to one study, surgical masks helped cut down the community spread of SARS in Beijing by 70%[3]:
> Always wearing a mask when going out was associated with a 70% reduction in risk compared with never wearing a mask.
But if you're specifically referring to randomised trials on mask efficacy during an on-going pandemic, you're right that there are no such studies -- because it would be unethical. So effectively all of the relevant studies are retrospective (which does introduce recall bias), but these are basically the best studies we can do ethically.
[1]: https://medium.com/better-humans/whats-the-evidence-on-face-... [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6993921/ [3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322931/
Of course we know it works for them, because in your own words "coming into contact with a SARS-CoV-2 carrier was low, whereas it's high for medical professionals"
> We know with overwhelming evidence that masks work
Yes they do, for medical professionals. I'm referring to non-medical situations, and I guess I didn't make that clear. I'm trying to understand why... well, I explained in my first post. I'm not looking for opinions but for actual solid evidence. Which someone (not you) actually provided.
"Of course we know it works for them"
How does this anti-logic make any sense? Do you think the masks have a sensor that turns off the "works" bit if it's on the face of a medical professional or not?
This is bit like demanding to see research that gravity has an impact on alpacas. We know fundamentally how gravity has an effect on mass, so it follows. Just as we know the fundamental filtering ability, and contagion spread limiting, of masks, including even surgical masks. We know that the CDC is telling health workers that don't have masks to even use a bandana wrap, as not only does it stop face contact it has some limited utility in stopping the tiny droplets of liquid that are one of SARS-CoV-2's vectors.
Unless that situation changes, masks are a good alternative. And yes, only if everybody wears them.
Given we know there are people with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic, any "Healthy people have no use for a mask" can simultaneously be true, and be practically irrelevant, as any definition of "healthy people" is necessarily impossible to prove. You simply can not know you are free of Corona Virus, short of having recovered from the virus.
If the standard was EVERYONE wears a mask, asymptomatic people would be a non-issue. Any advice contrary to the 100% mask usage argument has to explain how we deal with asymptomatic people. Short of testing everyone all the time, what would that even be?
TL;DR In a world with asymptomatic COVID-19 people, a 100% mask policy seems the sane default position.
What you say (and others too) makes sense to me and I could well believe it true, but I'm NOT claiming that masks are useless unless you are infected, I'M ASKING IF ANYBODY KNOWS WHY EXPERTS ARE SAYING OTHERWISE (or whether I just heard an unluckily skewed sample)
Plus, I also asked for a citation to back up the poster's position, not common-sense arguments (which are a good starting point but not evidence in themselves).
The official position for many countries that are containing the virus suggests wearing a mask when out in public. One notable exception is Singapore.
Here is the Korean society of infection FAQ that says wearing a mask can reduce transmission:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ko&tl=en&u=http%3A...
Oh, and you want citations, sorry, my bad:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOBX4p... - 30 some citations on masks.
See my reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22701821 Mind, I just don't know if what I'm saying there holds water.
Citations are good, following up!
However, if healthy people aren't wearing the masks, and only the unhealthy are, then the unhealthy don't want to signal they are unhealthy so they don't either. A huge part of getting the infected to wear masks is to get the healthy to wear masks so the infected don't put a huge label on themselves that indicates: "diseased", "corrupted", "infectious", "frail", "unclean" etc.
Logic says one thing, but people are not logical like machines.
And where did OP mention anything about masks protecting the carrier from infection?
The point you're missing there is that some people are asymptomatic. They don't know they're infected.
The cost of the epidemic now goes into the trillions, self-made cotton masks are cheap compared to the economic damage. They can be disinfected in boiling water and if everybody uses them they will help to stop the spreading of the virus.
In all the countries mentioned in the article people wear masks when in public, often just against pollution (i.e. Thailand).
The moment we open our mouth we spread germs, even more so when we speak. And when we touch our nose or mouth, we have them on our hands.
Thus entering a supermarket without a mask and without first disinfecting the hands should be forbidden.
Social distancing is one thing, stopping the virus at the source is another and seemingly very effective measure.