I dare to ask the question how wearing a mask carries critical risk vs wearing no mask.

Again, if you read the advice ...

"However, the following potential risks should be carefully taken into account in any decision-making process:

• self-contamination that can occur by touching and reusing contaminated mask • depending on type of mask used, potential breathing difficulties • false sense of security, leading to potentially less adherence to other preventive measures such as physical distancing and hand hygiene • diversion of mask supplies and consequent shortage of mask for health care workers • diversion of resources from effective public health measures, such as hand hygiene"

This advice seems to be directed at wearing masks to prevent oneself from becoming infected, but that ain't the point of having as many people as possible wear masks while out and about; rather, it's that you can be infectious without ever knowing it (i.e. you're asymptomatic) and wearing a mask (and gloves if you've got 'em) helps significantly mitigate the risk of you spreading it to people around you. That the WHO would advise against the widespread wearing of masks goes to show how behind-the-curve they continue to be throughout this pandemic; this has been widely recommended by pretty much every other authority for weeks now.

Also, "diversion of mask supplies" is a ridiculous excuse. Even an improvised mask (bandana, something handmade, etc.) is better than nothing at all. And if you already have full-blown N95s, might as well use 'em, taking steps¹ to sterilize them and maximize their reusability (I have two N95s, one previously used long before the COVID-19 outbreak, and one new one from my grandpa who found a box of 'em with his tools; I cycle between them, giving each at least 72 hours between uses per the rule of thumb that SARS-CoV-2 won't survive longer than that on an N95 mask, and if I ever need to reuse one sooner I'm content with sacrificing my oven for decontamination purposes. I also have some work gloves that I similarly cycle through, but I also recognize that these ain't designed to resist much contamination so I still take care to avoid needlessly touching things.).

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¹: https://www.msn.com/en-xl/lifestyle/coronavirus/how-to-clean...

Three of those points can be addressed by proper education by the authorities. And last two points have nothing to do with risks of wearing a mask and more to do with how authorities in a country are addressing the situation.

It's pretty easy to find official answers to that question. This is from the bccdc.ca website:

> Masks may give a person a false sense of security and are likely to increase the number of times a person will touch their own face (e.g., to adjust the mask).

http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/covid-19...

This argument makes about as much sense as saying seatbelts may give a false sense of security and cause people to drive recklessly. The WHOs mask advice is all outdated and from the perspective of stopping people from trying to catch the virus, whereas in Asia masks are worn to stop spreading your own virus. It's total crap that we can't question WHOs advice here - especially when they've been so behind the curve in other areas - when it could save lives.

I don't know who you're arguing with. I was simply responding to the parent's statement "I dare to ask the question", as if the contra arguments were some sort of mystery, or that they didn't exist, when pretty much any official site I've seen offers that information.

I didn't make any statement about whether I thought non-medical masks were a good idea for everyone to wear or not...

And I think it makes sense to be doubtful about this. It’s as if you’re saying wearing a helmet gives you a false sense of security. Wearing a mask may give some people a false sense of security. But at the end of the day the question is if mask-wearing populations have less infections than non-mask wearing populations.

Yeah, I just don't understand how in a thread of such important stuff, this comment that's so low-hanging, so based on a non-issue is the top, with dozens of responses to it. It's really bordering on the conspiratorial, it's a bummer to see HN embracing that.

It doesn't really make sense. You've got generic advice and then laws, WHO's statement was not in any way a contradiction of the law and it's grade school logic to see that. What's up HN?

If HN has trouble with it though, Google is not going to do much better. They are not known for having a masterful grasp of subtleties. Examples? Look at the abysmal quality of their translations, their repetitive and off target ad personalization, their weak and spotty voicemail transcriptions that miss even the name of the caller when it’s in the address book with the number, their dead or dying OSS hosting, their (lack of) care for their own products, their clunky bloat-feel mobile apps, their spam filters that even send Google Alerts to the spam box, their no fucks given customer service, their takedowns... Even their search results which have not seen any innovation for the last decade as far as I can tell. (I mean you can’t filter out or coalesce useless bad copies of stack overflow posts from site scraping copycat sites that appear alongside the original SO search hit? Really? That’s too hard for you, Google?) I don’t think they are any more capable of parsing WHO statements then a crowd of HN posters. Probably worse.

Not a huge Google fan, I've gotten downvoted more times than you can count for criticizing them, but the thread we're talking about isn't genuine criticism, it's a twisting of something easily explainable into something it isn't, which detracts from the conversation.

I agree, if techies at the heart of this can't discusses this rationally, then those that don't do this for a living are going to struggle to, which is why there should be a higher standard for discussion.

hN is heavily moderatded.

You'll never see my comment.

Essentially free and open discussion is impossible here.

I think there's just a pretty narrow range of opinions that you're allowed to express or the regulars that have invested so much time getting karma will make sure you aren't heard.

That does stifle discussion. I dunno if HN users realize how many people just refuse to touch the site because of these dynamics.

But this, I dunno what it's about. There's a really important issue here, and it's not "WHO said you only need a mask while caretaking and local laws say you need to wear a mask ergo contradiction/we're failing the children" ain't it. HN's too smart for takes like that, I don't get it.