What's the evidence again that universal masking compliance works and is necessary? It seems that some jurisdictions like California (or, hell, Wyoming, way lower than any country in Asia) have had very low transmission rates without it.

California had early, aggressive social distancing orders and large parts of California had/have manditory mask orders in place.

Bay area: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/22/coronavirus-bay-area-...

San Diego: https://www.10news.com/news/coronavirus/what-to-know-about-t...

Los Angeles: https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/05/14/coronavirus-covid...

Mandatory masks orders for enclosed spaces, but not for outdoors, which is presumably what is meant by "universal".

Nope, also outdoor. If you're queuing up for e.g. shopping, you must distance and wear a mask.

From the first article I linked: "Are you leaving the house? Facial coverings are required to be worn by anyone older than 12 while waiting in line or inside any essential business, using public transit, riding in a taxi/Lyft/Uber or seeking healthcare, as well as anytime you come within 6 feet of someone from outside your household."

Exactly. if you're outdoor and 6 feet away from people (walking in the park, etc) you don't need a facial covering.

California also has a large proportion of East Asians, where mask-wearing is common, especially when you might have a cold, so that you don't spread it to the next person. Epidemiology is culture-bound. By now everyone knows that the incubation period for coronaplague is long and that pre-symptomatic people are a significant source of spread. It's not a long leap for an East Asian person to think that they might carry the disease without knowing and want to minimize spreading it.

This kind of speculation is cryptically racist. My observations are anecdotal, but walking around in public areas such as parks where mask wearing is asked for I see east Asians ignoring the requests as much as non east Asians (I'm of east asian extraction myself)

This is still a very us centric view. California isn't low compared to Asian countries. But all California shows is that you can achieve low transmission rates with lockdowns done early enough. But of course lockdowns are not sustainable. It's really odd to bring up Wyoming. Any rural area can potentially avoid outbreaks. South Dakota has outbreaks now though.

I remember when the first "we suggest wearing a mask" came out. It was followed with a worry about masks becoming a bigger deal than they should. I remember hearing over and over during the same meeting that masks were not a replacement for keeping a 6' distance between people. Now it seems the whole country is Mask vs No-Mask when the actual experts suggest it's the 6' distance that really counts. Masks were just as an additional precaution and not meant to be front and center.

Meanwhile, in other countries where they actually want to get their economies going, people simply wear masks, because they're an added layer of protection, cheap, easy, and current evidence is that they do help contain the spread of the disease.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/04/04/czech-gove...

Sure, the US isn't as advanced or well-run as... the Czech republic, but we should at least try and aim for what those kinds of countries can accomplish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICc_H75R05A

yes they do help some but they're not the end all be all of protection which was my point. Wearing a mask or not wearing a mask has become a much bigger deal than it should be. People are protesting over a mask and people are social shaming over a mask, it's not that important. Maintaining distance and washing your hands is much much more important than a mask.

I think a 'defense in depth' strategy is what masks are part of, and since wearing them is fine for 99% of healthy adults... why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_(computing)

They're a bit uncomfortable, but so are ventilators...

Unless you believe we should wait for a vaccine, we don't need "the end all be all of protection", we only need adequate protocols to stop the spread of the virus from overwhelming healthcare systems. If we can find low impact ways (washing hands, wearing masks) that are effective enough to allow us to curtail physical distancing, that is hugely advantageous.

Testing and tracing has already been tried and shown to be more or less impossible in dense cities with no immunity. It’s not for lack of trying that many cities failed to contain the outbreak in February. Granted, it’s a lot simpler when people are aware, but it’s still likely that cities will fail again as soon as people move about normally.

I suspect a reasonable middle ground strategy is to aim for just some immunity (say 15% or 25%) while not overwhelming healthcare, after which tracing and isolation has a chance of working while also allowing a somewhat functioning society (Note: I mean for dense cities. This could still mean 5% in a country, as in Spain for example). The hard part is ensuring that as few as possible of those that are infected are in risk groups. This is something that proved difficult in many places.

There is a set of restrictions that allows the aggressive testing/tracing/isolation work for a naive population, and a different set of restrictions that is sufficient for to contain the spread in a population with 20% immunity. My feeling is that the former set of restrictions isn’t viable in democratic countries, or sustainable for the time we are talking about (1-2 years) without leading to something that costs more than is won.

South Korea has fewer cases - and deaths - than Iowa.

I mean, I know Iowa is a really dense place where everyone uses public transportation, but maybe they could at least make an effort...

I think random comparisons are pretty much completely lacking in information. Fewer died in country X than country Y doesn't mean policy is better. Nor does "they have fewer cases", or "they have fewer deaths". A tiny outbreak will yield few dead regardless of policy. Not all small outbreaks necessarily become large outbreaks, despite poor policy (why, we don't know yet). What would impress me is a region that with sustainable and accepted policies contain an outbreak in a population with very low immunity. Or a region that can reach a high level of immunity without the disease reaching vulnerable groups.

South Korea's initial outbreak was fairly large, if I recall correctly, as it was connected with a church.

This isn't some small, statistically insignificant difference. It's a massive difference in the number of cases and deaths.

300 dead is a pretty small outbreak by today’s standards I’d say. It was the second largest after Wuhan for a short while.

They have 300 deaths and 10k confirmed cases, suggesting they have confirmed 10% to a third of all cases.

It’s also impressive that they managed to keep the outbreak so small without extreme mitigations like other places with similar outbreaks.

I don’t think that most western countries can emulate it though. Next time, perhaps (this is South Korea’s second SARS outbreak).

> I don’t think that most western countries can emulate it though

They certainly can't if they don't even... try.

The "gold standard" idea is not what is actually happening. Look at the various European countries that have opened up. There are as many different sets of protocols as there are nations, and only a few might qualify as the gold standard. So there is at least a third camp between "aggressive and complacent", and that is where the vast majority of nations and US states currently fall.

Exactly.

Given the terrible situation in Brazil (and Mexico), is it not possible that the whole of the Americas could be cordoned off, while Europe and East Asia continue with efforts to suppress the virus?