What's telling is that in your original post, you stated: > Why did it take months for the government to be recommending face masks?"

But all of these links you posted are dated after the April 3 recommendation by the CDC for the public to wear masks. https://www.livescience.com/cdc-recommends-face-masks-corona...

"Based on the best evidence available at the time, it was not deemed that that would have a significant impact on whether or not a healthy person wearing a mask would contract COVID-19," Adams said."

There's not a single western industrialized nation or state that can be pointed to now as a mask success story. There were a few countries in eastern europe (specifically czechia) that were heralded as a primary reason for controlling covid in the spring.

We now know that this apparent good result was not because of masks, but because of geography. Czechia is ranked #1 in the world in cases / million in the last week and #3 in deaths / million (and its numbers are still climbing). Every single eastern european nation had low cases/deaths in the spring and now all of them are having their first large surge.

It's abundantly clear that cloth masks, as a whole, do not play a major role in how the virus spreads in a country.

Thank you for this. I knew 93% of Americans support masks and we're about to enter a third wave in America.

I didn't realize masks were that ineffective in other countries as well.

Opinion pieces? The first link is a study that measured the amount of droplets that each mask type blocks using optical equipment.

If you actually looked at each of the other links, you'd noticed that they were all valid.

I just picked the first one as an example of how seriously we should take your words at.

Now you start going on a tangent with meta-analysis of statistical data, comparing Sweden with America with no appreciation of the difference in the culture, lifestyle and handling of the coronavirus and then attribute their relatively good performance just to the lack of a mask mandate?

Give me a break, man.

You are going to have to go way back in the medical literature to find many peer reviewed studies on masks.

For the same reason it might be hard to find recent studies proving that blood letting is not efficacious.

It's basic physics and statistics. A germ of a certain size can only fit through a certain size whole. Masks of any type will reduce the number of particles and thus reduce your chances of contracting. Same goes for your statistical likely hood of spreading to others.

Like I just said it's clear that masks stop particles. That part is obvious.

What's not clear is if applying a plague vector directly on your face with a virus that remains active on surfaces for days is efficacious.

Is it efficacious at the community level?

It's basic epidemiology. You could be more pro-science and consider these things.

Here's a study from the original SARS epidemic showing that people who had known contact with infected people there was a 70% lower chance of infection when they wore masks[1]. At this point, arguing that masks don't work is absolutely taking the piss -- you only need to look at countries like Japan (which made the political decision to not do widespread lockdowns unlike many other countries in Asia) to see that widespread mask usage clearly works.

> Supporting the validity of this finding, there was a dose-response effect: by multivariable analysis, persons who always wore masks had a 70% lower risk of being diagnosed with clinical SARS compared with those who never wore masks, and persons with intermittent mask use had a 60% lower risk. Many persons who wore masks in the community did not use N-95 or similar highly efficient filtration devices, which have been recommended for use in the hospital setting.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322931/

Did you read that study? Or did you just read the first paragraph summary? I'm seriously asking. Because if you read that study...which is a SURVEY of 100 or so people.. you would clearly not be using that as your bulletproof evidence that masks work.

Did you just read the title?

"""At this point, arguing that masks don't work is absolutely taking the piss""'

Fanatical beliefs with no evidence?

Is Corona a cult?

I look at countries like Sweden and Norway and know that masks mandates don't work.