Each random person's picture of masks will be very different from what the next person is thinking.
And it's also very important to distinguish between the different meanings of viral transmission – of what virus, and according to what scientific results it's being talked about.
A lot of the friction comes from this.
In SARS-CoV-2 transmission specifically, I speak about it as airborne or aerosolized, based on all the papers that are out that confirm that now, and I when I say "masks" I tend to think of gaping surgical masks or better, and no, those don't work well enough.
However in the sense of the word masks as N95/FFP2 masks or better—often called respirators—then those masks are almost unreasonably effective at stopping transmission.
Here's the data I base my perspective on, in the nutshell form of some tweets from scientists, tweets linking to scientific papers. (Some are peer-reviewed, some at the preprint stage.)
https://twitter.com/JenniferKShea/status/1449748053548752903 — We've summarized the literature supporting airborne transmission of COVID-19 & several other respiratory pathogens. Guess what? #COVIDisAirborne
https://twitter.com/mjb302/status/1409628852867850240 — Important new research examining the real world impact better PPE has on workplace acquired infections of SARS-CoV2. — TL:DR - FFP3 respirators provide 100% protection to healthcare workers looking after patients infected with SARS-CoV2. 1/25
https://twitter.com/andymoz78/status/1441355141051936772 — A thread on our recent pre-print “The removal of airborne SARS-CoV-2 and other microbial bioaerosols by air filtration on COVID-19 surge units” (*Pre-print -not peer reviewed*) — TL:DR Hospital air is dirty, we can clean it
https://twitter.com/DFisman/status/1454776521818886145 — Remarkable new work from Korea shows the extraordinary impact of masks on SARS-2 transmission on public transit. — Parameterized based on *aerosol* simulator. (Because SARS-2 is airborne). Distancing helps, but less important (b/c SARS-2 = airborne).
https://twitter.com/caruzycki/status/1360635674324463616 — 2/ If this disease were only spread by droplets that fell to the ground within 2 metres, [plexiglass barriers] would be a perfectly fine solution to limit transmission. Unfortunately, we unequivocally know that aerosols are important with this disease.
People keep dismissing this, but respirators in hospitals are very different than respirators in the hands of the general public. Fit matters more than anything else, and hospitals have staff and procedures to ensure that PPE is used correctly.
This isn't a small or theoretical concern. Even a tiny gap negates the effect of the respirator, and people don't fit their respirators properly -- in large part because properly worn respirators are annoying and hard to tolerate for long periods of time. I regularly see people walking around with KN95 masks on their faces, with massive gaps around the nose and chin. These masks are pure viral theater.
(Also, not for nothing: two of the twitter links you cite are about respirators in hospitals. the other two are mechanistic studies, which are basically useless. Every failed intervention or drug in the history of medicine has a mountain of plausible mechanistic studies supporting it. Most things don't work, but everything we try has someone claiming that it's a sure-fire solution, based on a lab study.)
In hospitals, high importance is rightfully placed on correctly fitting N95/FFP2 and up – this is so that they function to spec and can be formally assumed to work like the specification indicates so they can be applied as a tool in general use by, well, by a population of staff.
This does not mean that respirators which are worn in a reasonable manner will ever be as poor filtration devices as gaping masks, especially not if the pathogen is airborne / aerosolized and operates almost purely as air flow, not droplets with mass and inertia to consider.
And COVID-19 is airborne and must be considered as airborne. There were five links, and the fifth is a collection of papers :) There is also a significant amount of detail and discussion and framing and context in adjacent tweets i all the links.
If you have any issues with my comment above which is based on clearly delineated and reasonable personal opinion and includes links to the scientific results it is based on, you have a duty to respond, not downvote.
At no point in any blog post did I see the blogger refer to themselves as conservative. Only cheering conservatives on a lot and blaming the left for a bunch of stuff (the only group the blogger said he has identified or belonged to)
You're engaged in tribalism: defining people as members of the other team because they disagree with you on one issue.
I am on the left, and agree with Prasad that the institutional left has done generational damage with its response to Covid, abandoned reason and equity and respect for science. If the "right" happens to agree with me, then that's fine.
(that might have an effect for 100 years?)
A 7 year old child is extremely malleable, and especially socially needs an incredible amount of input to develop as a person. What you do today to a 7 year old for (currently) 2 years has a massive effect later.
Not to mention, how do you think a 7 year olds parents are affected by lockdowns who they are locked up with? Alcoholism? Up. Drug abuse? Up. Domestic abuse? Up.
So again, where is the guy wrong?
Every one cares about children.
> I’m not sure what makes you right wing
The person consistently bashes the left and praises conservatives. I said that too. Not just school closures in isolation. What would you call someone who does that? Also I brought up the only association they do quickly make is saying they used to be progressive. Another common tactic taken by people who either never were and definitely aren’t now left of center at all. However they will keep leaning right without ever saying they lean right.
A number of political internet personalities in the intellectual dark web continue to do this ploy to varying degrees. Two less egregious examples are Stephen Pinker and Joe Rogan. Two more obviously slanted examples are the Pool and Rubin guy.
—
> Alcoholism? Up. Drug abuse? Up. Domestic abuse? Up.
I stated this in another comment. The status quo has never been good for children who were lower socioeconomically. All metrics: school funding, the amount learned, correlation between exam scores and going to university, all are unfair with our status quo.
Why is there suddenly this behavior of caring for all children as if mostly the right and maybe some centrists who want schools open are the ones who care about children. The blogger specially said the left is bad because they kept schools closed. As if the left doesn’t care about children as much.
All the issues you mentioned effect lower socioeconomic families more than any any other group of people. Where is the care for them when the war on drugs screwed stuff up for so long? It’s hard to believe these things are truly cared about when they have never been a focus for the vast majority of the country, both left and right, until the pandemic became insanely politicize and the right didn’t like the lockdowns.
We care because these things have gotten worse in lockdowns, proven by numbers. Just because something has existed before, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give a shit when it increases.
Especially if you’re supposedly left wing which I imagine you identify with.
“Poorer people always had more alcoholism and domestic abuse, so why do I care if it goes up if schools close”
That’s a ridiculous attitude.
Btw the whole point of politics and left and right should be that we discuss things and point things out to each other where they are going. Just because that guy to you is right wing doesn’t mean 100% of what he says is wrong. People both on left and right are right about certain things and certain times. That’s why we need debate and not polarization. You are dismissing OP for being right wing in your eyes, and dismissing everything he says.
Well maybe you can accuse him of exaggerating but it's true to an extent. In my (third world) country students have effectively missed two years of schooling, I know some primary students who don't know how to read/write very well.
Since pandemic I have lived in two places: one affluent and the other solidly middle class. Anecdotally, it didn’t seem like any of the children were close to harmed in a generational way. Society already screws over less affluent and colored students their entire lives. It’s interesting that only now the blogger and conservatives care about the well being of these kids’ educations. When otherwise the status quo does not benefit them.
0 the references I’ve seen that I remember are Hispanic and black parents not wanting their kids to go back to in person school.
https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk...
We really need to stop repeating the talking point that "everyone screwed up". The original evidence base was that masks don't do much to stop respiratory illness. "The science" changed in the span of a week in early 2020, based on little more than propaganda. No actual science was ever performed, and once we did some, we found out that the early evidence was pretty much correct.