Around a month ago Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said in an interview (paraphrased) "cloth masks are ineffective against the transmissibility of omicron".

(Edit: wrong person, here's video of what I'm remembering: https://mobile.twitter.com/townhallcom/status/14733056927149... ) (Anyway that was just intended as context for below, what I think may have been the starting point for a larger shift)

Thing is, the virus didn't change size, so right after this it's as if people started to realize the droplets-vs-aerosols mistake from 2020 that a minority have kept on since then, and what they've been saying for over a year is slowly becoming accepted:

Masks and social distancing were mandated under the assumption SARS-CoV-2 spread primarily through heavy droplets that would quickly fall to the ground, which were also large and heavy enough to easily be caught by masks. However, it turns out the primary spread vector is aerosol - too small for cloth masks to catch, light enough to quickly diffuse through a room, and light enough to easily slip around the sides of an unsealed mask.

A well-sealed N95 might work, but considering how bad even pro-mask people are at wearing cloth masks correctly, I don't think very many would manage to wear the N95 right.

No she didn't. She said cloth masks were the least effective type of mask. Here's the CDC guidance: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

And here's a quote not a "paraphrase": "What I will say is the best mask that you can wear is the one that you will wear and the one you can keep on all day long that you can tolerate in public indoor settings and tolerate where you need to wear it," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, told reporters this week. from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cdc-warns-loosely-woven-clot...

Ah yeah I got two interviews mixed up - here's video of what I'm remembering: https://mobile.twitter.com/townhallcom/status/14733056927149...

I'm no longer sure what point you're trying to make. She didn't say "masks don't work" either.

Masks absolutely work to prevent covid infection. Higher quality masks are much better than cloth ones, but any mask is better than no mask.

I added a note to my first comment, basically I think this triggered a realization in a lot of people how assumptions have been wrong from the start.

> said in an interview (paraphrased) "cloth masks are ineffective against the transmissibility of omicron".

That's a reallty dangerous thing to try and paraphrase - what did they actually say? Less effective? Have limited effectiveness? There's no evidence of any effect whatsoever? You have to be precise.

The CDC has repeatedly changed their standpoint on multiple measures in response to political influence. I put more trust in the WHO, who still recommend using masks. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

Also N95 have a limited effectiveness over time (e.g. you need to change it regularly).

This typically applies to surgical masks as well. The reason is that the fibers of the mask have an electrostatic charge. This charge helps the mask filter particles much better, but the charge will wane over time.

The official guidance on my P100 3M 2297 filters is to replace them when breathing becomes hard or the nuisance organic vapor protection isn't working as well as you'd like. Everything I've found concurs that the particulate filtration does not diminish with time/use.

AFAIK some filters are mechanical and others require the electrosatic charge to reach their stated performance. Half-masks or full face masks are typically of the former kind, while smaller masks of the latter kind.

The 2297 and 2097 filters (at least) are made with electrostatic media. The 2297 touts "Advanced Electret Media" for easier breathing.

Masks are effective against influenza. Swine flu + SARS-CoV2 can increase IFR up to 50x, i.e. we will have a "Spanish flu" level of epidemic again.

From the only randomised controlled study of masks... https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.long

  "The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with the rate of ILI statistically significantly higher in the cloth mask arm (relative risk (RR)=13.00, 95% CI 1.69 to 100.07) compared with the medical mask arm. Cloth masks also had significantly higher rates of ILI compared with the control arm. An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%

What type of masks do you see ~98‰ of people using? Here it is the cloth/fashion mask. The ones which, at the a beginning, had warnings about not being effective protection against covid.

Not OP. They work, but much more marginally and situationally than most people think. They're best thought of as a delaying factor in exposure, with cloth masks adding no or a few minutes and surgical masks adding somewhat more time. In many situations, this is irrelevant, because you're stuck with the group and the air for far longer than the mask differential affords. I'd say the optimal places for wearing masks are probably supermarkets, and maybe also communter transit. Can't find the damn paper now, and all information is false anyway.

If I'm not mistaken, these claims stem from studies modelling droplet diffusion, obviously no experiment could pass ethics for an actual infection exposure. I guess to each their own, but I am highly skeptical of the value of these kind of studies, also covid is aerosolized so why are we worrying about droplets again?

> covid is aerosolized so why are we worrying about droplets again?

Becasue we don't want sick people spitting all over the place when they talk, even when we aren't inhaling their breath.