1042 replies to this topic

[Sartac]

Like most things, masks aren't a black or white, good or bad, precaution for COVID or other viruses. 

 

Without reading this entire thread, the common arguments by "anti-maskers" are that virus particles are too small to be caught in even medical grade masks.  That's only partially true, since most airborne pathogens are suspended in droplets, which medical masks catch.  There are papers to support this, e.g. example.

 

"Maskers" may think that any mask is better than none, or that mask mandates are effective measures, and that's also only partially true.  Without being part of a total sanitary protocol, even good quality, medical grade masks can be problematic for some.  The lax standard for masks, especially when mandated, can give people a false sense of security when not wearing medical grade masks and following other sanitary procedures.

 

Those extreme labels are fairly useless for many people, who want practical solutions applied effectively.

 

Basic summary:

 

1. Medical grade masks help, especially N95, when used as part of a larger sanitary protocol.

2. Masks have disadvantages for some, especially the young while developing socially. 

3. Other caveats as described above

 

When choosing masks, 3M N95 are a good bet.  Copies like KN95 can be spotty in quality.  Personally, I'm over all the masking when feeling well, having had COVID (caught from a "vaccinated" friend) and natural immunity now.  In the unlikely event that I get sick again, I'll be following strict protocols and masking if I have to be around others, which will certainly be avoided.

 

Will have to see if I've posted here, since this is a bit "deja vu".  Then again, we've been rehashing this same crap for years now.

[Mind]

Another negative issue regarding masking is less recognized - which is that they create a culture of fear - which is bad for overall health.

 

Even the mask realists would wear them if there was a truly deadly virus moving around the globe. Although with a high kill rate virus, the effects of masking and lockdowns would not really be an issue as the breakdown of society would happen anyway. Destroying society over COVID was always a bad policy, considering the IFR is a small fraction of 1%.

 

The true focus should be on more sophisticated treatments, which is a subject of a different discussion.

[Daniel Cooper]

To say there was no effort to quell fear on the part of public officials is an understatement.  Remember the surfer in California that was arrested for being out in public (off shore in the surf on a deserted beach) without a mask?  That guy probably was at as little risk of spreading covid as anyone in the country at that moment. I remember watching people walking/jogging outside with no one around for 100 yards masked up. And everyone remembers sitting at a stop light, looking over at the car next to you and seeing a lone occupant wearing a mask.

 

These are the sorts of scenes you get when there is no effort to put relative risks into perspective. In fact, just the opposite. The zeitgeist perpetuated by the government and the media was "Be afraid ... be very afraid".

 

Covid was a somewhat dangerous virus. To some people it still is (though less so). Particularly if you had certain comorbitities. But it wasn't Ebola. It wasn't smallpox. It was never a death sentence in general.

 

I knew people that died. Some of them were close. Covid was a virus to be respected, particularly in the early days. But it should have never generated the level of hysteria that it did.  Fear seemed to have been actively stoked in certain quarters.

 

 

[Mind]

The retracted "Masks Work" study, is very important in this discussion and for possible future pandemics.

 

It was retracted because - over time - most people in the study ended up getting COVID, masks or not. It was a weak observational study in the first place which could not account for confounding variables, but at least the authors had integrity and retracted it after seeing the trend in infections over time.

 

What does this tell us? The same thing that has been brought up over and over in this discussion - you can't wear a hazmat suit for the rest of your life. Even if the government had the capability to hand out hazmat suits to the entire population, people still have to eat, drink, sleep, wash, etc. not to mention that it is healthy for social beings such as humans to be in contact with each other and communicate in a natural way.

 

If there was a major deadly virus that was specific to humans (not COVID which has multiple animal reservoirs), and the spread needed to be stopped, what would probably work better is local or regional quarantines. Supplies could be sent into the quarantine area to help keep people alive as best as possible. In reality though, this would also be tough to do because of the highly integrated and mobile nature of human society and trade around the world.

 

Which brings me back to treatments. We need new thinking about how to boost immune function and new strategies to disarm and lessen the negative aspects of viral diseases. Masks and isolation were a failure during COVID and will be in the future as well.

[geo12the]

Interesting perspective: 

 

Once and for all: Masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID

[Daniel Cooper]

Interesting perspective: 

 

Once and for all: Masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID

 

Just noting that this is an opinion piece. The "once and for all" aspect of it is in the author's opinion. So let's be clear - there is nothing definitive about this article. 

 

In my opinion, the efficacy of masking has been and remains murky and implies a small but slightly positive benefit. 

 

As I've noted before - in interventions that really work you generally get a strong positive signal and you don't have to sit and stare at the tea leaves indefinitely to try to figure out what is going on. You don't get this study that shows a benefit and then that study that does not. For instance, when penicillin became available there really was no debate that it worked. There were no conflicting studies on whether penicillin was highly effective against Staphylococcus. There was no controversy and no one disputed the evidence. It worked.

 

With masking there has been a long history of conflicting studies on how well they worked long before the covid-19 pandemic.

 

This implies that whatever effect masks have, the effect is not enormous at least in the context of masks as they actually end up being worn in the real world.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 20 February 2023 - 06:21 AM.

[Mind]

Interesting perspective: 

 

Once and for all: Masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID

 

This author's opinion is that masking "works" as a pandemic response, which is in opposition to almost all of the known science before, during, and after the media-created COVID panic. Over time, everyone will get respiratory viruses with 100% certainty.

 

The people who cling to this failed pandemic response are a barrier to scientific progress. We should be working on better treatments.

 

Meanwhile, our awful leaders continue to NOT wear masks in situations where other people are forced to wear masks. This elitist mask theatre has been prevalent throughout the media-created COVID panic.

[Danail Bulgaria]

... Over time, everyone will get respiratory viruses with 100% certainty.

...

 

I didn't get COVID19 

 

After each respiratory virus there are people, who didn't get it. 

[Daniel Cooper]

I didn't get COVID19 

 

After each respiratory virus there are people, who didn't get it. 

 

Yeah, there will be outliers that manage to avoid it.

 

But, keep in mind that there are a decent number of people that will get infected with SARS-CoV-2 that will never show symptoms and will never know they have been infected.  For about 18 months we had to do weekly covid tests where I worked. Over that time period we had a number of people that showed positive on multiple quick tests and either never showed any symptoms at all or their symptoms were so incredibly mild that they never suspected they had covid. And this was at a facility that had less than 100 employees.

 

And there are some people who have such robust innate immunity that they will be exposed to the virus but their immune system is so reactive against it that it will never take hold enough to even show positive on a test.

 

In the limit it will be a very low percentage that will have managed to avoid exposure and infection completely, but there will be a decent size pool of people that have actually been infected but were never aware of it. You might even be one of them.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 21 February 2023 - 12:55 AM.

[Danail Bulgaria]

... a decent number of people that will get infected with SARS-CoV-2 that will never show symptoms and will never know they have been infected. 

... And there are some people who have such robust innate immunity that they will be exposed to the virus but their immune system is so reactive against it that it will never take hold enough to even show positive on a test.

....there will be a decent size pool of people that have actually been infected but were never aware of it. You might even be one of them.

 

I work in a hopsital. The very first tests that I was forced to make were blood tests with immunoglobulins, showing non-speciphic viral infection. That I had to do before the PCR and before the antigen tests for COVID19 were even invented. 

Later on, I was forced to make a PCR.

When the antigen tests appeared on the market, I was one of the first people, who took them. I remember that my girlfriend found a way to buy them from China through AliExpress, before the antigen tests officialy started to be sold in my country. 

There was a period when I go to work I had to be measured a temperature with a non contact thermometer. 

After that I was forced to have a green certificate in order to work, e.g. I had either to vaccinate, or to make an antigene test before going to work. I made at least 20 (very at least 20). 

 

Everything was negative. 

 

You tell me from which group was I. 

[Daniel Cooper]

I work in a hopsital. The very first tests that I was forced to make were blood tests with immunoglobulins, showing non-speciphic viral infection. That I had to do before the PCR and before the antigen tests for COVID19 were even invented. 
Later on, I was forced to make a PCR.
When the antigen tests appeared on the market, I was one of the first people, who took them. I remember that my girlfriend found a way to buy them from China through AliExpress, before the antigen tests officialy started to be sold in my country. 
There was a period when I go to work I had to be measured a temperature with a non contact thermometer. 
After that I was forced to have a green certificate in order to work, e.g. I had either to vaccinate, or to make an antigene test before going to work. I made at least 20 (very at least 20). 
 
Everything was negative. 
 
You tell me from which group was I.

 
Obviously more likely to have never been infected. But surely you know of people that tested positive in your hospital that had no overt symptoms?
 
Are you guys still doing regular tests? Most hospitals and other facilities around here discontinued such testing early Q1 last year.
 
And the point still remains - a significant percentage of covid infections may have no symptoms (40% according to that study - and that before the milder omicron variants hit the scene).

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 21 February 2023 - 02:08 AM.

[Danail Bulgaria]

Yes, there were such, asymptomatic positive tests. 

 

No. No longer forces us now to do tests. But the period was not very pleasent. 

 

[Daniel Cooper]

Yes, there were such, asymptomatic positive tests. 

 

No. No longer forces us now to do tests. But the period was not very pleasent. 

 

Then you might have contracted it after your periodic testing was halted. Who knows but a possibility. That link I added above says 40% of infections may be asymptomatic. 

 

I'm agreeing with you that when the dust settles there will be some people that were never infected. But there will almost certainly be more people that were infected and don't know it.

[Danail Bulgaria]

After the obligate testings ended, I have done some, much less than during the COVID hysteria, but again until now everything is negative so far. 

[Daniel Cooper]

I will agree with Mind that in the long run everybody (as in so close to 100% as to practically be the same thing) will get this virus. You might not have had it yet, but unless you die in the near future - "the night is still young" as they say. Give it time.
 
This virus is converging to yet another coronavirus that causes symptoms that we collectively call "a cold". It's not there yet but that's were it's headed. About a third of all common colds are caused by a small group of coronaviruses that at one point were zoonotic viruses that jumped into man (though this one might have gotten an assist in that from the WIV). It's happened before and it will happen again in the future. The last time this occurred with a coronavirus might have been the 1889 Russian Flu which was roughly about as deadly as covid-19. If so the descendant of that virus still circulates and we all have almost certainly had it.
 
So to say that not everyone will get this virus is like saying "not everyone will get a cold". I suppose that's true. In a planet of 8 billion people I'm sure that there are some people that live their whole life without getting a cold. But they've got to be the rare exception.

[Danail Bulgaria]

When my first positive test arrives, I will certainly write you that you have been correct.

 

Until then, your theory, no matter how plausable, is still a theory.

 

[Mind]

Now the NYT (on the wrong side of science for almost the entire media-created COVID panic) is allowing opinion articles flatly stating that the masking was a failed pandemic response, even N95 maslks.

[Daniel Cooper]

Now the NYT (on the wrong side of science for almost the entire media-created COVID panic) is allowing opinion articles flatly stating that the masking was a failed pandemic response, even N95 maslks.

 

 

An opinion like that in 2020 - early 2022 was more than sufficient to get you kicked of any social media platform on which you expressed it.

[smithx]

Now the NYT (on the wrong side of science for almost the entire media-created COVID panic) is allowing opinion articles flatly stating that the masking was a failed pandemic response, even N95 maslks.

 

That's not quite what the Cochrane Review says. The actual study is here -- no need to read tweets about opinion pieces in newspapers :

 

https://www.cochrane...iratory-viruses

 

The authors actual conclusions are:

 

 

There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection. Hand hygiene is likely to modestly reduce the burden of respiratory illness, and although this effect was also present when ILI and laboratory-confirmed influenza were analysed separately, it was not found to be a significant difference for the latter two outcomes. Harms associated with physical interventions were under-investigated.

 

There is a need for large, well-designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk of ARIs.

 

 

They also note that:

 

 

Many studies were conducted during non-epidemic influenza periods. Several were conducted during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and others in epidemic influenza seasons up to 2016. Therefore, many studies were conducted in the context of lower respiratory viral circulation and transmission compared to COVID-19. The included studies were conducted in heterogeneous settings, ranging from suburban schools to hospital wards in high-income countries; crowded inner city settings in low-income countries; and an immigrant neighbourhood in a high-income country. Adherence with interventions was low in many studies.

 

Whether or not mask mandates were useful is one question. Whether or not consistently wearing a well-fitted N-95 mask is protective is another.

 

On a population basis, with poorly-fitted masks, inconsistent adherence to masking recommendations, it may not reduce the spread. On an individual basis, I think the jury is still out, but I'm gong to keep wearing them.

[Mind]

That's not quite what the Cochrane Review says. The actual study is here -- no need to read tweets about opinion pieces in newspapers :

 

https://www.cochrane...iratory-viruses

 

The authors actual conclusions are:

 

 

They also note that:

 

 

Whether or not mask mandates were useful is one question. Whether or not consistently wearing a well-fitted N-95 mask is protective is another.

 

On a population basis, with poorly-fitted masks, inconsistent adherence to masking recommendations, it may not reduce the spread. On an individual basis, I think the jury is still out, but I'm gong to keep wearing them.

 

The problem is that U.S. media, public "health" bureaucrats, and social media hit squads, assured everyone that masking was the perfect solution to end the media-created COVID panic in no time. Really. You might recall being told "wear the f^&king mask and this pandemic will be over in a couple of week". I was told that - exact words. Nothing could have been further -from the truth, yet public "health" bureaucrats are clinging to an anti-science position that masking works great. They are ready to force people to wear masks the next time they can create widespread fear over some new pathogen.

 

There are no greater examples of real-world failures of masking than east Asia. In countries such as Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, with very close to 100% mask compliance and high quality masks no less, they still have huge waves of COVID off-and-on for the last three years. Masking was a total failure. We should be looking at better solutions in the future.

[Danail Bulgaria]

... You might recall being told "wear the f^&king mask and this pandemic will be over in a couple of week". ... Nothing could have been further -from the truth, ..

 

I myself was thinking exactly on the same way, and I am still thinking simmilarly. That we can put an end of the COVID19 and any other respiratory infection, simply with a prevention. I strenghtened my view after I red about the inovative filter, based on active charcoat, invented by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. And I actually posted a topic on that.

https://www.longecit...tection-device/

This, combined with the fact, that there are people, including myself, who did not catched COVID19 so far, seems to me as a proof of my theory. If all of the people were like me, it would be just like that - ending the pandemy in a couple of weeks, or lets name it the time until the last infected cure or die.

 

The facts, that you CAN prevent age aggregating arround me. Including the video, of the mythbusters in whch they actually proof that you can prevent from being infected, but very few people can do it. They filmed it before the pandemy, but it happened to be actual today.

[Daniel Cooper]

I myself was thinking exactly on the same way, and I am still thinking simmilarly. That we can put an end of the COVID19 and any other respiratory infection, simply with a prevention.

Theoretically? Perhaps, but I'm even skeptical of that.

 

Practically? Absolutely not.  To do what you propose would require about as close to 100% participation as one can imagine.

 

Even an authoritarian government like China was not able to enforce the sorts of measures that would be required long term. Their population began to revolt against the endless lockdowns and distancing and even the mask mandates.  If you can't make that happen in China, you can't make it happen anywhere.

 

So if we all woke up tomorrow in Utopia and people were willing to universally take on the measuring you're suggesting of their own volition then maybe. But covid doesn't exit in Utopia anyway, and Utopia certainly doesn't exit on Earth.

 

 

[Mind]

All of the elitist scolds who claim to "follow the science" are absolutely rejecting the science on mask mandates. See the hilarious LA Times telling everyone the Cochrane Review study didn't really say that mask mandates were ineffective.

 

Mask mandates were tried in 1918 during the Spanish Flu - conclusion: the mandates did not work.

Multiple RCT trials in the past few decades showed that masking did not work.

Mask mandates did not work to stop the spread of COVID.

Cochrane Review meta analysis finds that the mask mandates did not work.

 

Elitist "follow the science" crowd says no, no ,no, mask mandates really work!!!

[Danail Bulgaria]

Theoretically? Perhaps, but I'm even skeptical of that.

 

Practically? Absolutely not.  To do what you propose would require about as close to 100% participation as one can imagine.

 

Even an authoritarian government like China was not able to enforce the sorts of measures that would be required long term. Their population began to revolt against the endless lockdowns and distancing and even the mask mandates.  If you can't make that happen in China, you can't make it happen anywhere.

 

So if we all woke up tomorrow in Utopia and people were willing to universally take on the measuring you're suggesting of their own volition then maybe. But covid doesn't exit in Utopia anyway, and Utopia certainly doesn't exit on Earth.

 

simmilar to what I ment   If all people were like me = if we all woke up tomorrow in Utopia and people were willing to universally take on the measuring I am suggesting. By their own will, not by an enforcement. The simple stupid things and the social responsibility that noone wants to follow.

 

As for the masks I still believe, that the inovative active charcoat filters that I initially bought and used worked.

[Mind]

Not a surprising opinion here, considering the declining quality of western university "intellectuals". Now people who do not want to wear masks are racist.

[Mind]

Just got done flying across the country. I was surprised to see people wearing masks in the airport. About 1 in 100 people were wearing a mask - very poorly, I might add. A couple of people wore masks on the airplane and then took them off while talking to people next to them, took them off while eating and drinking, wore them around their chin a lot of the time, etc... It was bizarre. I wanted desperately to explain to them how useless their "masking habit" was, but refrained. What is going on "mentally" in these instances? When you see 99% of the (traveling) population living normally, strolling casually through the airport, and not dying, how long do you keep wearing a mask (very ineffectively)? It seems more like a child's "security blanket", than a useful tool at this point.

 

Everyone will get COVID, no matter if you wear a mask or not. I am amazed at how many people are still living in abject fear while the rest of the world lives normally. You can find some "I finally got COVID" stories online everyday. Even though they got COVID, they are doubling down on all of the weird ineffective protection methods they employ. They say they are going to mask even "harder" than before. Unbelievable.

[smithx]

Everyone will get COVID, no matter if you wear a mask or not. I am amazed at how many people are still living in abject fear while the rest of the world lives normally. You can find some "I finally got COVID" stories online everyday. Even though they got COVID, they are doubling down on all of the weird ineffective protection methods they employ. They say they are going to mask even "harder" than before. Unbelievable.

 

 

 

This kind of attitude is exactly why huge percentages of the population will experience significant health problems, increased mortality, neurological issues, etc., and it's disturbing to see on a supposedly science-based forum like this one because it ignores all the research indicating that getting COVID-19 once is bad, but getting it multiple times is much worse.

 

 

For example:

Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection

https://www.nature.c...591-022-02051-3

 

In sum, in this study of 5,819,264 individuals, we provide evidence that reinfection contributes to additional health risks beyond those incurred in the first infection including all-cause mortality, hospitalization and sequelae in a broad array of organ systems. The risks were evident in the acute and postacute phases of reinfection. The evidence suggests that for people who already had a first infection, prevention of a second infection may protect from additional health risks. Prevention of infection and reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 should continue to be the goal of public health policy.

 

 

 

 

A less technical summary is here:

Why Getting COVID-19 Multiple Times Is Risky for Your Health

https://time.com/623...ctions-effects/

 

 

Studies are showing that getting infected more than once—an increasingly common scenario as the pandemic drags on and variants become more transmissible—may have compounding effects. “We wanted to know, if you get multiple infections, do they matter? Are these infections consequential, or has the immune system adapted because it has seen the infection before and developed a way of dealing with it?” says Al-Aly. “We found that if people are infected a second or third time, those infections certainly contribute to additional health risk, even if they are vaccinated.”

 

With each infection, the body’s resilience drains a bit more, until, with enough assaults, it reaches the danger zone. “Cumulatively, each infection could get you closer and closer to the edge,” says Al-Aly. “That’s why avoiding a second or third infection is important to try to continue preserving health.”

 

 

Edited by smithx, 11 March 2023 - 09:15 PM.

[Mind]

 

 

 

This kind of attitude is exactly why huge percentages of the population will experience significant health problems, increased mortality, neurological issues, etc., and it's disturbing to see on a supposedly science-based forum like this one because it ignores all the research indicating that getting COVID-19 once is bad, but getting it multiple times is much worse.

 

 

For example:

Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection

https://www.nature.c...591-022-02051-3

 

 

 

 

A less technical summary is here:

Why Getting COVID-19 Multiple Times Is Risky for Your Health

https://time.com/623...ctions-effects/

 

 

If one follows my postings more closely, you will see I am not saying that there should be NO response to disease, but that we should be striving for better options - instead of just falling back on something that failed miserably (masking).

[smithx]

It is true that most people don't wear the right masks, or don't wear them correctly.

 

A lot of masking is basically symbolic. I was trying to coin a term for people who leave their noses out of their masks: "nose-nothings" (that might have gone over better around 1910, actually).

 

But a well-fitted N-95 mask worn consistently is still a good defense against SARS-CoV-2 in the air, and people who obliviously believe that "it's over" are doing themselves a disservice.

 

The other side of the argument "We're all gonna get it anyway, so why bother trying to not get it?" is similar to the argument "We're all gonna die so why fight it? Aging is natural!"

 

I hope everyone on this forum agrees that we are not those people. Death may indeed be inevitable, but the spirit of our community has always been to avoid it for as long as possible and to try to be as healthy as possible while we're alive.

 

There's no place for fatalism there: we are supposed to be the ones who fight against aging, disease, and decrepitude with knowledge and innovation. Not the ones who give up and give in because it's too inconvenient to preserve our health.

 

Edited by smithx, 12 March 2023 - 06:30 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

But a well-fitted N-95 mask worn consistently is still a good defense against SARS-CoV-2 in the air, and people who obliviously believe that "it's over" are doing themselves a disservice.

 

It is the normal course of events for pandemics to eventually wind down and end. It has been so since before humans walked the earth.
 
So at some point, covid-19 will become a relatively mild endemic virus that causes an unpleasant but almost never lethal experience for the overwhelming majority of people.  Just like the other three or four coronaviruses that cause colds in humans, which most likely were far more dangerous when they first breached the species barrier and became infectious in man. Now we can argue whether we've hit this point as of today or not, but it will happen as it has happened with every prior pandemic of this nature.
 
This is the daily death graph for the USA. That far right hand data point is 95 deaths on a 7-day moving average. That's 95 deaths in a country of about 330 million. That's down from a peak 7 day average of 3,500 in January of 2021. Almost all of those would have had significant comorbidities. Note that we've now been in this low level tail longer than any of the other minima previously in the pandemic. For almost exactly 1 year now. In fact this is the first year we've experience without any major spike in infections or deaths since the start of the pandemic.


 
There is this really curious phenomena where there seems to be a cohort of people that are reluctant to see the pandemic end. It seems to have given some people a sense of purpose that they aren't prepared to let go of just yet.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 15 March 2023 - 09:06 PM.