There are numerous references in the Wiki article on Risk Compensation.
The specific case of cycling helmets is not without controversy, and the effect is probably different in different societies. But the fact that risk compensation can sometimes have a large effect is certainly true. And I think it may well be extremely important with these makeshift masks when we don’t really have good evidence about just how effective they are.
At the very least, government guidance should be oriented toward emphasizing that makeshift masks may only offer minimal protection, to try to minimize risk compensatory behaviors, and I’m not seeing that happening at all.
You have consistently implied that masks offer protection to the wearer. As you have already been told, this is untrue, in fact dangerously untrue. Masks offer protection to other people. By requiring masks in public you are protected in the sense that you won’t be forced to be close to someone without one.
All the messages I get in the Bay Area are that masks are not a substitute for social distancing. Are you getting another message?
In my rare visits to stores before and after the mask requirement, I haven’t seen any difference in social distancing.
That masks protect others, not you, is exactly why it had to be made mandatory. Not wearing a mask doesn’t increase your risk, it increases that of others. Unlike helmets.
No, I haven’t. Or if I have, it was unintentional. I understand the physical purpose of wearing makeshift masks.
That makes no difference to the issue of risk compensation in behavior. It doesn’t need to be the person wearing the mask whose behavior is influenced. What matters is that there’s a causal connection between mask wearing and riskier behavior.
(1) If I think I may have been exposed, but I’m not sure, without a mask I’d definitely stay home because I’m a good citizen and I don’t want to risk infecting other people. But if I’m getting the message that wearing a mask probably stops me infecting other people if I’m sick, maybe I decide to go out anyway. That’s risk compensation.
(2) If the fact that other people see me wearing a mask makes them more inclined to approach me, the change in their behavior is also risk compensation.
I recall a study in Japan where condoms are routinely used, they have more than a 99% effectiveness rate. In the West it’s dismal with around 75% and it’s because of improper usage.
So I see the point where other posters have been asking about usage. I wear a mask and am simply amazed at how much I would’ve subconsciously touched my face otherwise. So I guess that is something else too.
Medical guidance changes all the time based on new research and changing conditions. They change CPR protocols all the time, so it’s no surprise that you’re hearing changing guidance about masks and gloves.
The thing that prevents masks and especially gloves from being effective is that most people aren’t trained to use them, and most people don’t have a big enough supply to rotate and dispose of them.
Gloves especially are the worst. If you’re not constantly rotating them, then you’re just accumulating contamination and spreading it.
Masks are a little more complicated. Like gloves, they’re supposed to be rotated. Surgical masks are supposed to protect the patient, not the doctor. If the doctor has an infectious disease, they don’t rely on a mask, they simply avoid patients altogether.
But we’re not in an operating room scenario here. People aren’t trained in mask use or rotation. We don’t know who is carrying COVID and who isn’t. Essential people have to work, and we have to buy essential things like food. We’re also in the midst of allergy season. The rules are relaxed a bit.
In that light, masks are good because when you feel that allergy sneeze coming on, but you can’t cover your mouth because your hands are full, then the mask prevents you from spraying a 10-foot plume of sputum across the produce section of the supermarket. If you’re carrying COVID, that saves lives.
I haven’t found this anywhere else. If I missed it and people want to link it here, great!
My work is talking about a phased approach to get everyone back to the office at some point. No hard date.
Question from this. Let’s say I still wear a mask. Let’s say they move people’s desk six feet apart and no meetings in conference rooms. Does my chances of catching something increase the longer I’m there? In other words, I’m wearing a mask and being socially distant but then I’m on the same floor for eight to nine hours, breathing the air. Are my chances higher of catching something?
I’m trying to find data on the duration around others because I know wearing a mask cuts it down, when done properly. I haven’t seen it on an extended duration, like a work day.
Yes, of course. Here is a good link that explains how infection is basically a function of exposure to viral load multiplied by the time you spend in that space, especially if it’s an enclosed space.
Viral load accumulates in enclosed spaces. Sustained indoor contact is one of the highest risk factors for infection. Also there are all the high-touch shared surfaces in the office (are you planning on going to the bathroom that day?)
There’s nothing magic about the 6 foot limit. You could still get infected by aerosol at 8 or 10 feet. Someone just determined that if we want to do the daily necessities, then 6 feet is kinda manageable and kinda safe.
The mask doesn’t protect you at all. All the airborne particles are going to land on your mask instead of your face. You’re not trained to treat your own mask as a hazard, so you touch it and touch your face and infect yourself. The mask is only to protect others from your giant sloppy coal-miner sneezes and coughs.
There is no safe way to return to work right now, absent a level of aggressive testing that isn’t happening right now.
All the barriers to viral movement are most effective at the point closest to the source of the virus. Your mask protects everyone else. If you don’t have the virus, that protection is irrelevant, and the amount it protects you remains minor. The six foot range protects you more than a three foot range, but less than a nine foot range. The total number of infected people in the building increases the likelihood of infection for all the uninfected people. Most of the infected people don’t know they are infected, for at least a week or two. They might never know. Research is equivocal about how long after recovery a person remains infectious, if at all. Similarly, immunity may be conferred on those recovering, and may last for an unknown period. Or, perhaps not, or perhaps for only one strain at a time, or, perhaps. Keep in mind this disease was unknown last year. The entire genus of viruses was unidentified except as “possible agents causing the common cold” a decade ago.
The last time a new disease agent was identified as a threat a lot of very expensive effort was put into creating a vaccine, and then testing it, and the disease (SARS) was judged “no longer a major threat” and no one wanted the vaccine. Yes, it was supported by public funds. No, it was not entirely paid for by public funds, and a lot of careers were left dangling when that happened. MERS followed, and the exact same scenario occurred again. The things that were learned doing those things is the reason that this time a single year may be long enough to get the vaccine ready.
In that case, the entire political momentum of the Anti-vax community will be born again! Think of all the things that the new vaccine can be blamed for! Halitosis, psychosis, neuralgia, and kids not being everything their parents think they should be. But, this time, we can blame it on the Chinese!
I haven’t found this anywhere else. If I missed it and people want to link it here, great!
My work is talking about a phased approach to get everyone back to the office at some point. No hard date.
Question from this. Let’s say I still wear a mask. Let’s say they move people’s desk six feet apart and no meetings in conference rooms. Does my chances of catching something increase the longer I’m there? In other words, I’m wearing a mask and being socially distant but then I’m on the same floor for eight to nine hours, breathing the air. Are my chances higher of catching something?
I’m trying to find data on the duration around others because I know wearing a mask cuts it down, when done properly. I haven’t seen it on an extended duration, like a work day.
Hey, thanks for linking that. If credible, it answers another question I have about outdoor exercise in semi-crowded spaces.
I went for a run yesterday, and ended up doing about 3/4 of the outer loop at Green Lake (for those of you familiar with Seattle.) I probably got passed (both by people going faster than me as well as by people going the other way) a good couple dozen times - mostly by runners, but sometimes walkers. There is no social distancing on that path. Almost no one was masked. I still probably won’t run there again, but it sounds like the viral exposure was likely low, so hopefully not too much to worry about.
Logically, yes, your chances of catching something increases with time spent.
Unless someone is injecting the virus directly into your bloodstream, there is NEVER a way to definitely contract a virus - be it COVID 19, the flu, or the common cold. It ALWAYS is a chance you come in contact with the virus, and it has a chance to multiply before dying. So, the longer you are spending in an atmosphere where the virus might be, the more chances you have of picking up a live one.
One of the problems with infected people out at the bars is that you end up spending several hours there. You might not spend any time directly with that individual, but you might walk past him 3 times or 5 times or 12 times or… each time, you have a chance of catching whatever he has. Now, it’s how many people walking past him 5 times or 12 times or… same thing at work.
Now, by wearing a mask, you limit spreading whatever disease you might have. Every time you go to the bathroom, you wash your hands to kill the germs the last guy left. If you go into the kitchen, I’d wash my hands. Use the copier? use some hand sanitizer when you get back to your desk. These are ways to try to stop the spread, but they’re not 100%.
Here is an article that notes that if there is an infected person and a healthy person, and only one of them wears a facemask, that the risk of infection is reduced by 50-90 percent more than if neither wore masks - and that if both wear masks, the infection risk drops down to a mere 1-2 percent.
There was discussion earlier in this pandemic that masks might cause people to feel safer and therefore take more risks, and also cause people to touch their face more. I see a ton of people adjusting their masks, removing them to make phone calls, and generally getting it wrong and touching their mask and face much more than they would without the mask. I have heard some public health authorities suggesting limited mask use when in areas where social distancing might be difficult, which makes sense. I don’t think the issue is as cut and dried as most seem to think.
I’ve seen studies that show that behavior of cyclists and motorists are different when helmets are involved, but other research shows a substantial reduction in injuries for those wearing helmets.
Seems to me it is possible that the increase in risky behavior may not offset the safety provided by bike helmets. It could be the same with masks, too.
I have not been wearing a mask when going into a retail establishment. Mostly because I didn’t have access to pre-made masks and lack the sewing ability to make my own and mask wearing is pretty spotty around here. My employer just got some masks for us, (nobody wearing them at work) but I had mine in the truck when I stopped in at the liquor store tonight. They just went back to letting customers inside, had been curbside service for about a month or so. So I put my new mask on, went in to buy some beer.
Me: “It’s been a while since I walked into a liquor store wearing a mask.”
Clerk: Blank stare, then “Oh… you would have got in trouble.”
Me: (Damn, I thought that was funny!)
Masks are not legally mandated here, but at least one grocery store chain requires them for all staff and now all customers. Others do not, and on average only about half of customers and only some of the staff wear them. Anecdotally, I’m not seeing any difference at all in physical distancing among these stores. All the stores have separation markings on the floor and everyone seems good about obeying them, mask or no mask. Also, every single store that is open for customer entry has large plexiglass shields between the customer and the cashier.
It may be that some ignorant people are under the impression that masks offer total protection, but I’m not seeing that reflected in actual behaviors. I acknowledge that “risk compensation” is a real thing (I see it with morons with 4-wheel drive pickups and SUVs and impressive-looking snow tires driving much too fast in snowy/blizzard conditions and ending up in the ditch half the time) but I think in this case it’s a bit of hyperbolic academic pedantry. In any case, I’m not seeing it – at all.
If that’s the intent, it’s a very poor and dangerous policy, because the benefits of masks are limited. If, just to pick a number out of the air, surgical type masks reduce the risk of transmission by 50% or 60%, then they are well worth wearing, but not a magic solution for going gangbusters on opening up everything. Things are bad enough as it is, with large numbers of people wearing masks; becoming careless about physical distancing will just make things worse.
The stay at home orders were to reduce the strain on the healthcare industry. We’ve done that. If the following protocols are met, it should be safe for most of the population to go back to work and living.
The vulnerable should continue to stay at home.
If you are not vulnerable, and you leave your home and are in public are at work, you should social distance. If you are not able to social distance you should wear a mask. You should continue to was your hands or sanitize them regularly.
These steps will significantly reduce the spread of the disease.
The goal isn’t and shouldn’t be for the world to stay shut down until the virus is eradicated. If we begin seeing the healthcare system being stressed then you pull back.
Part of the problem with trying to resume normal life is the lack of proper masks. Improvised masks are reasonable solutions provided everyone is using them and using them properly. From what I see in public, that’s not the case. Only a small number of people are wearing masks properly, improvised or otherwise. The majority of mask use I see is with low-quality materials and/or ill fit, which means filtering efficiency is low. With poor mask use being so widespread, to be safe you really need some kind of X95 or X100 mask since it’s totally on you to keep yourself safe. You can’t count on your community to help out.
As an analogy, consider how the Amish work together to pick up and move a barn. If you haven’t seen it, lots of people come together to physically lift a barn and walk it to a new location. Since everyone is helping out and giving their full effort, the work for each person is small and they are able to move something as large as a barn on their own. But without the community help, the barn owner would have to use machinery or something since he would have to, quite literally, do all the heavy lifting himself. Unfortunately, community mask usage in America is such that each individual needs to take 100% responsibility for filtering the air they breathe. Encouraging mask use by Americans leads to either haphazard execution or outright defiance, neither of which makes the environment safe enough to try to resume a normal life.
True if everyone is acting as they would if nobody wore masks. Riemann’s point is that they might take more risk. I doubt that’s enough to offset the benefit in certain situations but I don’t know for sure.
It shouldn’t generate risky behavior if I realize that (at least) non-N95’s masks do little for my safety. The benefit as you say is supposed to be for others if I’m infected. Understanding that, why would I take more risk with a mask on? However it’s not clear, even from this thread, how many people understand it’s supposed to be to protect other people not oneself. I think the changed tune of the US experts hasn’t helped there. Let’s face it, if you don’t keep it absolutely simple and consistent a lot of the public isn’t going to get it*.
Another aspect is ‘in public’. I’m willing to wear a mask in indoor public spaces, but really doubt it makes a wit of difference outdoors at social distance. It’s ‘recommended’ here outdoors, I don’t do it. I carry the mask for when I go in a store or perhaps if I’m going to chat with people at 6’, but mainly I do my 8 mile daily walk (to replace the gym), giving everyone a wide berth, speaking to no one. I’d need actual evidence this has any significance in spreading the disease. And back to *, especially given that experts were ambivalent about this, and the change seems to be about messaging, not any new evidence that COVID actually spreads among socially distanced people outdoors.
Although on a another level masks have become social signalling devices, ‘I’m with the program’ or not, and along increasingly political lines. But that’s not my reason, but likely extremely low probability that passing people at a distance outdoors is any risk. In a store perhaps different; on a plane? some science contributor for NBC insisted he did every precaution and still believes he caught it on a crowded flight (there aren’t too many but I guess this was one). He figured it might have come into his eyes.
*Originally there was a bit of shading of facts for ‘the greater good’ I believe. They said ‘masks won’t do you much good’ actually meaning, ‘stop buying up N95 masks, which might in fact help you if used properly, but front liners need them more than you’. Then later ‘OK now you should all wear [non-N95] masks, it’s to protect others’. That’s not actually contradictory or theoretically that hard to follows, but in reality a large segment of the general public will just see changed shadings like that as inconsistent, order, counterorder, disorder.