I’m not wearing a mask, and I am washing my hands more often. And it is asinine for medical professionals to tell people that masks do nothing to reduce risk for heathy wearers.
Just out of curiosity, why do lay people even have access to N95 masks if we are so incompetent at wearing them? And they have long been a part of recommendations for emergency kits put out by the some of same agencies now saying they are useless because you won’t know how to wear it.
If the virus is spread through particles in the air rather than droplets, then how much good is it to stand 6 feet away from a coughing person? And why bother having healthcare workers wear them if they are literally useless?
I have no problem with officials telling people that they don’t really need masks, they aren’t worth the trouble of wearing and learning how to wear them properly, and you still should do all of the other Important things like hand washing, etc. But actively telling people that they won’t help is wrong, and will decrease confidence in those same officials, when people need to be able to trust them.
It’s right up there with all of the assurances that it wasn’t present in the US when they weren’t even testing for it. Now we know it’s been circulating in the US for weeks.
I went to a clinic for blood tests yesterday (just related to general health and heart condition), and the receptionist was not only wearing a surgical mask, but a sort of plastic shield that looked like a cross between a motorcycle helmet and an Apollo moon helmet. Before processing the form she asked questions about respiratory symptoms and other signs of coronavirus. There are a grand total of 20 cases in Ontario, FFS, in a population of 15 million, and each one of them is self-isolated at home. I had to keep asking her to repeat her questions because I couldn’t understand her through the combination of the surgical mask and the Apollo moon helmet. It’s ridiculous. The person who actually took the blood sample had no mask and no apparent paranoia about coronavirus.
But what he’s saying isn’t true, and I suggest his reasons for saying so are the ones I outlined in my previous posts. If they didn’t help, healthcare workers wouldn’t be wearing them. Few things are foolproof, but every additional measure helps. Imagine someone attending to someone with a dry cough and a fever and the attendee decides not to don the mask they have in their house having been told they are ineffective. That doesn’t sound like proper epidemic management best practices to me.
This is directly against the present advice of public health officials. Don’t wear a surgical mask simply for the sake of emotional comfort; this is a waste of a mask, and masks are currently in short supply.
Perhaps the receptionist is immunosuppressed. When I was in chemo, I was told by actual real doctors to wear a mask for my protection when I was in public.
Also, it may be true that the 20 known cases are the “grand total,” but unless there has been true surveillance testing it is really unknown how many cases there are. In the US, the CDC would not test unless the suspected case had a known exposure. Do you know what the testing criteria are there?
In Hawaii at one point, a state that normally has 700 flights a month from Japan and South Korea, where the coronavirus was circulating in the community, doctors requested testing of 9 patients based on clinical diagnostic procedures. The samples they sent for testing not only were not tested because they did not meet the criteria of travel to an infected area or known contact with a known case, but the samples were also destroyed.
In the US at least, no one has any business referring to the known cases as the grand total. I know more testing has been done in Canada than here, but it didn’t sound like there has been the kind of testing that would ensure definitively a known number of cases.
We’ve been discussing N95s throughout this thread, yourself included. I think the OP used masks as a metanym for both masks and respirators. The vast majority of the public conversation is around the N95s. Nevertheless, the study says surgical masks are also effective but less so.
And what point is that exactly? If you’re saying wearing masks will block some droplets of virus laden saliva reaching your nose and mouth areas, I agree. If that’s the protection you’re looking for, turning your back to them would work much better.
If you’re saying masks help prevent the wearer from getting infected, I disagree. There is no doctor, scientist or study that recommends wearing a surgical mask as a way of preventing anything other than an already infected patient from spreading germs through coughing and sneezing.
I think that’s being a bit silly; this is akin to saying staying at home is better cranial protection than riding a bike wearing a helmet. If a person needs to go out and speak to people, wearing a surgical mask is better than nothing. It may not be as good as N95 which may not be as good as a respirator but “not as good as” and “useless” are not synonyms.
Who said surgical masks were useless? I questioned to what purpose people are wearing them. Some usages are not as effective as others. “Not as effective” and “useless” are not synonyms.
Speak for yourself. I take public transit every day. Are there other forms of transmission I am subject to? Of course. But “stranger sneezing close to my face” is not all that rare an event during cold season.
Also, the comment above about masks not being useful because they get damp so you need to replace them strikes me as odd. I bought a lot of surgical masks at the start of the SARS scare, thinking they might become scarce if it broke out. I had them in my closet for years, then one day had to fly when I had a cold, so I wore one, thinking it would be polite not to spread my cold.
That was the most comfortable flight I’d had in years, and I realized that a lot of what I thought was “jet lag” was actually dehydration, from breathing the dry eir in airplanes.
I now wear a mask every time I have a long flight because the extra moisture it holds makes me a lot more comfortable.
I don’t have a cite handy, but I’ve recently seen a bunch of data about how people are more susceptible to many diseases when their mucus membranes dry out, and that low humidity increases the risk of catching colds and flu. I suspect that JUST THE ADDED MOISTURE in your nose from wearing a surgical mask may provide a little protection.
I’m not yet wearing those masks on my commute, but I may next week. Or maybe I’ll work from home.
I only hope you are as immune to SARS-Cov2 as you are to reason. Since you seem dead set on being contrary and not following data or arguments, this is my last attempt. I’ve already explained why doctors are not recommending them. To repeat:
Fear a shortage of masks for those who urgently need them
Fear a panic from those who don’t get them
Fear the mask will provide a false sense of security leading to the abandonment of other preventative measures. The general public also needs to be informed how to don, wear, remove, and dispose them
And it being better if you turn your back vs wearing a mask is one of the dumber arguments I’ve since in GD let alone GQ.
The idea that surgical masks are useless for self-protection is implied by your responses where you’ve handwaved any suggestion of their utility, culminating in the facetious response that “turning your back […] would work much better”.
If you’re now agreeing that they offer some protection, to the wearer, but are far from optimal, and there are wearables that provide significantly more protection…then we’re in agreement.
I’ve said exactly this upthread, and in fact we can completely ignore the position of surgical masks being optimal / offering full protection, as nobody has claimed that. Nobody is going to claim that.
Surgical masks offer some basic protection from a direct spray of particles and from touching the nose or mouth.
The fact that we can find things that offer additional protection does not invalidate this.
This was sort of covered, but more specifically he’s definitely talking about ‘mask not tight enough’, not that the virus (or droplets containing it) would go through.
Assume we’re talking about N95 masks. Assume (might or might not be realistic) it’s tight or well fitted enough. I believe in fact trying to condition public sentiment and keep people calm (nowhere remotely near enough N95’s around) is a factor in certain statements. Maybe not the one quoted but in media presentation of expert opinion on the whole.
‘N95’s are useless so please, don’t buy them all up’ has a sort of contradiction to it. But aside from attempted panic control it’s pretty irrelevant at this point to tell people not to buy them. They’re gone from stores, prices on Ebay etc are sky high. If some people calm down and the bids go down a little, other people will just be more incentivized to scoop them up at slightly less ridiculous prices. If a significant supply of N95’s is really still in the private system and it would really help the public health effort to get hold of those for medical personnel, the govt needs to find a way to do that. But I doubt the remaining private supply for sale now is significant.
But ‘won’t help’? I doubt that. A panacea obviously not, putting it down, shifting it around and therefore touching your face with unwashed hands, not well enough fitting in the first place…all valid points about how the usefulness could be limited.
I agree with these points (on why doctor’s discourage the general public from using face masks). If they had any significant efficiency do you think doctors and scientists would discourage their usage by the general public? None of your points are relevant to the effectiveness of face masks.
And what’s so dumb about turning your back towards someone who is spewing saliva at you? That is much better protection than facing them with a mask. Staying away six feet away from them as the CDC suggest is a good idea too.
I read your cites. So they found masks offered some level of “protection” in a controlled environment. I get that. But you realize that’s like saying using a newspaper to cover your head from the rain will “protect” you from getting wet? Sure, it will block some rain drops from hitting your head but its effectiveness won’t last long and you’re still going to get wet. There are much better ways of staying dry, including staying indoors.