The amount of speech being propelled from rear ends in this thread is robust.
City States have…options.
It’s not just scary, it’s disgusting.
Speak for yourself.
What it comes down to is that absent N95 masks used properly - which should at the moment be going to medical professionals anyway and which laypeople generally don’t use properly - the working assumption behind having lots of people use some kind of covering is that infection has spread to the extent we assume nearly everybody is infected. As mentioned above in this thread, the masks are less about getting infected and more about not spreading the disease yourself.
But if we make this assumption of widespread infection, the best things we can have people do are stay at home, wash hands frequently, and avoid contact with other people, i.e. the same things we’ve been asking people to do anyway.
So, yeah, masks might help slow transmission of the disease a bit but they’re not a magic bullet, especially if they simply give people a false sense of security. Widespread use is in the same bucket as stay at home and social distancing orders.
It’s pretty simple and something people continue to push back against: stay at home, wash your friggin’ hands, and minimize contact with other people. If you do go out, sure, wear a mask if you want, but don’t expect this to offer protection for yourself - it’s to protect other people from you.
Asia, as mentioned in the OP, is a great example of this but for different reasons. We have some nations (like Singapore) that have not implemented widespread use of masks yet still able to control spread better than many Western nations via aggressive testing, social distancing, contact tracing, etc. We have other nations (like Japan) where mask use is already common/rampant but now seeing community spread at an alarming clip and only recently implementing some distancing measures.
Most likely, mask use isn’t going to hurt (unless people hoard N95 masks so medical professionals can’t get them) and may even help a little, but it also wasn’t going to be something that helped a lot in the current emergency on its own.
Prohibitions against murder and forcing an individual to take a shot against his will are hardly equivalent.
“really lazy, entitled people who don’t give a shit about others” are our society. And if, as you state, these people who make up our society are really lazy and entitled, so much so that they’re willing to endanger others due to a little boredom, then that society doesn’t merit saving.
You’re right: it’s more like negligent homicide.
It’s less like shooting a specific person, more like randomly firing a gun where it could hit people. I’m fine with both of those things being illegal.
All of Asia has been staring on at collective horror and befuddlement at the consistent “masks don’t work” messaging coming from Western medical authorities. Cheap surgical masks have been considered an integral and cost effective way of fighting infectious diseases in Asia ever since SARS due to rigorous, evidence backed research.
Here’s a peer reviewed meta study from the Cochrane Review in 2011 comprised entirely of Western scientists where the conclusion was:
Here’s a New York Times Article from 2018 that claims
All of the evidence pre-2020, including by WHO authors, was always super pro-mask and then WHO and CDC abruptly shift gears and start claiming masks are useless as soon as it becomes clear there might not be enough for healthcare workers. It’s hard to ascribe this to anything except an intentional big lie which, unfortunately, has wasted valuable time when countries could have encouraged domestic manufacturers to produce more masks and people could have been ramping up homemade mask production.
Also, there’s been very little Western documentation on how to safely reuse disposable masks. In China, Fudan University published a study Feb 9th detailing safe ways to sterilize masks for reuse so that a limited supply of masks could be used for the duration of the quarantine and it became practical for the Chinese government to ban anyone from being outside without a mask.
Viruses, unlike bacteria, can’t reproduce outside of a living host so the viral load on any object can only go down over time. In China, masks were generally considered safe to reuse after they were left hanging for 5 days so having ~5 masks per person was considered enough to get by indefinitely under lockdown.
Wearing masks is why Corona has barely been an issue in China.
CMC fnord!
Sup China has published a collection of translations of the public health messages placed around China to help communicate about the lockdown and they’re aggressively blunt and non-negotiable about the importance of masks:
Masks are required by my school for us when we are teaching. There are also now legally required for any public transportation. Taiwan has enough for the professionals and although they are still rationed here, it’s easier to get them. We had a bunch so we are good.
If nothing else, they help me remember to not touch my face, including my eyes, nose and mouth.
The US really seems to be dithering over the mask thing, and I’d wish they’d just recommend it (non-N95, just some kind of covering, like a surgical mask). Even if 99 non-contagious people have to put up with one, it doing little good for each, for the sake of the one person strolling around infected but pre-symptomatic, mildly symptomatic, or completely asymptomatic, emitting viral droplets.
OTOH ISTR the jury’s a bit out over whether wearing a mask makes you touch your face less, or more–if you’re constantly adjusting your mask, then it might be more.
From a practical sense, I wonder if having a mask on really significantly changes how often a specific person touches their face. If someone ends up touching the mask a lot, I question how diligent they are about not touching their face in general even without a mask.
Recklessly discharging a firearm into a crowd of people and forcing a person to be vaccinated against his will are hardly the same thing.
There’s this thing called “science” that the anti-vac crownd need to look into.
This, quite simply, is the answer. And I agree that it was not okay, even if they had a “noble motive”. It’s going to make people very skeptical of public health recommendations. What we clearly have to do is filter everything we hear through a screen of “cui bono?” That is: could there be an ulterior motive here? What is the real truth likely to be, given various competing interests? It’s unfortunate.
DD, you’re way behind the times on this.
But yeah, I was a “rando on a MB” saying the earlier advice was bullshit weeks ago. Shows what I know! :dubious:
That only says that IF there was a unlimited supply of mask- *which there ain’t, *then “masks are] a potentially good way of preventing that.” Potentially. Maybe.
But as Fauci made clear- wearing a mask doesnt protect you- it protects others if you are sick. Now, yes, you can be sick and not know it.
But still, most non-medical people that wear masks wear them wrongly, and will have a totally false sense of security. They dont help you if you arent sick.
I am highly dubious of the idea that the people wearing masks are being more careless than those without them. I have not been out there in weeks (my wife has done the shopping), but my strong hunch is that the correlation would go the other way: masks would be a signifier of people who are careful in general.