Can someone explain to me why there is such an ongoing argument about using facemasks to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. My own view is that they were probably marginally useful and, importantly, among the few things you could do on your own to reduce the likelihood of contracting the disease. Another was self-quarantine.
I suspect the argument is more about the mandates than the masks. My own gripe is the vitriol.
Actually, I have another gripe which I mentioned at the time. On a multiple times daily basis I saw police officers standing tightly clustered without wearing facemasks. You can’t have it both ways. The mayor can’t be advocating the wearing of facemasks but giving a pass to police officers. They weren’t immune; they were exempt. That places things in an entirely different light.
https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/masks-dont-work-covid-a-review-of-science-relevant-to-covide-19-social-policy
Masks have always been used in sterile hospital settings such as surgical theaters or isolation settings. In these cases masks are used once and then discarded. The new formula, however, for mask use has become multiple reuse of the same mask, over sometimes many hours (such as when employers demand employees to be masked). I have seen few reasons to do the latter, and, IMO, is a protocol meant primarily to keep the COVID threat front and center in people’s minds and fears.
For young school children mask mandates have been cruel and often inhibited their emotional growth and socialization. But, once something is in place for long periods of time people, without thinking, adapt and simply fall into step with such mandates, even when an abundance of evidence indicates the folly of this practice.
Seems many people saw masking as submission and actually bonded over resistance to mandates and the masks themselves.
Peer pressure is a powerful motivator and so individuals with daily commonality synchronize their behaviors and beliefs, they apply ridicule to enforce conformity and so it becomes uncomfortable to stray from group mores.
There were too any distractions in the beginning of the pandemic, we knew little about transmission. Then the political bull came into play which gave some a reason to resist. Over a million Americans died, many more million got very sick. It crashed our medical systems, still is. It crashed our system of goods and services, it still is. We could have had a better internet system, but, we didn’t and still don’t, it crashed our education systems, it still is. We burnt out all the front line workers, teachers, medical staff, we all were affected by the pandemic, we still are. If masks didn’t work the medical community would have stopped wearing them long before covid.
Masks undoubtedly offer some protection to the people around you, because they catch the droplets when you sneeze or cough.
However, they are only minimally effective at preventing the inhalation of viruses and bacteria. And if there are any microbes in the air, they are definitely on all the surfaces around you. You might be better off wearing gloves.
By the way doctors and nurses wear masks to protect the patients, not themselves. They also wear gloves, again to protect the patients, not themselves.
And, yes, masks should be worn once and discarded afterwards. That is really a protection to the wearer, because the masks do collect and concentrate the wearer’s own microbes.
“By the way doctors and nurses wear masks to protect the patients, not themselves. They also wear gloves, again to protect the patients, not themselves.”
So would not masks worn by the general public protect the general public, neighbors, friends, folks at the supermarkets, etc…?
Some people feel existentially threatened by others not wearing masks, seeing it as a dangerous threat to their personal health.
Other people feel existentially threatened by politically capricious mandates (see Dave’s exempt policemen), seeing it as a dangerous abuse of state power.
(other categories also exist)
The real issue is grimly unifying: (1) if Identity is whatever you make of it, then so too is existential threat; (2) this internet age of ours encourages people to extend their personal identity brand far and wide, without acknowledging that others also are doing the same thing, but with conflicting aims.
The result? Existential tantrums, writ large.
Enmeshed internet dynamics have made societal win-lose impossible (you can still destroy your opponent, but you can no longer destroy JUST your opponent). It is either going to be win-win, or lose-lose.
MAD writ large.
Will we come to our senses in time?
Masks quickly became politicized when they have actually been used for a long time. They have commonly been used in many Asian countries. In the hospital they were used on a single use basis but not because studies showed they lost effect after one use but because they were cheap and uncomfortable to wear for a long time. Pre-covid N 95s went for les than a dollar and they weren’t use that often. Surgical masks were even cheaper but people in the OR did wear them the whole day.
The aerosol scientists are unsung heroes. They showed that covid had both droplet AND aerosol spread. They also did good work on masks and masking materials. They clearly work to reduce exposure to aerosol spread viruses and droplets. Studies within hospitals have confirmed that they work, but in hospitals compliance is enforced. In fact, when we had a couple of outbreaks in our hospital we tracked it down and found that the people were mask skeptics who were not wearing their masks. So if you actually wear your mask your risk is reduced. Not eliminated but reduced. AS PD said its not a force field.
So once politicized, and yes the CDC contributed to that, it became focused on mandates. Mandates could work if everyone was compliant, but they weren’t. We largely didnt enforce them. They were even less likely to work in areas where people didnt believe in masks.
Steve
So would not masks worn by the general public protect the general public, neighbors, friends, folks at the supermarkets, etc
Why don’t people simply wear hazmat suits for the ultimate protection! COVID’s biggest contribution was to insert fear of dying even though the possibility of death was percentage-wise minuscule, almost zero for children, and minimal for those in good health. Ironically hospitalizations, disabilities, all cause deaths have significantly risen since 2021, following the push for these “experimental†vaccines, especially in areas that achieved high rates of vaccine compliance. But people remain programmed under the mesmerizing “safe and effective†slogan that Pfizer continues to stream, rather than turning their attention to the corrupted, inadequate safety precautions Pfizer first hid and then had to release in their clinical trials data.
Going back to masks, the mandates and encouragement to wear them everywhere, has been a successful psychological tool, along with social distancing, to keep people harnessed to never-ending fear.
Steve, I’ll share the pithiest summation I have yet found, which I think agrees with you:
“Masks work. Masking doesn’t.”
Compliance in the population at large was never going to be enough (too many people would just wear them incorrectly), and all the mandates accomplished was to piss people off (even with the best of intentions).
But then, isn’t this exactly the sort of vindictive chaos we find as the historical norm, at the intersection of pandemics and human nature?
http://www.phinancetechnologies.com/HumanityProjects/US%20Disabilities%20-%20Part5.htm
The number of deaths actually caused by COVID continues to be suspect because of corrupted CDC data, monetary incentives to cite COVID as the reason for death, accompanied by the alteration of death certificates numerically increasing COVID deaths for those dying with a positive COVID test rather than because of COVID. My brother in law was one of those whose death certificate listed him as a COVID death when the real cause was stage 4 brain cancer. Also, autopsies, earlier discouraged, are now showing organ lesions, unusual blood clotting attributed to the vaccine, not COVID.
The overall burden of influenza (flu) for the 2019-2020 was an estimated 36 million flu-related illnesses, 16 million flu-related medical visits, 390,000 flu-related hospitalizations, and 25,000 flu-related deaths (Table 1).
In the year 2022/2023 Over 1hundred million cases of covid,
1 million deaths
During the masking and the so called lock down the flu cases dropped dramatically, if we had not accomplished as much as we had in terms of masking and avoiding large crowds the stats on covid may have very well been much higher.
“Going back to masks, the mandates and encouragement to wear them everywhere, has been a successful psychological tool, along with social distancing, to keep people harnessed to never-ending fear.”
Fear may have saved many of us from a much worse fate.
As a former Hazmat lecturer and unofficial instructor I am not sure what benefit you would get from a Hazmat suit when the problem is a respiratory virus unless you were imunocompromised or working with people who are, or maybe working for long periods. Then you could combine a Hazmat suit with a PAPR and be safe from the virus while remain comfortable. Downside is you have to work within a helmet so harder to see.
Masks are really just a tool to reduce risk. I think the people who talk the most about fear are either the ones most afraid or wanting to use fear as a tool. As part fo the team who had to decide when we would institute masking at our hospital, and we were asked for input for our community, I can say none of us ever thought of it as a way to scare people.
Steve
Fear may have saved many of us from a much worse fate
Fear can indeed be useful such as in the fight or flight response. However, fear can also “mask†truth, by using emotional subjective thinking, rather than applying objective analysis, that importantly is open to changing perspectives, information and data when it becomes available.
In the case of COVID we have been misdirected in our reliance on distorted Pfizer clinical trials data, unreliable huge case numbers because of PCR testing that proved to be 93% inaccurate, as well as an inappropriate test for detecting disease according to Kary Mullis, the inventor of this test. The medical establishment’s censoring and/or derision of early treatment remedies, threats to physicians prescribing them, and the lack of informed consent, to those recommended or forced to take the vaccine, of the risks posited by some 500+ safety signals denoted in the Pfizer trials, and the dismissal of those harmed and killed by the vaccine has yet to be fully exposed, and mitigated hopefully in the justice system.
Similar to Merck’s controversial launch of Vioxx, it took 5 years, 20 million people taking the ill-fated drug experiencing 88,000 heart attacks and 38,000 deaths for Merck to finally remove it from the market. With far more harms and unrecorded deaths, the COVID vaccine will eventually be overwhelmed by too many â€unexpected death†events, too much dire insurance logistics to keep perpetrating the myth that this injection, now pushed as an oral medication, is “safe and effective.â€