Forcing children to wear a mask is child abuse. The Left failed children.

People have been posting things like this for a long time, and while there is an obvious point, it cleaves off way too much of the details and nuance around the topic.

Does a mask stop aerosol transmission? Nope. Not even N95s do that 100%. To that end, the virus is basically unavoidable for those whom have to spend extended periods of time around other humans indoors.

Does a mask stop the insane amount of non-aerosolized covid-carrying particles that come flying out of your face every time you talk, cough, etc? Yes. Quite well.

So, are masks a panacea? Not even close. Are they a common sense preventative measure and courtesy to use when interacting with other people within spitting distance? Yes.

Granted, now that the pandemic has basically ripped through the population entirely and vaccine distribution has reached its saturation point, masks are close to pointless. But during the last wave and especially during pre-vaxx it was a much different story.

 

For most, I would think but they aren't pointless to those that don't want to get infected or don't mind being infected but don't want to spread to vulnerable families. It's not a small segment either, ~10m.

 

I don't think masks stop you from getting infected (unless it's N95 even though I've yet to see the evidence broken down about that), but they help prevent you from spreading your own infection (in certain capacities/situations).

As always, I support anyone's right or decision to wear a mask forever if they want. I'm lucky enough to not have anyone in my inner circle whom I have to worry about their health.

Everyone should do whatever they can to protect themselves however they see fit, but, for the rest of society, it's mask off time baby.

 

Nothing stops infection because of human behaviors. Lab testing showed even surgical masks greatly help reduce inhaling sars-cov2 aerosols. Of course, that's a lab environment and doesn't capture human behaviors and thus there need to be studies in real-world environments. There is no double-blinded gold standard study on masking but there are some that came close to that and there are plenty of correlation studies that show masking work.

From what we know, masking helps reduce the chance of both infection and transmission. I do advocate that if you are vulnerable or try to prevent spread, you do want to go with the better mask and fitting (KN94, N95). But that doesn't mean that lower-quality masks or fitting are useless. And you don't need to mask every time for every event. The simple formula is effectiveness is proportional to wearing duration and mask quality. Up to each individual to decide how long and what quality based on their risk tolerance, where they are, and what they are doing.

 

There is no mask mandate at my school and my state. I'm fine with that. Other close by school districts still have mask mandates and of course, other locals still do. I'm fine with that too. At this point, where there is still major spread in some places and almost nothing in other places, I think it should be based on local conditions. But in general, yes, I think mask mandate is no longer needed... for now. The next big wave could just be around the corner, and we need to be ready to change course nimbly. I do hate legal ban on public health policy as it stupidly ties the hand of health officials.

 

If you have sources/links for anything relevant please post. I've been really disappointed trying to find reliable info on this.

 

Are they the same? I haven't dug into the data, but that wouldn't surprise me. This has been well known for a while:

1- mandate doesn't mean 100% compliance
2- not mandate doesn't mean 100% compliance
3- some cities ignore state mandate (either mandate to mask or mandate to ban mask)
4- some schools ignore cities or state mandate
5- businesses ignore cities or state mandate

Why - pretty much no one enforces mandate (either version). It's the wild west of masking.

With that said, Omicron is extremely contagious, and masking likely isn't as effective as the previous variants.

The other thing to note in all of this is Children in the US have a major issue with masking. There is no US-approved surgical or higher-grade masking for kids - all maskings are for adult size which makes pretty much every type of masking from the US, in general, a bad fit for young kids (pretty much useless and pointless when it's a bad fit). Asian countries solved this issue years ago due to their scare with Sars1 with KF94/KN95 mask designed specifically for kids' smaller face. I have mentioned this before - one of my kids uses KF94 and he sometimes forgets to take them off - he's just used to it and said it's more comfortable than the surgical mask (kid side also) that we were using before. I bought these directly from Korean stores months ago.

 

Don't remember the old ones. I'll try to remember next time I run into a relevant one. I think the CDC does have a list of studies on masks. Some of them are observational studies and some are much better. All are peer reviewed I believe.

 

It's a freaking mess and it's a bad way to manage a pandemic. I made this argument may be more than a year ago in the other thread...

In the US, it's mostly all local - each state and even each city decide for themselves. Heck, it's now even each school district. When it comes to NPI, the federal response is limited to recommendations, us borders, federal workforce, interstate and international travels, and federal funding.

My basic argument was that a virus doesn't care about borders. The spread and infection rate will eventually be the same everywhere given enough time without a coherent national response, which we can't have in the US.

It's all local and since it's that, then you must then enable locals to do what's best for them.

 

The problem with a pandemic is that it tends not to stay local. Not unless you do like the PRC and actually close down the locality and prevent movement in or out.

That is very difficult to do in the US.

The problem with the US is that there was no national strategy to deal with this. Pandemic in the early days. There wasn't a national standard to get PPE and states ended up fighting with each other and the Federal government. There was no national standard on restrictions. While Minnesota might've had restrictions it was impossible to keep those going as long as ND, SD and IA had little to none and people moved easily and frequently across those states.

 

Well, I'm not even going back to how horrible the US started... if we had a good start and nailed it early (see Taiwan for a great example), we would be in a much better situation but that's long gone.

I would say the expected national strategy was for states to follow federal leadership and CDC guidelines. That went down the toilet pretty quickly.

 

Just saw this. Once again, you are full of ****.