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I remain disappointed that so many people have huddled around mask wearing as such a significant political symbol. I was hoping the US would adopt a mask culture similar to what Japan has, where wearing a mask is common for people that have the sniffles but need to go out and get groceries, and its not weird to put a mask on when you are on the train with a bunch of gross randos.
Instead we are getting kindof the opposite, where its mainly hypochondriacs wearing masks in public and sick people wont wear them because they dont wanna look like a pussy. pretty lame all around.
I was inclined to agree circa April 2020, but I think that we've since run massive natural experiments and found out that masks basically don't matter to any meaningful extent, short of wearing tight fitting respirators. Every time I see someone still wearing a cloth mask, I wonder at just how bad their information diet is.
I specifically want sick people to wear masks, masks do block particulate matter from coughs and the like. I don't wanna dig up the mask horse but i don't recall reading anything that said "masks don't work, throw em out", just various things about masks middling efficacy at stopping covid. All the masking and social distancing meanwhile basically ended the flu for a few years, i feel like theres something to be gleaned from that and it isn't "fuck masks" imo.
Weird how masks destroyed the flu and yet all the pre-COVID studies showed poor results for masking against influenza. Or how Asian countries with cultures of mask-wearing pre-COVID did not "destroy the flu". I wonder if there were other things going on in 2020 that were not going on in other years.
none of that means that masks are a bad prophylactic for generally slowing down the spread of respiratory infections that spread by coughing.
Even assuming that people actually cough into their well sealed "KN95 respirator" (eww), what proof do we have that those respiratory infections actually spread by coughing and the relatively larger sized particles?
eww? my friend, when someone coughs on the bus its eww for everyone, my point is that the person who is coughing should have as much of the cough localized to them as possible. yes eww, but it's the guy who's coughing thats gross to begin with.
What are you asking for here, studies that show that the particulate from coughs can contain viruses? That you can catch a cold by being coughed on?
im not saying that if we adopted voluntary masking at 100% uptake the cold would be gone, im saying that i bet it would reduce the spread of cough-transmitted sickness.
Then why the complete lack of studies showing that before 2020?
i that the case? Heres one from 2010 https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/201/4/491/861190
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