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So... it's nearly 2024. Why are there still a noticeable amount of Americans wearing Covid masks everywhere they go? I traveled in Europe recently and I saw essentially ZERO masking. When I did see a mask it was obviously an Asian or American tourist. (And yes, Americans are easy to spot. North Face jackets are a dead giveaway).
Seriously, the rate of masking was below 0.1%. I'm not sure I saw a single French person wearing one.
Yet, here in Seattle, I still see Covid masks everywhere. On the plane, on the train,
in a box, with a fox, at the movie theater, at the opera, at the grocery store, driving alone in a car (why?), riding a scooter on the fucking sidewalk, etc.. I'd estimate indoor masking rates are like 5% still. Are people in Seattle this mentally ill? Why is there such a difference between Europe and my corner of the US?Maybe they have a cold/flu and don't want to infect others?
I seriously wish that habit from Japan would reach Europe.
I don't buy it. Everyone was wearing masks everywhere for two years and everyone still got Covid.
There's certainly no high-quality evidence that masks work, and that's remarkable considering just how hard they were being pushed.
But let's consider another possibility. What if large scale mask wearing actually increases disease burden? It's not just a binary of works/doesn't work. It's a trinary of works/doesn't work/is harmful.
What do you mean by "evidence that masks work"?
Surely there's no meaningful doubt that COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, primarily entering through the nose and mouth, and the chance of infection increases with the number of virus particles (likely saturating at some point). Nor that N95+ or equivalent masks block the vast majority of such particles. Similarly, we also are pretty sure at this point that telling a population "wear a mask" has minimal public health benefits, since I hope we can agree that masks have no effect when not worn. To me, the non-obvious parts seem to be:
My big problem is almost noone wears N95. They wear nearly useless paper masks.
Wracking my brain, I recall a worker at Home Depot who wears an N95 and it looks properly fitted, not that you can truly tell by looking. Pretty much every other masker isn't wearing an N95.
Interesting. That's definitely different from my observations. I rarely see paper masks outside of medical offices (some of which still give them away and require masking) where they are definitely the most common type of mask. But elsewhere, I think KN95s are, although N95s aren't far behind. The rest are ones I just can't identify, which may be useless cloth masks, or the occasional paper mask. I'm occasionally tempted to straight-up walk up to those people and ask them (while I'm wearing my N95) why they are wearing an uncomfortable ineffective mask when there's no mandate, but I've never done so. (I don't think I've ever seen an airgami or P100 in the wild, although I've seen friends use them.)
(Of course, the vast majority of people I encounter in public outside of masks-required situations aren't wearing any mask at all; I'm not trying to imply mask wearing is at all common.)
My local distribution:
Almost everyone: no mask.
Most maskers: paper or cloth.
The select few elite amongst the maskers: N95.
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