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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.
Wearing masks is one of those things that only works some of the time and probably don't scale all that well. Different illnesses spread easier/harder to start with; COVID was so prolific, considering how naive everyone's immune system was, that masks hardly put a dent it in. Concerning scaling, preventing disease transmission takes a fair amount of effort, and simply throwing a mask on while continuing to do everything that you would have otherwise done is definitely not going to cut it at scale.
But of course masks can and do help reduce the spread of disease if used diligently and in conjunction with other efforts. My family got together, all in one house, for a couple weeks around Thanksgiving. My sister showed up sick (not COVID; she had bought the plane ticket months in advance), and my mom is immunocompromised. My sister mostly isolated herself in a bedroom (working from home) and wore a mask whenever she came out until she got over it. My mom also put on a mask when she was likely to be in the same room as my sister for a nontrivial amount of time. Thankfully, no one else caught whatever she had.
Is this actually why most of the people that you're seeing in public have masks? Almost certainly not. But it probably does explain some percentage. Would be difficult to find out what percentage that is.
"masks" (or at least the ones everyone wears) do not stop or slow the spread of respiratory diseases; I wouldn't be surprised if something like a P100 respirator had some effect on respiratory illnesses, but as far as I know this isn't studied and certainly not at scale
if they "of course" did, it would be easy to find a strong statistically significant effect and yet when people try to do that they don't find it unless the "study" is helplessly compromised and manipulated
the best studies do not find this effect; the most they can do is find a weak effect which is washed out by any number of intentional or unintentional issues with the study themselves
Your "COVID is the only thing that matters" or "I only discovered this topic because of COVID" bias is showing. You do know that you can search Google Scholar for pre-2019 papers, right? Example
covid isn't the only respiratory disease and non-covid illnesses are included in this cochrane review of physical interventions to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses which includes quite a few papers from before 2019, e.g., the exact paper you're linking in your comment
I guess it's a good thing the selected group to conduct the review knows about google scholar
You know that you can search for pre-2019 papers, right? Citing a post-COVID review is likely shot through with motivation, one way or the other. In any event, that funnel plot looks pretty funnel-y, in the direction of a small benefit. Not surprising, given the wide array of different situations/interventions/adherence that they're having to muddle through in this type of meta-review. My position is vastly smaller in scope and cannot be dismissed by simply citing such a large agglomerating meta-review. Masks/quarantining/such can have a small effect of reducing risks in small, discrete settings. That is saying nothing about widespread use, which is rife with all sorts of weird interactions, adherence effects, etc. We don't have to say anything about that mess of a problem to be able to say, "If your sister is sick, do you think you're more likely to catch the disease from her if you both just stay at your respective houses all week, or if she comes over and sleeps in your bed with you all week?" We don't need to say anything about that big mess of a problem to say, "If your sick sister comes over for a few hours, does wearing a mask for the short period of time and washing hands help your probability a little bit over hugging and kissing?"
The Cochrane review is nice because it lists a large bulk of articles, even excluded ones, which are cited for easy reading if you're inclined.
I'm sure there is motivation, for e.g., the main author on the paper you linked has received grants and worked as as consultant for 3M corporation, the largest maker of masks in the United States at the time. Did you know that? Did that make you think the paper was "shot through with motivation"?
Lucky for us, the list has other papers with the listed outcomes for you to look at which are pre-2019 and you can read them past the abstract.
this tends to happen when the passable positive studies find weak evidence of weak effects
when you're at the point when you're relying on a bundle of unseparated actions to make an "but of course ___" statement about any particular one let alone trying to pass off as a fair comparison masks vs kissing each other, you're at best just over your skis
in any case, thanks for the dialogue
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