To Mask or not to two - Mask Megathread cont.

It's not always clear from posts on the thread, if only about the present or the entire pandemic is being discussed.

The point also is that the state is entitled to mandate that you must wear one, should it deem it necessary. And it is doing so for public health reasons - not for the risk to you alone but also the risk to others. This is a misconception repeated constantly on the thread, that people were mandated to wear masks to protect themselves.

I think you credit those folk with too much common sense Mr O.

Just posted again on this on the Booster thread ....

Maybe have a read to get some context .

Not the gotcha you think it is .

Correct!

The analogy was an illustration of attitude by folk who don’t like being told what to do.

They tend to think solely of themselves and not how their actions can affect others.

They tend to be selfish people who seem to think that they are ‘experts’ on everything and vigorously object

to being,as they tend to see it, told to do anything by the State, irrespective of the issue.

Referring to your top quote I never suggested that…..please don’t put words in my mouth.

Your second quoted post is pure rubbish.

we all go to doctors, dentists, electricians, accountants, police who “tell us” what we can do in various situations.

We seek advice from people who are better qualified than us in certain scenarios,who have more information, more training, more knowledge in certain fields than we have.

There are folk of course who don’t like authority and for some warped reason think they know more than the ‘experts’.

You’ll find them in boozers most nights and populating social media sites.

But Lookit… we can carry on.

Hmmm…..

Those earlier studies you are mentioning are not relevant to the mask mandates. If they are the studies previously cited e.g. they showed that cloth masks should not be relied upon by healthcare workers as direct protection against infection. Nobody is disputing that.

Similarly, the sentence you have cherry picked out of the WHO is about direct protection to the wearer.

The WHO recommend masks to suppress transmission.

So if you accept their bona fides in that regard and citing them as an authority, your must accept the bona fide of that statement.

You continually misrepresent the mask mandates as a personal decision re: personal protection.

It was never about that.

It was about suppressing transmission from the mask wearer to others.

Similarly so we had 25,000 cases a day. Could we have had more? Yes.

Our case count now cannot be directly compared due to different levels of vaccination, prior infections, and level of testing.

We need to also consider the possibility that cloth \ surgical masks, while not directly protecting against infection, do offer a different kind ie reduced viral load exposure so that if infected, the infection could be milder.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/07/418181/one-more-reason-wear-mask-youll-get-less-sick-covid-19

LOL...you are back to your 25k cases a day 'evidence'...I thought you finally understood how moronic that particular argument is, I guess not :)

Your entire post is a series of falsehoods.

Hysteria? There was some hysteria on this thread from the "masks will kill you" brigade... hysteria seems to be a slogan now, thrown in as a mantra, without foundation. It seems to be shorthand for "somebody somewhere is showing the slightest bit of concern about covid". This appears to count as hysteria with some posters.

The thread is full of the evidence presented for mask mandates, it was this evidence - following the facts - that lead every major health authority in the world to recommend masks and mask mandates. Now maybe you disagree with the evidence or the benefits but to state it was done purely as theater is without merit or foundation. You haven't even tried to support this with evidence. It could be dismissed without evidence therefore - but in this case, the evidence is there.

It was always about trying to protect people and reduce the strain on the hospital services which we all rely on. Measures such as masks were about bringing down the R number of the virus.

Apart from all the evidence of course:

The use of masks to protect against respiratory infections: An umbrella review - PMC (nih.gov)

An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19 | PNAS

Effectiveness of Mask Wearing to Control Community Spread of SARS-CoV-2 | Infectious Diseases | JAMA | JAMA Network

Still Confused About Masks? Here’s the Science Behind How Face Masks Prevent Coronavirus | UC San Francisco (ucsf.edu)

Again you continue to deliberately misrepresent out of date information / out of context info in a misleading manner.

That information relates to direct protection by the wearer from an infected person.

Mask mandates were about masks as barriers on an infected person.

You continually ignore this point when challenged on it.

That’s probably from the time when the experts were asked to go on the media to say masks don’t work, as there was a shortage for healthcare workers.

It is out dated information taken out of context.

For one thing that was from a time when it was unclear how much spread was fomite / surfaces versus respiratory droplets. It over states the concern re touching masks risk. It is now established primary spread is respiratory.

Surgical masks for example block both on the way in and out - but imperfectly. A health care worker giving close contact care to an infected person is still going to be at high risk of infection. That is reflected in the advice you quoted.

Mask mandates were primarily about containing the droplets at source because eg surgical masks are more effective at blocking the larger droplets expelled rather than directly protecting against inhaling smaller particles.

"Masks may be more effective as a 'source control' because they can prevent larger expelled droplets from evaporating into smaller droplets that can travel farther."

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-about-masks-heres-science-behind-how-face-masks-prevent

This study assesses the evidence for masks as PPE versus 'source control' along similar lines

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2014564118

In this interview Dr.Margery Smelikinson and Dr. Leslie Bienen discuss efficacy of face mask:

They are discussion several studies that prove and disprove the usefulness of masks in controlling the spread of covid -19.

According to them, the more thorough studies that are based on randomised controlled trials did not find masks very effective in reducing transmission levels. They suggest that the media are cherry picking the low quality studies to promote masks and mask mandates.

In one of the study they masked 6 year old and unmasked 5 year old school kids, and found no significant differences in covid transmission.

You keep asking this question of various people while living in a fantasy land ignoring and running away continually from the mountains of evidence available.

If an expert is disagreeing with mountains of evidence, then they need to bring their own backed evidence instead, to save you the trouble of asking stupid questions in the future, people will disagree with them and they will be putting their "expert" credentials at risk.

The examples you've been cheerleading are either misrepresenting evidence or you continually misrepresent what they say (pathetically referring to comments from the beginning of the pandemic).

I posted multiple studies showing how masks work unequivocally, peer reviewed and backed by numerous experts, do you disagree with them the mountains of evidence?

That's not what you've been doing though for the past 3 years, to claim otherwise is quite funny.

Do you disagree with the mountains of evidence provided in multiple studies?

He posts that argument every few weeks and in the meantime Kirk jumps in with his genuine question

" Do you think mask mandate is on the way? "

I guess there's a pattern somewhere..