funnily, I encountered an inspection in a tram where they did check for masks, and masks only. They wrote up personal details of the ones who did not have masks on them.
But this was the only time since the whole thing began and it was this year (when it was arguably already over).
I think this is more about long distance trains and buses, local public transport not crossing state border was already following various local rules which were usually already relaxed.
What is your interpretation of the following quote then?
> The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.
> There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection.
Who is the "believer" in your opinion? The one that after reading the above says "mask don't work" or the person that says "but, masks might still work"
It seems very problematic to provide those quotes without the immediately preceding context:
> There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect.
> Who is the "believer" in your opinion? The one that after reading the above says "mask don't work" or the person that says "but, masks might still work"
In the face of known uncertainty, the only conclusions one can draw are ”masks might work” and “masks might not work”. The person who concludes “masks don’t work” based on this analysis alone did not understand the analysis.
The conclusion seems far closer to “we don’t really know”, than “masks do nothing”.
Thank you for this. Exactly my take but I didn’t write as I’m sick and tired to speak reasons with the worst categories of believers: the ones accusing you of being one while applying their own logic like OP
That highly depends on what you mean by “thing” and how you define “effectively”, but in general, not as far as I can tell?
If we learned tomorrow through some better study with more certain data that masks reduced deaths by X percent, I don’t think you could fairly claim that during the period of time without that information, behaving as if masks did nothing was the same as behaving as if they are effective.
The cost of betting wrong is asymmetrical in the two scenarios.
But consider actual masking practice, rather than the theoretical undertaking.
In practice, they are used in a way that legitimises closer contact (socialising, working, travelling, supporting) than would otherwise be appropriate.
At the point it matters, for example getting to see an elderly relative in hospital, masking isn’t effective enough that it should be counted. Yet it is.
If I was to make a bet, it would be that if masks are eventually identified as being useful, the confounding factor is exactly that they make us increase contact so much that it offsets their entire benefit.
> In practice, they are used in a way that legitimises closer contact (socialising, working, travelling, supporting) than would otherwise be appropriate.
You are seamlessly slipping from a claim of practice back to just a theory.
Those are fine things to speculate about, and lead to some interesting conversations, but these are not practical claims.
One could further speculate that the emotional needs of a deeply social species would have still overridden whatever guidance was given, and in a no-mask world the primary difference might be that some people mentally adjust for a greater degree of perceived risk (and still carry out their planned visit) than they otherwise would have.
If your bet is correct, I think it's necessary to consider more than one dimension of benefit when evaluating the overall scenario, e.g. the benefit of seeing one's loved ones one last time (and similar scenarios) needs to be considered when evaluating which policy would have been better (assuming the impact of a masking policy is roughly equal to the impact of a non-masking policy).
The hyperbole of that designation aside, it is still just as likely to be directionally correct as it was before.
Even if this meta-analysis was available during the peak of the pandemic, refusing to wear masks while knowing there is as much reason to believe they work as there is to believe they don’t still paints a pretty unflattering picture of the person making that decision, considering the relatively low cost (across all notions of cost) of just taking the precaution until we have more solid info.
This remains true even if we prove down the road that masks did/do nothing.
That isn’t to say that I endorse the social behavior or the absolutism displayed by both “sides” of this topic. That’s a separate issue that is orthogonal to the pandemic itself, and continues to unfold.
I'm not sure that I understand what you are arguing here. Assuming there is no masking policy, the act of not wearing a mask is no longer a signal that someone is more or less cautious than someone else. This is assuming that accompanying that policy is a general public sentiment that masks are not effective.
The act of wearing a mask despite no policy would indicate greater caution, but the inverse is not obviously true.
It seems the existence of a masking policy, public knowledge about the implications of exposure, and the presumption that masks provide some mitigation are all things that are required to then make some conclusion about whether or not the unmasked person across the room is relatively un-cautious.
> There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection.
Masks have worked in Asia for decades now. They "don't work" only because a certain spolitical segment in the US has made it into a political dog whistle. And they "don't work" only in the US for that reason.
who wears masks in Asia for sickness besides Japan? most of the masked people in Asia wear them to protect themselves from extremely polluted air where these masks can work against wrote big particles compared to viruses and obviously people in clean Europe and relatively clean US no need to wear them to breathe clean air, which is luxury especially in China and India
No, they are not. I've lived in China for years and only very small minority of people worn masks against pollution prior COVID. I've also travelled all around Vietnam for weeks and it was extremely rare to see someone wearing mask prior COVID (even more rare than in China). So stop this misinformation about decades of their use in Asia (outside Japan) for health reasons. You sound like someone who never been to Asia and just repeats nonsense read somewhere.
So yeah.