What the experts told the public about wearing a mask

[Deleted member 21371]

Travellor, show me the "on the ground" evidence. See graphs above, what happened to covid cases after 24th July 2020 when masks were made mandatory?

Lets see what our chief medical officer thinks....

England’s chief medical officer has warned the public wearing face masks will do little to combat the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

Professor Chris Whitty told Sky News on Wednesday that wearing a face mask had almost no effect on reducing the risk of contracting the illness.

Prof Whitty said: “In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that.”

“The only people we do sometimes use masks for are people who have got an infection and that is to help them to stop it spreading around," he added.

Don't wear face masks in response to coronavirus, says chief medical officer

Chris Whitty instead advises people to regularly wash their hands

www.independent.co.uk

So, you agree, if you are infected, wearing a mask will indeed reduce transmission?
Thank you for agreeing with that at least.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Allanah,

I don't understand what you are saying.

On the one hand you say "Scientists work with the information and evidence they have" at the time. OK

On the other hand you said "they knew next to nothing about the virus and how is transmitted". OK

If both of those statements are correct, then how were the "scientists" able to make ANY claims or offer ANY advice to the public about face masks? -- if as you say, at the time they knew nothing about it and could only work to the information they had at the time, which was next to nothing?

Doesn't sound like science to me...

I think we are all saying use current knowledge.
If you quite from years ago, and ignore the actual advances made, you can probably find anything on the internet to support you.
And if you admit you don't understand this, and don't understand thinking advances as we discover more, that says enough as well.
Science is about discovering new facts, not about looking back at mistakes. That's history. Build, grow better and wiser.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Hi Travellor,

My point there, was just that they knew nothing about the effectiveness of face masks back then, but still were happy to give out advice to the public. Surely, a more professional approach in those circumstances is to not say anything when you don't know anything, or just admit you don't know and leave it at that.

I'd still like to see the "on the ground" evidence of the effectiveness of the introduction of mandatory face masks. See my post above about the introduction of face masks on the 24th July 2020 and the huge spike in covid cases following it.

It doesn't show any spike at all, The rate of infection decreases as you have shown.
Many other actual studies show a decrease as well.
So, I think that proves masks work.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

I'm not saying you need to be right before you move. Quite the opposite, they shouldn't be advising the public on the not wearing a mask when they didn't have the data to prove that. Better to not say anything or just say they don't know.

I didn't miss quote you, I quoted you "" correctly. e.g "they knew next to nothing". Please re-read it's shown in quotations. My comment was paraphrased (missing out "next"), not a quote.

To be honest, if you need to massage quotes, and change them (sorry, "paraphrase) by totally rewriting out of context, it never looks an argument winner.
You are an anti masker. You're in a very low minority.
I think we need the thread reviewed by the moderators now.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Cases go up day after day after day following introduction of masks on 24th July, look where they get up to by September?

Masks weren't the only thing that happened over the summer.

Looking at this graph, I think one could make a case for it being eat out to help out in August (which I also doubt was especially bad):

COVID-19 Data Explorer

Explore global data on COVID-19.

ourworldindata.org

Zooming in, it looks like numbers were increasing from July 19 rather than July 24.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

only that after they were introduced, there was no evidence they made any notable difference

Yes, I'm inclined to agree with that. (Someone might argue that during summer masks might well be less significant since people are outdoors more.) More generally, the world has really sucked at producing good evidence on lots of NPI. (And pharmaceutical interventions, for that matter.)

Maybe for masks you'd want lots of test capacity (to test a town population regularly, for example) and maybe by the time we had that it was too late to run a mask trial? And likely somewhere in Asia couldn't do one (despite having lots of testing) because masks would be something they'd automatically be using.

(So all we're left with is things like that Danish study showing that as an intervention for protecting the mask wearer it's not especially effective. Worth having but not the question most PH people were that interested in.)

 

[Bruce Stephens]

and like you suggested, we've hardly got any on the ground "town population" studies of their effectiveness like the one you mentioned.

No. Maybe we could have done. (Similarly, should children wear masks in schools? Presumably that could have been trialled.) But it's probably too late, now.

 

[Maca44]

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[Deleted member 21371]

Darwinism

 

[Eddy Edson]

This is the corpus of mask evidence as of Nov 2020, according to the CDC:

Data regarding the “real-world” effectiveness of community masking are limited to observational and epidemiological studies.

• An investigation of a high-exposure event, in which 2 symptomatically ill hair stylists interacted for an average of 15 minutes with each of 139 clients during an 8-day period, found that none of the 67 clients who subsequently consented to an interview and testing developed infection. The stylists and all clients universally wore masks in the salon as required by local ordinance and company policy at the time.32
• In a study of 124 Beijing households with > 1 laboratory-confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 infection, mask use by the index patient and family contacts before the index patient developed symptoms reduced secondary transmission within the households by 79%.33
• A retrospective case-control study from Thailand documented that, among more than 1,000 persons interviewed as part of contact tracing investigations, those who reported having always worn a mask during high-risk exposures experienced a greater than 70% reduced risk of acquiring infection compared with persons who did not wear masks under these circumstances.34
• A study of an outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an environment notable for congregate living quarters and close working environments, found that use of face coverings on-board was associated with a 70% reduced risk.35
• Investigations involving infected passengers aboard flights longer than 10 hours strongly suggest that masking prevented in-flight transmissions, as demonstrated by the absence of infection developing in other passengers and crew in the 14 days following exposure.36,37

Seven studies have confirmed the benefit of universal masking in community level analyses: in a unified hospital system,38 a German city,39 a U.S. state,40 a panel of 15 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.,41,42 as well as both Canada43 and the U.S.44 nationally. Each analysis demonstrated that, following directives from organizational and political leadership for universal masking, new infections fell significantly. Two of these studies42,44 and an additional analysis of data from 200 countries that included the U.S.45 also demonstrated reductions in mortality. An economic analysis using U.S. data found that, given these effects, increasing universal masking by 15% could prevent the need for lockdowns and reduce associated losses of up to $1 trillion or about 5% of gross domestic product.42

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

CDC provides credible COVID-19 health information to the U.S.

www.cdc.gov