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Comment by justanotherc | Hacker News Reader

Masks and gloves are ineffective for people who don't know how to use them -- wearing a mask? Great. Now you just felt hot and pulled the mask down onto your chin. Congratulations, the outside of the mask is no longer sterile. You're wearing gloves? Fabulous. Now you're out shopping pushing a cart and you just scratched your nose with your gloves. Cart handle is now contaminated or visa versa and gloves didn't change anything. PPE is only effective under very controlled environments, and the general population doesn't understand this.

The economy will recover, especially since EVERY country is taking a hit, I don't think it will take very long for the capitalist engine to roar back to life. That's the beauty about capitalism -- you're turning the ingenuity of humans loose to be productive. As humans we're great at figuring out how to be productive.

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The effectiveness doesn't need to be perfect. If I'm now only 50% less contagious to others with my no-longer-sterile mask, that's a huge win.

There is a shortage of masks and other PPE because people think that way. There is a cost because if everyone were to wear masks, there is not enough supply for healthcare professionals who could actually benefit from them.

The percentage of effectiveness isn't really measurable if the standard isn't followed. You're assuming its 50%, but it very well could be 0% because your equipment is just as contaminated as your hands. So you have not helped yourself, AND you have decreased supply of essential equipment from someone who ACTUALLY needs it. That's a big fail.

I agree that we shouldn't be taking the supply away from the professionals while there's a shortage, but your statement was that they were ineffective in the hands of laymen, and I don't think that's true.

I'm not assuming that they are 50% effective either, I pulled the 50% number out of my ass, but so is your 0%, and I find it hard to imagine a physical reality where me keeping a 6 feet distance to an infected person decreases my infection probability significantly more than that person wearing a mask. Anecdotally, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, where wearing masks is quite commonplace all seem to be doing better in transmission rate than the Western world, and all that without killing their economies. And considering that we're producing around 2 billion disposable plastic bottles a day, I'd currently bet money that we should be able to ramp up the supply of cheap masks for a sum that's a lot less than that of halting 50% of the Western economy for several months. Obviously, it can't happen in a day, but I'm not really seeing anyone try, except for perhaps Trump after his recent epiphany that Corona is not a Democrats' hoax. I'm willing to be dissuaded by someone who's actually thought it through, but sadly I haven't seen any such analyses.

I'm not an expert on infection control, but I work closely with people who either work in the infection control department of a hospital, or are running their own infection prevention and control consultancy. They live and breathe this, and I am only repeating almost verbatim what they have explained to me. I'm pretty sure they have "thought this through".

So believe what you want, but I'm gonna go with the experts on this, not someone who's only support is his own conjecture lol. They're not even the only ones saying this. Go Google some reputable sources yourself and stop guessing.

Your dismissive tone is uncalled for and not appreciated. Here's a systematic review that cites several studies that find face masks show a statistically significant effect in protection against influenza:

https://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3675.short

If your collaborators can point you to peer-reviewed studies that rebut these results, or to a serious current analysis that shows the impossibility (or estimates the price and time frame) of ramping up PPE production, please post it.

> I'm willing to be dissuaded by someone who's actually thought it through, but sadly I haven't seen any such analyses.

Dismissive tone? Take a look in the mirror pal. I'm done.

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