Are neck gaiters worse than no mask at all? | Hacker News Reader

Are neck gaiters worse than no mask at all?

medical.mit.edu

51 pointscarabiner37 comments

While we are on the subject of ineffective masks, please consider reaching out to anyone you know who works at Esty and pressure them to ban "mesh face masks."

Esty is unfortunately being abused to peddle what is effectively a 5 year olds "I'm not touching you" response to mask requirements.

Mesh face masks are stupid. But requiring people to wear something with zero formal requirements is also pretty darn stupid.

I'm no anti-masker, but aren't there legitimate uses for mesh masks? Costumes? Raves? Cosplay? I mean, maybe not during the pandemic, but afterwards? Maybe only the ones display anti-mask messages on them should be banned, and then the other masks that aren't ineffective protection should merely have a warning message displayed to that effect.

A CoC type clause requiring mesh mask listings to be posted with a “Not a Covid preventative mask” type notice seems like it’d make sense. Idk how the implementation of that requirement would go though.

The issue isn't that buyers think they'll prevent Covid.

The issue is that buyers know they're useless against Covid and buy them to thumb their nose at mask requirements.

You used to be able to buy a "solvent trap" which made the job of cleaning a firearm a lot less messy. But 99% of the people who bought them drilled a few holes and converted them to makeshift silencers. Even though they have a perfectly legitimate use case none of the major online platforms will let you list one for sale.

And now people just use mufflers. I'd imagine banning mesh masks on etsy will have a similar usefulness.

Oil filters

Contemporary America has the ability to weaponize even bits of cloth in the culture war.

"Even Fischer expressed dismay at the media’s coverage of his work. “Our intent was not to say this mask doesn’t work, or never use neck gaiters,” he told the New York Times. “This was not the main part of the paper.”

Bottom line? Cover your face. Overall, research shows that two layers of anything are better than one and that fit matters — no face covering will be effective if it’s not snug on your face."

Why have you quoted this bottom line?

It is nice to see a well reasoned response to a paper for once.

It is really a shame how some fields (cold fusion, climate change, now it is anything related to coronaviruses) are so loaded that one cannot published a their research without worrying about how it will be misconstrued by the public

No. Neck gaiters are not worse than no mask at all.

This experiment was discussed many times. There were several flaws in the analysis.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/neck-gaiters-covid-19/

So I initially used Buffs as face masks because they looked cooler than regular face masks and also happened to be more widely available.

After getting my first buff, I noticed that I failed the "blow test" (blowing out a candle with your mask on) when I used a single layer of the buff but _barely_ passed when I folded it over itself. However, the Buff was quite uncomfortable when I did this, so I looked into getting a proper cloth mask. As it happens, the cloth mask is more comfortable and WAY more effective at filtration!

I now use the Buffs on my head when I work out. They're great at absorbing sweat; not as great for preventing the spread of coronavirus.

Unfortunately, football coaches and players still use gaiters on the field (at least the ones I've seen when I've seen games at bars and stuff).

Apparently MIT medical also has a good article on how to choose mask materials.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24757619

i dont know if you meant to, but you just linked to this thread

The link I meant to give.

https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/08/how-do-i-ch...

For fields with a large amount of public interest, are there standards for saying what evidence is actionable and what isn't? It feels like clinical research is the only science that has a clear pipeline between an experiment being completed and evidence accepted as fact in practice.

Does Betteridge's Law of Headlines apply still here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

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