Comment by vlovich123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vlovich123 | Hacker News Reader

Took a bit of searching to find Paul’s statement where he claims to have support from studies. Does anyone know which studies these are?

> A Danish study of 6000 participants found that wearing a surgical mask did not significantly reduce a person's risk of COVID-19 infection, compared to the risks facing those who did not wear masks.

> And a Vietnamese study of 1600 participants found that cloth masks allow for 97% penetration of particles. This study also found that cloth mask wearers had a higher rate of infection than the control group who wore no masks.

What’s interesting is this (intentional or otherwise) game being played with terminology. Mask proponents are arguing cloth masks reduce the R0 of the virus and less so about your own personal risk. Mask opponents seem to be saying “but it doesn’t change your own personal chances of infection” which may be true but is a weird way to look at controlling a pandemic. It’s also weird to me that some studies would conclude that cloth masks have a negative impact on your personal infection. Is the theory that coronavirus particles somehow just get trapped in the cloth?

There is a portion of the population who believes that if you've already been infected, then having a mask over your face just causes you to reinfect yourself over and over again.

Not sure why you were downvoted. I know people who hold that view.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/

(hope i dont get banned for 7 days)

Making all drivers wear helmets, or all cars and trucks have giant nerf bumpers would save lives, too, but like masks, these are ridiculous given the extremely small (though very grave) risks involved. Both wearing a mask and vaccination are only be moral if they are voluntary. (And that is especially true with a completely new kind of never-before-tried "vaccine"...)

One mechanism could be that masks cause a false sense of security that increases risk overall—even if each interaction is slightly less risky.

A lot of people think masks are very effective.

"A lot of people think masks are very effective"

And they are free to make YouTube videos saying so. A US Senator, trained in medicine, is not allowed to opine otherwise, and is in fact banned from saying _anything_ on their platform for a week. It's punishing him in addition to silencing him. A lot of people find this very problematic.

That Danish study only had about 120 people infected overall (and over 1000 drop out of the study midway). So it's not really N=6000, it's N=120, which is tiny.

The evidence from RCTs is way too preliminary to draw any conclusions. The best evidence so far is from studies that directly measure whether a mask can block aerosols, and those results are very compelling.

We do need more and larger RCTs though.

There is no game, this is normal standard information not being understood. Information asymmetry.

1. Everyone assumes they have the same level of understanding as themselves.

2. Everyone assumes some protection is better than no protection - while this makes sense on paper, it also can encourage more social behavior, which then increases risk of infection.

3. Cloth masks do absorb, and can retain liquid which means it could increase rate of infection assuming the mask is not cleaned daily or replaced.

I'm pro mask, simply because it hides my face and in this world that was something outside of Asia I would get double/triple looks for.

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