In defiance of all previous medical experience, the Covid “pandemic” has muzzled the population with bank-robber masks, driven families asunder, forced elderly couples to die apart, punished schoolchildren with the false promise of “remote learning,” made Americans eye each other with suspicion and sidle away, and created a near-Stasi level of rats and snitches only too happy to inform on their fellow citizens.
I like the people who drive by themselves in their cars wearing a mask. The mask, by the way, protects others from you.
Scientific research found in early summer that the mask also protects the wearer from CoVid-19 infection. Decades before that, already knew that such personal protective equipment protects hospital workers from disease. What about CoVid-19?
ReplyDeleteA tough issue when a scientific experiment is to be ethical, is that if the hypothesis is something like, "Masks protect the wearer from CoVid-19," you cannot just expose mask wearers and a control group of non-mask wearers to the virus, without having a quick cure at ready, which there is none still. Otherwise, given enough subjects to make conclusions, knowing what we already know, the study would probably result in deaths.
The mask research was done in 2 ways or parts. The first is in knowing how the virus travels through the air, person-to-person, by droplet and aerosol which, like second-hand smoke, can remain in still air for hours. Studying or recreating that in a lab, using masks and dummies, how do droplets and aerosols behave when a breather has a mask on? This leads to common sense, but not scientific findings. We can say nothing more than that such PPE protects hospital workers from much disease.
For those of us outside a lab, street research tells us, that if you put a mask on, and walk by smelly garbage barrels or second hand smoke, you can still smell it, the aerosol getting into your lungs, but just not as badly as getting a full blast of it. This way, we come to understand the common sense tenet that masks block much of some aerosols. However, this can lead scientists only to hypothesize, that it would be so for the CoVid-19. And the questions still would remain, that even if it is so, (1) does the mask block CoVid-19 to a similar degree as garbage and smoke aerosol, and (2) is that enough to protect the wearer in the case of CoVid-19?
The second is after the fact studies (in lieu of unethical experimentation), looking at how and where the virus spread. This explains the delay in scientists coming to the conclusion that masks protect the wearer too.
A note on herd immunity and starving out the virus, knowing what we know. If all at once, 60-70% of the population had the virus, it would die out, because there would be no one handy for the virus to spread to. This would mean that following this, millions of US residents would die in a CoVid-19 holocaust. Call it a freedom holocaust, rather than a concentration camp one, or call it a herd immunity holocaust. The suffering and death would still be as extreme in bedrooms as in concentration camps.
What brings this herd-immunity percentage down is mask wearing. It is also brought down by vaccination. It's all about percentages. We would not even need a vaccine if everyone wore a mask. How simple and Constitutional is that? We do not allow people to go without shirts and shoes in some public places, or piss in the streets, or shoot roulette-loaded guns in malls. Why would we ever allow people to walk around without masks during a pandemic that has already claimed nearly 400,000 of since just March?
In order for a vaccine to take the place of the herd immunity holocaust, tens or hundreds of millions of us would have to accept vaccination all at once, preferably the same month. Otherwise, if not enough of us had the vaccine, the virus would still be spreading, and then the vaccine would wear off, and those vaccinated would be again susceptible.
What scientific research might that be? Please cite. The virus is exceedingly small. It would pass right through a mask. The mask protects against bodily fluids wherein the virus might be. The wearer’s bodily fluids.
ReplyDeleteHi Frank, Very recently, and to show the impact that masks have on aerosol transmission, here is a link: Effectiveness of Face Masks in Preventing Airborne Transmission of SARS-CoV-2. But we've known for months from the studies. Those studies, being months old, have become common knowledge, so I did not keep links to the earliest ones. Anyone can google for them. And I just bumped into this one: Masks Do More Than Protect Others During COVID-19: Reducing the Inoculum of SARS-CoV-2 to Protect the Wearer, which discusses that the better the mask, the less the symptoms, if and when the virus is contracted. It's all percentages. The more masks, the less people infected, the less the infected people get organ damage and such. Recent studies also show that contracting CoVid-19, not only indeed damages the heart, and is apt to damage kidneys, but is apt to lead to anxiety disorders and depression. This is one horrific virus.
ReplyDeleteRead the first link a little more closely: "Airborne simulation experiments showed that cotton masks, surgical masks, and N95 masks provide some protection from the transmission of infective SARS-CoV-2 droplets/aerosols; however, medical masks (surgical masks and even N95 masks) could not completely block the transmission of virus droplets/aerosols even when sealed."
ReplyDeleteDroplets, just as I said. Sunlight — more specifically, Ultraviolet B — kills the Covid virus in the open air. Under lab conditions, UV B has been found to kill it on surfaces within 6.8 minutes. Fifty percent of those who become infected with Covid-19 are asymptomatic. Ninety percent of those who become sick get well.
Of course, one is entitled to believe whomever and whatever one wants. Having done a bit of science and medical editing in my time I prefer to do my own research and draw my own conclusions. Given the government's record over the years when it came to diet guidelines, I certainly take anything any government spokesman says with more than a pinch of salt. SARS-CoV-2 is not, as it has been billed, the return of the Black Death.
Oh, and I do wear a mask when I enter a store and I keep a proper distance and use the hand-cleaners when provided. Otherwise, I walk all over town mostly mask-free. I am in my 80th year and so far am Covid-free. But then, I've never had the flu either. And this is all I shall have to say on the matter. Amen, amen, amenissimen.
More on this out today from BMJ: Covid-19: controversial trial may actually show that masks protect the wearer
DeleteSince you have done some medical editing, please note '...could not completely block the transmission of virus droplets/aerosols even when sealed.' Even some protection is certainly better than none at all.
ReplyDeleteI guess so. I also guess I'm one of those shallow people who doesn't unduly worry about things. As I've pointed out, I take common-sense precautions, but Covid-19 does not seem to be any worse than the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic, which didn't stop Woodstock from taking place. I am just not inclined to panic because the government and they media tell me I should. But as I say, believe as you wish and do as you care to. History will presumably clear the matter up eventually.
DeleteBTW, I have always thought that viruses do not leave the body on their own, but piggyback, so to speak, on droplets or aerosols.So their size is not relevant to the mask discussion.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand your point, Frank, about not having had the flu.You are not the only person to walk the planet.
Oh, there are loots of people who have never had the flu. There was just a study done about it. One hypothesis is that they did contract it once, probably when young, had few or no symptoms and are immune. My point was simply that maybe that explains why I haven;t got Covid. No profound pronouncement was intended. I haven't got much else in my life either. Luck me. So far. In my case it could easily be that no respecting microbe will have anything to do with me. Microbes can enter the air through airborne particles when an infected person sneezes or coughs.
ReplyDeleteHi Frank,
ReplyDeleteWhat's better therapy for an ill retired guy like me? This discussion is also quite interesting and quite important. So thanks.
I'm not sure you realize that you shored up my point, and I did so too, when I responded to your request for the science behind the benefits of mask-wearing to the wearer -- a benefit that is now hammered clear in this discussion thread. Refer to the street research I suggested with garbage fume and cigarette smoke, to see that the science agrees with the street experience. Yes, you are correct, that all aerosols are not equal, and that the CoVid-19 one is especially insidious, even a bit worse than second-hand smoke -- I never said it wasn't. This also means that it hangs in the air longer than the smoke. Again, your point simply qualifies my more general statement, and further explains why the percentages never become 100% protection. Lee then gives a terrific abstract summary saying, "Even some protection is certainly better than none at all." That's clearer than my saying that it is all percentages. We all agree after all.
But step in further, and if there ever becomes a study to show that we three have been wrong, that it turns out masks do next to nothing against the aerosol -- this would create an argument for lockdown, which has worked in New Zealand, yet not quite as well in Victoria. The problem with Australia is that of allowing the virus to spread from other areas. It's like having the now proverbial peeing section in a pool.
We know how requiring people to wear clothing or even certain clothing, like seat belts in a car, is altogether Constitutional -- a point made in my initial response with other examples. In the case of a lockdown, we similarly know that curfew is Constitutional, an act that some governors are considering, in large part because of the issue of people not wearing masks. There must be emergency with lockdown, and it is not done at the federal level.
Is there such a dire emergency? Let's consider today's death count tally of 253,382, mostly all from March to this month, with an understandable lag in data collection. What we do is divide that by 0.67 to come up with a figure that more agrees with the excess deaths in the USA during the CoVid-19 period. This yields the horrific death toll of nearly 380,000 US residents.
There is serious concern that excess deaths are about to climb significantly, because there will be more and more people dying who needed to be under hospital care, but there is no room. This makes the ongoing emergency clear, that if so many people (percentages again) refuse to wear masks, a lockdown is the only safe action, even if a neighboring state allows the peeing in the pool to continue.
Number qualifications. . . .
DeleteSo many dead from hospitals not having room, is different from those who are, for instance, having a heart atttack, but do not go to the hospital lest they contract the virus, not understanding that they are about to die -- a profile already considered in the 0.67 factor.
That said, where the 0.67 factor can increase (which would lessen today's 378K estimate), a factor established using data through the end of July I think it was, is if there is an increase in test rates -- which seems to be the case. This would mean that many of those dead who would have been hidden from the count in early summer, are accounted for nowadays. The difference between the 378K excess dead and the 253K counted dead, include those who have had a false negative, and those who never got tested. The reason I say that it "seems" to be the case, is that the new numbers seem to include an uptick in younger people dying of the virus, a group of people who might not have gotten tested earlier in the year. This phenomenon might also be explained by the morphing of the virus. And whoever they are, many people who were refusing tests earlier, or for other reasons not getting tested, may be getting more recently, thus adding to the death count.
And here an interesting study about mask wearing, which indicates just how complex the issue can be (and why the lay reader has to be extremely careful in interpreting the available data, and attacking experts/scientists who have likely spent years learning how to do so):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
It is crucial to remember that a reader must always ask what a study doesn't show, as well as what it does.
Hi Lee,
DeleteI'm reading the study, thinking that it really is a non-study. It's not scientific, and if you disagree, it certainly is no experiment. And then I get to the limitation section, in full:
Limitation:
Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.
Exactly all of that and more. The very subjects had to agree to exposure, which first of all makes it an unethical observational study, if that's what it's trying to be, but furthermore, makes these agreeable subjects precisely the ones who would sabotage the study, even if absentmindedly, or through not understanding how strictly the study requires them to follow though -- for instance being sure the mask is well fitted to the face, and certainly not (ever) worn under the nose or chin. Whether any given reader agrees with me, these subjects were not randomly selected as a whole, only by grouping, and the target group is only one of convenience, without apology and thus no adjustment to allow for the descrepecies that would have come, in that what this entire group needs is a real control group, but again, that would be unethical.
It's starts off saying, "Observational evidence suggests that mask wearing mitigates transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is uncertain if this observed association arises through protection of uninfected wearers (protective effect), via reduced transmission from infected mask wearers (source control), or both.
Here's a well-done study from late August: Face mask use in the Community for Reducing the Spread of COVID-19: a systematic review It's a meta-analysis and review of different research types. It says, "It seems that all types of masks reduce the viral exposure, even though the levels of protection, in terms of reduction of susceptibility to infection in the wearer, are probably lower for some materials (i.e., cloth masks), to the extent that they do not effectively protect against infectious aerosols."
Drop down further, and after mentioning a 49-country study done by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control it says, "The results of this ecological study and of the individual-level studies included in the review are in line with our findings, supporting the use of face masks for reducing the transmission and acquisition of respiratory viral infections in the community."
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