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Do masks save lives?
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amother
Violet


 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 9:28 am
amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:
For all those claiming CA rules are the proof as why SD and masks don't work, I have a bridge to sell you too.
I live here and we are in a huge surge. Worse than NY was last March according to some statistics I read. Hospitals are FULL. No ICU beds. They turned gift shops and some other rooms into patient rooms due to lack of space. And they opened tent hospitals in parking lots.
Why are we in such a surge when we have such crazy rules here? Because people don't follow them. Because they are not enforced. You can have the strictest rules imaginable but if people still have massive parties, have Shabbos meals with guests, get together for play dates.... Yeah, all the rules will not help. Our stores REQUIRE masks but people wear it under their nose, take it off when they think no one is looking... And stores are afraid to kick someone out. We have a massive homeless population that doesn't wear masks but enter stores and panhandle etc. (our government refuses to do anything real about the homeless people... They give them motel rooms that they trash and refuse to leave, they won't force people into shelters, violence goes unchecked...long discussion for a different time.).

My neighbors are a reason why COVID-19 is an issue. One had shabbos meals out a lot, play dates, didn't wear masks well. Well, they got it. The other one had huge parties, shabbos meals etc. not at all social distanced and no masks in sight. One of them got mad at me when I asked him to please wear a mask as he was 2 feet away from me.

It feels like we are the only ones trying. No play dates, no guests over, always wear masks out of our apartment, no shul for 10 months, no camp last summer.



I think your reasoning is flawed because many people in CA are indeed following the rules. So if even 40% are following, why are they haven't it worse than states with no rules at all?

And what about Israel, Italy, France, and Spain? They've all had huge surges well after various restrictions were mandated. How would explain that?
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Jenmom




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 9:31 am
DrMom wrote:
You mean the why didn't we wear masks to prevent things like common colds or the flu? Because the risk was not large enough to warrant it. Not because masks do not reduce the spread of such illnesses.

BTW, some Asian countries mandated masks before covid to reduce the spread of other respiratory diseases, so your claim that mask-wearing is an unprecedented policy is not true.

Now let me ask you something I asked upthread but to which I received no reply:

How do you think covid spreads?


Largely by touch and on surfaces. washing hands frequently would be more effective, but they have stopped focusing on telling people to wash their hands an instead focus on just telling people to wear masks. Breath goes around the side of the entire mask (I know, I wear glasses and they fog up constantly while I wear it) so they are almost useless. The droplets just go in different directions. It does slow the spread of droplets from coughs of people who are actively ill.
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southernbubby




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 10:08 am
amother [ Violet ] wrote:
I think your reasoning is flawed because many people in CA are indeed following the rules. So if even 40% are following, why are they haven't it worse than states with no rules at all?

And what about Israel, Italy, France, and Spain? They've all had huge surges well after various restrictions were mandated. How would explain that?


People are good at dodging restrictions. As was mentioned in an earlier post, NY has a quarantine for people who traveled to non contiguous states but probably it's rarely followed or enforced.
I think that most people who have fragile elderly relatives want anyone who enters their home to wear masks and early in the pandemic, Ukrainians found masks to be working. The US was short on masks for health care workers and decided that any face covering would lessen the spread. It now looks as though only very high quality and high filtration masks really protect the wearer. Both the virus, the masks, and our knowledge has evolved and now Bavaria requires higher quality masks in public places.
The question of saving lives is basically dependant on people to cooperate and they usually don't wear masks 100% of the time that they are around other people.
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weirdo




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 10:42 am
amother [ Apricot ] wrote:
Sorry to break this to you but you were not being careful if you allowed people from outside your immediate family to "stay in by me"


you are 100% right that by doing that it's not called ''being careful''. Can't say more than that you are right!!
The thing is I can only be careful about myself and do what I can do but I don't live on my own and they are things that are not in my control and letting those people in, of course, was not my choice and I had no control on that.

This is btw one thing that this pandemic taught me, CONTROL and RESPONSABILITY. I can only do what I can and they're things that are simply not in my control and I need to let it go.
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amother
Oak


 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 10:46 am
DrMom wrote:
I will ignore the part about people not wearing masks correctly (obviously anything used incorrectly is less effective than something used correctly, so that is not an argument).

As for the rest: Covid is for the most part NOT aerosolized. It spreads mainly through respiratory droplets that are large enough to be blocked by a surgical mask.

Some small amount can also be aerosolized, which is why SD indoors is crucial.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/.....50018

As for your claim that no study has shown masks reduce the spread of covid, that is simply false. I do not see how anybody who actually looked into this issue can say that honesty.

Here is just one example from the Mayo Clinic:

https://www.king5.com/mobile/a.....f0373

I think this study is very thorough in that the researchers measured the transmission of droplets, and also the study does not rely on self-reporting of mask-wearing (which is unreliable).

It is far from the only study coming to the conclusion that masks reduce the spread of covid.

And touching your mask doesn’t reduce its effectiveness unless you poke a hole in it.


A study performed in a lab cannot conclusively show that masks are effective when worn outside of the lab environment. As mentioned, many studies were done both in and out of the lab since China began implementing masks 20 years ago, so I would be curious to compare this study to one of those, however, this wasn’t yet published, just a summary in an article.

Covid spreads both via aerosolized droplets (micro droplets) and larger droplets. https://academic.oup.com/cid/a.....67798

Two recent large studies, in Denmark and the military, showed no decrease in covid rates when comparing 2 similar groups of people in real life settings, with and without masks.

My point about touching your mask is that it spreads germs. Again, medical workers in a sterile environment don't touch things without washing or disinfecting for a reason. As for people wearing masks correctly in general, I believe it's exactly the argument. People behave a certain way in real life settings, so wishing or pretending they were different doesn't change the expected result.
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 10:48 am
amother [ Violet ] wrote:
I think your reasoning is flawed because many people in CA are indeed following the rules. So if even 40% are following, why are they haven't it worse than states with no rules at all?

And what about Israel, Italy, France, and Spain? They've all had huge surges well after various restrictions were mandated. How would explain that?

Here is Israel, we had surges after restrictions were *lifted*.
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Hashem_Yaazor




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 11:02 am
When was mask wearing ever lifted?
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amother
Violet


 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 11:16 am
DrMom wrote:
Here is Israel, we had surges after restrictions were *lifted*.



hasn't there been a surge the past few months with many restrictions in place?
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amother
Coral


 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 11:29 am
amother [ Violet ] wrote:
I think your reasoning is flawed because many people in CA are indeed following the rules. So if even 40% are following, why are they haven't it worse than states with no rules at all?

And what about Israel, Italy, France, and Spain? They've all had huge surges well after various restrictions were mandated. How would explain that?


Have you looked at the difference between Northern California and Southern California. The Bay Area is doing much much better and many people think it’s due to people being more careful about mask wearing
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 11:42 am
Hashem_Yaazor wrote:
When was mask wearing ever lifted?

It wasn't. Other restrictions were lifted, then re-imposed when numbers went up.

Most of the restrictions had to do with allowing gatherings and activity that necessitates person-to-person contact.

(I really don't know what this discussion has to do with mask-wearing, which is just one component of fighting covid.)
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amother
Royalblue


 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 11:45 am
DrMom wrote:
It wasn't. Other restrictions were lifted, then re-imposed when numbers went up.

Most of the restrictions had to do with allowing gatherings and activity that necessitates person-to-person contact.

(I really don't know what this discussion has to do with mask-wearing, which is just one component of fighting covid.)


For some reason whenever there's a discussion about one aspect of covid management, posters inevitably lump together everything else. Masks are NOT lockdowns but not everyone is capable of differentiating.
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southernbubby




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 11:56 am
While it's difficult to absolutely prove something, if an infected person who wore a mask didn't spread the virus to those around him, it might be because of the mask but this would be more anecdotal than proof.
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Hashem_Yaazor




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 11:58 am
DrMom wrote:
It wasn't. Other restrictions were lifted, then re-imposed when numbers went up.

Most of the restrictions had to do with allowing gatherings and activity that necessitates person-to-person contact.

(I really don't know what this discussion has to do with mask-wearing, which is just one component of fighting covid.)

That is exactly my point.
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 12:01 pm
Hashem_Yaazor wrote:
That is exactly my point.

I don't understand. What is your point?

That masks alone aren't enough?

That people don't always comply with rules?

I would agree with both of these statements, BTW.
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Hashem_Yaazor




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 12:05 pm
No, that it's impossible to have clear data about masks' benefit.

One cannot say "restrictions lifted" leads to uptick and then use that to prove masks are therefore what is curbing cases. Masks are irrelevant.

It's impossible to find RCT using masks as the only variable.
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 12:14 pm
Hashem_Yaazor wrote:
No, that it's impossible to have clear data about masks' benefit.

One cannot say "restrictions lifted" leads to uptick and then use that to prove masks are therefore what is curbing cases. Masks are irrelevant.

It's impossible to find RCT using masks as the only variable.

Well, you can't make such an assessment using Israel because mask-wearing was not lifted here. Perhaps you can use data from other locales for such a study.

I think it is a fallacy to say "oh, we can never know if masks help at all." That's nonsense.

For starters, the Mayo Clinic experiment was very controlled and logical, and it clearly showed an impact of masks on covid transmission. It was a good sanity check for a very obvious hypothesis that is 100% consistent with everything we know about the transmission of respiratory illnesses.
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dancingqueen




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 1:16 pm
Yes they protect both the wearer and people around them. In addition, masks are contributing to lower rates of flu and some regular coronaviruses this year, which is a nice side benefit.
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Hashem_Yaazor




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 1:48 pm
DrMom wrote:
Well, you can't make such an assessment using Israel because mask-wearing was not lifted here. Perhaps you can use data from other locales for such a study.

I think it is a fallacy to say "oh, we can never know if masks help at all." That's nonsense.

For starters, the Mayo Clinic experiment was very controlled and logical, and it clearly showed an impact of masks on covid transmission. It was a good sanity check for a very obvious hypothesis that is 100% consistent with everything we know about the transmission of respiratory illnesses.

I think you're misinterpreting my comments on this thread.

I just chimed in about using studies in different regions to see if masks vs no masks made a difference. I'm saying that other than the Denmark one which was about individual benefit to the mask wearer, none have been isolating mask wearing as the only variable. That's all I've said. Israel was brought up, and I was just clarifying that it's irrelevant to the discussion about proving mask wearing. I've been very neutral here, just trying to help posters understand what is involved in finding the data they seek.
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smss




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 4:18 pm
We don't need studies to tell us that covering our nose & mouth (tightly, with preferably a few layers of fabric) will REDUCE the amount of droplets that get out into the air.

About covid being aeorosolized, my understanding is that that primarily happens when you're NOT wearing a mask. The droplets get out into the air, where they evaporate and become aerosolized. This is why YOU wearing a mask when others aren't doesn't do a whole lot, but EVERYONE wearing masks can make a big difference.

But yes, masks should NEVER be thought of as a SUBSTITUTE for social distancing! We implement as many safety measures as we can for the greatest effect.
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amother
Goldenrod


 

Post Sun, Jan 17 2021, 4:20 pm
I saw a good saying on someone's mask

Worn with force not out of fear
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