The return of the cloth masks (radio, March, doctor, world)
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It’s also a lie that killed people and continues to kill people. How many people infected with COVID have went out and exposed others while wearing a mask, thinking that they were “protecting” themselves and others? Countless.
Exactly, it gave certain people a false sense of confidence. Not to mention, required healthy people to wear masks and spread fear and paranoia.
We learned during the spanish flu pandemic that masks don't work. Why we needed to relearn this lesson 100 years later is beyond me.
I have/had no issues recommending masks in 2020 as a "we have nothing else" approach. What I always had issues was lying to the general public that science supported masking to reduce transmission, it did no such thing. Public health messaging in 2020-2023 implied that masking was well backed by science. This was and still is a lie.
Public health officials should not be permitted to lie to drive behaviors they want.
At least you are speaking in real time terms.
It was quite obvious early on that risks of infection were increased in closed in areas with more people. I don't think that any medical professional, save a researcher, is going to tell their patients in 2020 not to try and avoid those situations, and mask if they can. Even more so in direct medical care areas.
Of course 2023 is very different, and medically very close to normal.
Remember the Ebola outbreak? Do you think a cheap blue mask would've stopped that?
Medical workers were in full hazmat suits and STILL caught it.
With Ebola masks are more for preventing the spread from those infected. But no doubt that Ebola controls evolved similar to the Covid Pandemic. Until matters are known, we have to be extra cautious. Luckily the Covid virus evolved into more benign variants, and the world gaining relative herd immunity was not persistently calamitous. But in 2020 we did not yet know that with enough certainty to tell the public at large not to be concerned.
It was quite obvious early on that risks of infection were increased in closed in areas with more people. I don't think that any medical professional, save a researcher, is going to tell their patients in 2020 not to try and avoid those situations, and mask if they can. Even more so in direct medical care areas.
Of course 2023 is very different, and medically very close to normal.
Recommending masks is not the same thing as lying saying the science has shown masks to be beneficial.
Recommending masks is not the same thing as lying saying the science has shown masks to be beneficial.
Early on there were studies to demonstrate enough improvement to recommend masking. As the virus evolved and became significantly more transmissible, and more significant herd immunity was approached, the general recommendations for masking waned. But for 2020, no medical entity will be telling people simple masking should be avoided at all costs.
Early on there were studies to demonstrate enough improvement to recommend masking. As the virus evolved and became significantly more transmissible, and more significant herd immunity was approached, the general recommendations for masking waned. But for 2020, no medical entity will be telling people simple masking should be avoided at all costs.
Mining observational data sets, and cherry picking results, are not scientific studies. Scientific studies are and always have been clinical or cluster randomized trials. There were 72 clinical/cluster randomized trials done on masking and influenza, and they were all basically null, no effect. This is why CDC guidelines on masks, up to 2020, has always been there is no scientific evidence behind them working.
All the links in the Jama article are just case studies. These case studies were cherry picked. The cases where people wearing masks and got infected were not included. The cases where people were wearing masks and transmission were low were included.
As a self reported medical professional, you should know why not to base your clinical practice on case studies. But regardless, case studies are not in any way sufficient to say there is scientific evidence behind masking. And they specifically repeated over and over again that the science on masking was clear. It was clear, just in the opposite way they wanted it to be.
What some (perhaps many) don't realize is several designs for sewing cloth masks included a pocket so an additional *non woven* layer or 2 could be inserted and changed out. Non woven layers were what increased blocking capability of a fabric mask. Various materials were used in that layer; one such material used was a HEPA filter, and there were instructions on how to do that.
When the medical community asked for sewists to make masks for them to use, they provided patterns and detailed instructions. Those instructions included the pocket to add a 3rd layer, a layer which they advised they'd be adding at their medical facilities, before distributing the masks to staff.
I'm a sewist, and I made a few fabric masks (with pocket for addition of a filter) and I got the pattern and instructions from the medical community. They were what was available when the N95s and KN95s were not yet available.
Perfect? Absolutely not. The idea was add some mitigation and better blocking. However, nothing is as good as a P99 or P100 respirator.
Mining observational data sets, and cherry picking results, are not scientific studies. Scientific studies are and always have been clinical or cluster randomized trials. There were 72 clinical/cluster randomized trials done on masking and influenza, and they were all basically null, no effect. This is why CDC guidelines on masks, up to 2020, has always been there is no scientific evidence behind them working.
All the links in the Jama article are just case studies. These case studies were cherry picked. The cases where people wearing masks and got infected were not included. The cases where people were wearing masks and transmission were low were included.
As a self reported medical professional, you should know why not to base your clinical practice on case studies. But regardless, case studies are not in any way sufficient to say there is scientific evidence behind masking. And they specifically repeated over and over again that the science on masking was clear. It was clear, just in the opposite way they wanted it to be.
Case studies are but one part of the equation. More important early in the Pandemic are experience and common sense. It simply takes too long to do a double blinded controlled medical study to arrive at some perfectly created scientific result when people are dying all over the world from a novel airborne virus. While things were brewing China and Italy, we did get some good stuff. But we didn't have enough reasons to take significant action until March of 2020. Why were you not here posting at that time?
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