Mitigation is not a binary thing. If a temperature sensor is somewhat inaccurate, but can still identify outliers (even with false positives, or even false negatives), there's value to it.

Widespread temperature sensors in Singapore, even if security theater, have been great for one important reason: If you suspect you have a fever, you naturally self-quarantine since you can't go anywhere anyway.

Even the gentle nudge to self quarantine can bend the R0 curve down. Every little bit helps.

Well, since we seem to have woefully inadequate testing capability right now, we don't know who is infected.

If everyone wore masks, then the would be one way of making sure that infected people wore masks.

In this instance the infected person was the airport worker. So wouldn't that help limit transmission?

And you also agree already that it reduces hand to face contact, further helping limit transmission.

Also, it's not as clear-cut to say they do not help prevent spread. Doing a quick search and picking the very first article from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=face... says this:

> Hand hygiene and facemasks [vs just hand hygiene, or nothing] seemed to prevent household transmission of influenza virus when implemented within 36 hours of index patient symptom onset. These findings suggest that nonpharmaceutical interventions are important for mitigation of pandemic and interpandemic influenza.

I hear this a lot but the whole message isn’t consistent to me. Masks (mostly n95 respirators) aren’t effective for the general population but they are needed by healthcare workers? How is it they are at the same time effective and ineffective?

This is false you should stop repeating it. The public shouldn't horde masks but that doesn't make it ok to go around saying they don't work.

If you have to put yourself in a high risk situation like flying on a plane where you are going to be in a crowd where someone is potentially sick I would absolutely wear one. CDC's own guidance for preventing infections on commercial aircraft says as much.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/air/managing-sick-travelers/c...

Can you back this claim up with a peer-reviewed study? (i.e. not a C|NET article, and not a link to the totally discredited CDC)

Who are you going to trust, random US journalists or Lancet? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Even CNN which has been publishing “masks useless” articles every day for like at least two weeks published a piece a few days ago saying that while wearing masks may not be effective in the U.S., it could be effective in high population density countries with busy public transit (can’t find the link now). I’d say the crowded airport security lanes are definitely among the places where masks are warranted, even in the U.S.