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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

Situation: Infected person coughs near a non-infected person.

If the Infected Person is wearing the mask, all good. Cough contained in mask, no virus spread anywhere, everyone OK.

If the Non-Infected Person is wearing the mask, they're still covered in virus-laden cough mess. All they have to do is touch their face once in the next 3 days to catch the virus. Washing their hands will remove the virus from the hands, but not from their clothes, hair, etc.

Also, they're now covered in virus. Everything they touch will be covered in virus. Virus everywhere, infecting everyone. Everyone not OK.

It's possible that a non-infected person wearing a mask might prevent a tiny bit of infection, but it's MASSIVELY more effective on the infected person.

Surgeons wear masks in case they cough on the patient. They don't put a mask on the patient...

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And then the virus just dies on non-live surfaces like clothes in a couple of hours.

Like we said several times, masks provide some protection (decreased risk) for a healthy person, they don't protect from getting infected 100%.

No one ever said that mask is more effective on healthy person than on the infected one, I am not sure who you are arguing against. But it is the popular for some reason notion that a mask does not protect a healthy person at all that is plain false as has to go away.

No, the virus lives on non-live surfaces for up to 3 days. This alone invalidates the rest of your argument.

We still don't know how long it lives on clothing. On doorknobs, plastic, stainless steel it can live for 72 hours, yes.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/8116090...

Plastic, like buttons, which are on clothing.

Fair enough, but I wouldn't assume the difference goes from 72 hours to 3 between different inert surfaces.

That's an entirely normal range.

https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/news/10608438/How_Lon...

"The viruses remained detectable for up to 4 hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard, and up to 3 days on plastic and stainless steel."

Different surfaces are, well, different.

The difference in effectiveness is huge, to the point where it's ridiculous to be healthy and wear a mask. Like I said, they don't put masks on surgery patients.

And don't forget the social signal part; if everyone wears a mask all the time, then we don't know who actually considers themselves to be infectious. Whereas if just the infectious people wear masks, then we know who they are and can act appropriately (being grateful that they self-identified as infectious and kept the rest of us safer, for a start).

> The difference in effectiveness is huge, to the point where it's ridiculous to be healthy and wear a mask.

I think the point is that you have no idea whether you're healthy.

I get that. But still, if you're going to not wear a mask all the time, then better to wear one when you think you're sick than when you think you're healthy.

I think the social signal part has second order effects that make it work out not as you would expect.

If ONLY sick people tend to wear masks then masks will make you a more visible target of fear and hate, which would lead people who are sick to not wear masks.

It's a much better idea to destigmatize the act of mask wearing so we can get larger coverage of sick people with mask s.

in the West, yes. Because we're idiots about this sort of thing.

In Asia, the feeling is gratitude - thank you for wearing a mask and protecting me from your illness

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