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Comment by anon102010 | Hacker News Reader

anon102010

Fascinating that they recommend you take OFF masks while on things like crowded BART trains and airports (I had lots leftover from forest fires) if you are "healthy", even though that might mean you are asymptomatic, or not yet diagnosed etc.

Despite claims masks (with good adherence to wearing) are highly effective - primarily by reducing hand to mouth/nose contact, secondarily as a direct barrier. And surgical masks are dirt cheap.

It looks like other countries went big on mask production and wearing - be very interesting if the claims that you should NOT wear masks if "healthy" even on crowded BART cars etc checks out in the end.

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My understanding is that the urging to not wear masks when healthy is solely due to preserving masks for people who actually need them (sick people and doctors) given a limited supply, not because they're ineffective when healthy.

It's just a form of triage.

And asking you to save them is very much different than asking you to deliberately take them off while on a crowded subway car.

I would like to wear homemade mask from this site https://diymask.site/ but that stupid recommendation will make me look like a sick person.

Really? Where do they recommend this? Sounds insane.

Czech Republic recently started requiring face covers so we will have results in few weeks.

I second that request for a source. It sounds like disinformation to make people upset.

There is really low number of infected people and also low density of people walking outside in Czech republic. I am not sure you can make a lot out of it. I think requiring face covers outside is more panic than reasonable measure.

I live in Prague and when I go outside I meet someone once in few minutes and majority of the people are not wearing face cover despite it is required. Mostly they have it prepared on the neck to put it on when they go inside. One doctor in TV did not recommend extensive usage of face masks as cheap or improvised masks tend to get wet after 20 minutes. This significantly reduces their effectiveness. Risk of being infected outside is really low unless you are in crowded area.

Sounds reasonable. Mask should be required in grocery shops and crowded places, but it was probably easier to include all public spaces.

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