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Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

What confuses me is why so much scrutiny is being placed on the practice of wearing a mask. It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience. And common sense dictates pretty convincingly that it must have some benefit, however small. So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not?

I suppose there are two answers to that question. One, health officials want to know if masks give a false sense of security so they can spend their time promoting measures that will actually make a difference. Two, folks just want a reason to avoid the minor inconvenience or, worse, have been led to believe that mask mandates seriously impinge upon their rights. My concern is that the most common answer is the second and articles like this only serve to confuse people at a time when we need to accept that we must make small sacrifices to solve this problem.

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> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience.

It's not (for the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time) but the benefit is to other people not you and well acting in other peoples self interest seems to be seen as weakness in parts of the world (including sadly mine).

FWIW I always wear either a mask or a bandana over my mouth/nose when I'm out and about these days not because I expect it to protect me but because it might protect someone else.

I expect my opinion is swayed by my best friend having Cystic Fibrosis for which Covid19 is essentially a death sentence and a mother who has chronic health issues.

From my perspective alongside all the other advice wearing a mask seems sensible.

Same reason I wear heavy duty motorcycle gear and a helmet when I ride my motorbike - I don't plan for the crash but as the saying goes, you don't wear it for the ride, you wear it for the slide.

There's a video on Youtube of some guy blowing vape smoke through various filter types. Pretty much all of them pass it, up to HEPA filter types for vacuums and medical respirators. Some filters I tested will filter particles down to the size of smoke, but Corona-19 is 1/10th of a micron across, which is smaller. It does get filtered by various materials, but those materials need to use static cling to filter. If they don't, the virus will pass through, given the hole size of the material.

If you are hanging around and talking to someone at a fairly close distance, masks simply won't do anything other than visually signal distance is required to others. And, in the unlikely event someone sneezes or coughs, it probably prevents widespread contamination of the surrounding area.

The Seattle choir episode and some studies out of China in restaurant air handling systems seems to indicate the virus is airborne and can be spread to others within a fairly large area, with time and proper airflow. This will happen with or without a mask in place, in my opinion.

I'm super nervous about sharing indoor space with people I don't know, so I don't. The more time we can buy ourselves, the better the outcome.

Masks do a great deal to reduce transmission of Covid-19. (This isn't true of every disease.) Covid-19 is mostly acquired by inhaling droplets of water+virus exhaled by carriers, so masks work quite well. A large amount of evidence for this is collected at https://masks4all.co/facts/

The idea is to stop the respiratory droplets that contain viruses. Droplets measure on the order of micrometers, which is the range that surgical masks are made to be effective.

A Google search result for droplet sizes: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/E2386

A Google search result for effectiveness of various masks related to particle size: https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2009/10/14/n95/

Visualizing Speech-Generated Oral Fluid Droplets with Laser Light Scattering[0]

[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2007800

If the virus spread airborne rather than by droplets then you would see the effective R value much greater than what the coronavirus is.

Example: measles is spread airborne and the R value is > 10. Coronavirus R value is < 3

I don't know why you are downvoted. There is growing evidence that the virus mostly spreads as aerosol and that the amount of particles you inhale dictates how sick you get. The so called super spread events account for over 80% of the transmission.

Bad ventilation and dry air keeps the airosols floating around making it easier for people to inhale them. The spread in meat factories is one example.

But a mask still can prevent a lot of airosols. While also being limited. There was research that shows a lot of air escapes above and below the mask if someone coughs or sneezes.

"Corona-19 is 1/10th of a micron across, which is smaller."

People seem to have a huge misunderstanding about how viruses travel through air (which is how you get stupid memes like this[1]). There aren't isolated viruses floating around passing through spaces 1/10th of a micron or larger. They need a medium of which to travel upon (such as saliva droplets) that are much larger than the virus itself[2] (usually 5-10 microns)

1. https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/im-wearing-t...

2. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/03/8256393...

I would note that bandanas aren't necessarily the best material for DIY masks. Still better then nothing, but folks may want to take a look at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/best-materials-diy-face-masks...

It is always a balance with risk management. People should wear heavy duty motorcycle gear and a helmet when riding motorbikes, but with cars the same gear is seen as a bit excessive as there are a 30x difference in risk for the two mode of transportation (per distance traveled) and the small but possible risk of a false sense of security might result in worse driver behavior.

If you are near someone in a risk group it seems very good advice to use or even mandate the usage of masks. Same for being around high risk areas such as using any mass transportation. For low risk areas the benefits are less clear and the potential downsides seems to have about as much evidence as the benefits.

Agreed. People could wear similar gear (motorcycle helmet, motorcycle jacket, motorcycle gloves) when driving a car. It'd be inarguably safer for certain types of crashes. I, for one, have road rash on my arm from a car wreck.

But we don't. Because it'd be inconvenient. Safety is not anyone's highest goal.

>So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not?

FUD around masks and their effectiveness is being deliberately spread by people and groups with a political agenda, primarily through disinformation campaigns on social media. This isn't an entirely organic phenomenon.

Even the CDC was against mask use by the general public at first, so while much of the naysaying is now political, there was also seemingly legitimate information being pushed by prominent organizations that encouraged people to ignore masks.

Also, there's no character limit here, you can write the entire phrase instead of using obscure acronyms.

>Also, there's no character limit here, you can write the entire phrase instead of using obscure acronyms.

FUD is no more an obscure acronym than CDC. FFS this is a programming and tech forum, people throw acronyms around all the time.

...the CDC was against mask use by the general public at first

And they too admitted to spreading FUD about masks, in the misguided belief that stopping average people from using masks would leave more masks for the health care providers.

That should reinforce the important point that we're dealing with unqualified, clown-show/amateur-hour political appointees in multiple levels of government, making critical decisions, at this point, a point in time, unlike most points, where leadership or it's lack matters.

And I know that FUD is just a long-standing acronym for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and I too could just write that. But being so long-standing, the term not is only convenient but has come mean a particular kind of fear, uncertainty and doubt, that spread through a particular of public relations system.

It's not clownish, just the opposite.

There was a severe shortage of N95's at the time, and if the public thought masks were important, there would have been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community would have had squat. Given that masks, particularly N95s are actually effective in a Healthcare environment ... it was the exactly the right call to make.

Get the masks to those who it will actually help, not the public for whom it will make a smaller difference.

Once production is ramped, or we have enough PPE, then it makes sense to have a pro-mask policy for the public.

From a communications perspective, it's obviously problematic, but in terms of equipment triage, it's highly rational and we actually want our leaders making these kinds of tough decisions.

The WHO and various governments should have been more efficient in their messaging however.

Yeah this is the part of the issue that my social media feed seems to attach to. They post comments from politicians and public figures (and medial professionals) saying early on that we shouldn't wear masks.

I'm sad that the original messages didn't come across as the nuanced issue that it is. Hospitals need the N95 stuff because they are exposed at high rates for a long time. Hospitals also educate their staff on proper protocol when wearing a mask so that people don't negate the effectiveness by wearing it wrong or touching their face after removing it.

The public isn't educated on proper mask wearing procedure. We don't know how to test that a mask fits properly. We don't have the same training to avoid cross contamination and poor mask hygiene. We don't understand the marginal benefits of masks and how it creates a false sense of security causing us to take more risks and spread the disease more quickly.

So at first, it makes perfect sense to funnel the best masks to the highest risk people and encourage "stay at home" (instead of "go outside with a mask") because it limits disease spread the most and protects the community.

I'm sad that it has turned in to "but they said masks did nothing" as an excuse to not wear them. It was never that they did nothing, it's that masks ALONE is not enough. Masks and proper behavior are necessary together.

> I'm sad that it has turned in to "but they said masks did nothing" as an excuse to not wear them. It was never that they did nothing, it's that masks ALONE is not enough. Masks and proper behavior are necessary together.

If you have the correct behaviour (hand washing, distancing) the mask provides you no benefit.

The only point to wearing a mask is if you are unable to maintain that distance, or you're stuck in a room with symptomatic people. But if you're doing that you're also provided with eye protection and gloves and a gown and copious water for handwashing, and you've probably been trained to don and doff the PPE correctly, and maybe you even have a person acting as a PPE spotter helping you put it on or take it off correctly.

No one is telling people to wear masks in their own house or sparse outdoor spaces, and in most cases there are no rules about outdoor spaces at all. Where the anti-maskers are causing a problem is refusing to wear masks indoors. Airflow can be very different in different buildings and the "6 feet apart" distancing rule is fairly arbitrary. It is implausible to actually properly distance in most indoor spaces. Hence masks are indeed important, even for those following the other "rules".

That aside, there is high overlap these days between people that say masks don't work and people that are completely negligent about distancing. It is a little ironic, as there were concerns that belief in masks would make people distance less due to sense of security.

I don't recall the exact CDC statement but I do recall quite a few of my (well educated, liberal, in some cases educated in public health) friends posting on Facebook that masks actually do more harm than good because "people touch their face more" or something. I remember thinking a lot of the messaging seemed wrong, but I also wasn't confident enough about it to start getting into social media fights about whether people should wear masks.

So there definitely was some narrative going around back in March that masks had an actively negative effect for an individual, not just that masks do nothing. That said, anyone who is an anti-masker at this point is being ridiculous.

> if the public thought masks were important, there would have been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community would have had squat

This still happened, though. All the stores that sold masks to consumers sold out, very rapidly, at the same time the Surgeon General was tweeting that they didn't work.

They should've ordered they be pulled from sale, not lied about their efficacy.

This is also incidentally the exact sort of thing the Defense Production Act is actually for. It could be invoked, used to give guaranteed quantity and price contracts to suppliers and avert the entire issue of supply runs.

Which likely wouldn't happen because it's not like someone who gets a profitable contract from the Federal government, retools their factory, isn't going to then try and squeeze as much production out of that as they can anyway.

> it was the exactly the right call to make.

Lying is never a defensible policy. If there was reasonable concern about run on PPE, then perhaps government order restricting or banning their sale to general population (like it was done by some governments) should be considered.

Lying is absolutely a defensible strategy when done for the greater good.

That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a ton of clowny behavior from leadership.

It destroys public trust. What do you now say to people who refuse to wear masks? Do you say "I was lying to you earlier for the greater good, but now I'm not." Why should they ever listen to you again? You could be lying again.

This is exactly what was done here in Czech Republic - sale of high grade PPE to public was banned, massive PPE shipments ordered and home made masks made mandatory everywhere.

This seems to have been effective, as most of the restrictions have been lifted and we are back to sporadic local clusters by now.

"There was a severe shortage of N95's at the time, and if the public thought masks were important, there would have been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community would have had squat."

Uh, you what actually happened? There was been an unprecedented run on PPE and the medical community got squat. It's bizarre to have to recite headline news from two months ago ... doctors in NYC using garbage bags instead of real protection. Hand sanitizer unavailable. Nurses in hospital prohibited from using their own masks and not getting them from the hospitals. The Federal government hoarding PPEs for who knows what asinine reason.

Well I think you helped to prove my point.

As I said, there was excess demand for PPE, but by and large, most medical staff did have access.

That there were some doctors who were unable, means that obviously there was some shortage.

But Dr. Fauci and the WHO had of indicated that 'every American should wear a mask' - then all doctors would have been wearing garbage bags through the entire affair.

The 'excess demand' from natural concern was bad enough, but 350 Million Americans clamouring for N95's would have wiped out any hope of keeping the medical staff in place.

It was a rational decision given the risks and unknowns: We need to get PPE to doctors because the value to the general public is limited.

A tough and difficult decision at the time, but they did the right thing.

The claim here is that 1) CDC knew masks were effective but 2) decided to ignore that to preserve stocks.

For you to support claim 1 all you need to do is post links to the meta-analyses or randomised control trials that show the effectiveness of masks to prevent the spread of respiratory disease. There are lots of RCTs around mask wearing to prevent the spread of respiratory disease.

> And they too admitted to spreading FUD about masks

No they didn't. They haven't even changed their advice. Now they say "it may prevent the spread", they definitely don't say "it does prevent the spread", and they're still trying to preserve stocks of medical supplies.

I wish they had treated the public like adults:

"Listen, we believe masks are effective but we don't have enough for medical personnel who need them right now so unless you absolutely need one please stay home, stay safe, and leave them to doctors, nurses, and other emergency personnel."

No misinformation and the vast majority of people would have complied.

Lying to everyone just cost them credibility and probably lives when this is all said and done.

"And, by the way, there is plenty of toilet paper." I bet that would have stopped the panic buying, too.

Always this talking point whenever anyone suggests they should tell the truth. What else should they lie to us about because the public supposedly won't react well?

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more the state lies, the less we listen to it, and the more we start looking out for ourselves, and disregarding the public good.

Government officials see us behaving like this, they assume we're too dumb and self-centered to do the right thing, so they attempt to manipulate us in order to get us to behave properly.

I don't think the public would've acted like adults though, but I don't think it would've changed anything either. Even with them saying that masks don't work, there was a mask shortage almost everywhere.

Then the worst case: Still a shortage and no misinformation (aka lying) to undo.

Still a major win over our current situation.

But the shortage would have been worse ...

How does a shortage get worse than "we're all out"?

The duration can differ. A shortage lasting a week is better than a shortage lasting months.

> That should reinforce the important point that we're dealing with unqualified, clown-show/amateur-hour political appointees in multiple levels of government

In light of this point, how much would you trust a vaccine approved by the FDA or CDC?

I’ll wait until it’s approved by reputable non-US health care agencies. Especially if a vaccine magically arrives before November 3rd.

> Even the CDC was against mask use by the general public at first,

It. Was. Not. The WHO and CDC both issued guidance that public use of personal protective equipment was a bad idea, for fundamental scarcity reasons. And in both cases the messaging was done poorly in a few spots and could have been interpreted as statement that masks don't work against covid. They were heavily criticized for this at the time, and the criticism was carried by the media. No expert ever told people that masks don't work, or that the public shouldn't wear them. They were telling people to save them for the health care workers!

And getting to the point upthread: that bit of misinformation is, again, something being deliberately propagated by people with a political agenda.

Perhaps I’m just dense, but that’s exactly how I would read this tweet from late February: https://mobile.twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1233134710638825473...

“ CDC does not currently recommend the use of facemasks to help prevent novel #coronavirus. Take everyday preventive actions, like staying home when you are sick and washing hands with soap and water, to help slow the spread of respiratory illness. ”

The US Surgeon General, in late February:

> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus...

https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/12337257852839321...

It's not surprising people got "masks don't work" from that messaging.

You left off the second half of that tweet in your quote:

> but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!

The WHO and CDC were telling people that masks don't work because there is no good quality evidence to show that masks work, and there's plenty of evidence to show that masks do not work.

Look at the most recent CDC mask advice. They're not saying "masks work", they're using much more cautious language: "masks may work". https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

> there is no good quality evidence to show that masks work, and there's plenty of evidence to show that masks do not work.

Bullshit. Most of all because it's not a binary issue at all. Even if masks reduce the number of particles you exhale and inhale only by 30%, that makes a huge difference for the population as a whole.

> Bullshit. Most of all because it's not a binary issue at all.

Parent comment doesn't claim it is binary, or rest on it being binary. Post good quality evidence to show that marks work.

The guy from Slate Star Codex made a great point about this: Initially, the CDC refused to recommend wearing masks to inhibit virus transmission because there weren't rigorous studies supporting that usage. At the time they must have viewed it as irresponsible to recommend protective measures that weren't properly evidenced.

But, the reason there weren't rigorous studies supporting mask usage was not because they don't work, but because nobody was willing to run a study where you exposed half the subjects to a virus without any protection just to prove that masks would help the other half. It's the same reason there aren't any double-blind studies proving that parachutes help you if you fall out of a plane.

Archive link to the referenced post: https://web.archive.org/web/20200415084132/https://slatestar...

That’s not the primary reason. They selfishly wanted to protect mask supplies for medical use and so spread FUD around public mask usage. It was criminal and people should be held accountable. Masks work for some value and whatever that value is, it accumulates as more people wear masks, and the idiots in charge gave up months of that reduction so that people wouldn’t buy up all the masks at Home Depot. Only they still bought all the masks, and then used the CDC’s own FUD as their own to not wear them and convince everyone else not to wear them.

When I bought my N95 masks in mid february, every Home Depot has already been cleared out and the masks sent to China where they were valuable. I had to visit 5 stores to buy a few leftover.

That was well before the CDC and surgeon general were telling people masks are bad for you don’t buy them. The masks were long gone by then.

I don't consider that selfish. It's like Triage. Healthy doctors and other medical professionals are of special importance in a pandemic, and preserving supplies of protective equipment for them was especially important.

It’s selfish when the advice isn’t “we need n95s, everyone else please at least pull your shirt over your nose”

White lies are still lies that cause people to lose faith in any advice you might have.

Given how easy it is to create home made mask which is better then none, it is absurd.

> That’s not the primary reason. They selfishly wanted to protect mask supplies for medical use and so spread FUD around public mask usage.

No, this is specifically addressed in the SSC piece. The CDC has been against masks for many years; their advice on masks this year was the same advice they've always given. There is absolutely no reason to believe they put any further thought into it than that.

For what is worth: many health authorities world-wide have used the same strategy (conserve mask for healthcare by not advocating/dissuading their use). Taiwan and Korea being notable outliers.

So it is not that the CDC was malicious / selfish / conspiring. They did what they believed was the best policy response. Even if we know better now that they should have just published instructions on making community masks and advocating their use.

> Initially, the CDC refused to recommend wearing masks to inhibit virus transmission because there weren't rigorous studies supporting that usage.

> nobody was willing to run a study where you exposed half the subjects to a virus without any protection

Running the studies is effectively impossible due to ethics constraints. The CDC were probably lying about their reasoning because if you put all these facts together the CDC would not ever be able to take a position on countermeasures until it was clearly too late. I dunno what their idea of Disease Control is for pandemic, but a little bit of "balance of probability" thinking probably happened.

Even if we'd discovered masks were a complete waste of time, the cost-benefit of everybody spending $10 for hastily sewn cloth mask was clearly in favour of recommending the idea. We've had entire economies parked up, I'm sure the labour could have been found to do some knitting. As projects go it would have been a very productive use of time. They just didn't want to disrupt the supply of medical masks and showed a rather dire level of panic and unpreparedness.

Political agenda, or something even more sinister, like an opportunistic foreign adversary? It seems like a lot of the FUD around Covid-19 is deliberately being spread to maximize casualties.

The article points out that contrarians, often conservative, promoted mask wearing until the US government reversed its position and said that masks do work.

Suddenly, anti-lockdown protests, conspiracy theories and mask objecting started happening, and mask wearing became politically polarizing. It would be interesting to see where these people get their information from...one suspects that the answer will be skewed heavily toward social media.

"Political agenda, or something even more sinister..."

I think the simplest explanation is that the conservative right now views literally every issue as a them-versus-us issue, and as soon as it was clear that "they" thought we should wear masks, a very predictable conservative backlash occurred. I'm not sure if the president helped launch this particular battle in the "culture war" or was just a cheerleader as usual.

I'm not sure if the president helped launch this particular battle in the "culture war" or was just a cheerleader as usual

The US government reversed itself on masks and recommended them before the rest of the English-speaking world. The WHO only endorsed masks a few weeks ago. I don't like Trump, but these are facts.

It seems to have been politicized after Mike Pence visited the Mayo Clinic, and didn't wear a mask, and then Trump was then pushed on the issue, and reacted characteristically. If Pence had set a good example and worn a mask, or of there hadn't been a huge uproar about him not wearing a mask, would the issue have turned into a front in the culture war?

> The WHO only endorsed masks a few weeks ago. I don't like Trump, but these are facts.

That's not facts, that's spin. From your phrasing, it sounds like you're saying that prior to a "few weeks ago" that the WHO policy was somehow anti-mask. It wasn't, even in January. Their policy was always that PPE should be reserved for health care workers due to scarcity, and in a few (A FEW) instances their wording of that recommendation was poor and might plausibly imply that masks don't work.

No expert ever interpreted the WHO policy the way you people insist on doing. And at this point this insistence is just pathological.

and in a few (A FEW) instances their wording of that recommendation was poor and might plausibly imply that masks don't work.

Until Zeynep Tufekci's New York Times oped, the consensus was indeed that "masks don't work" for Covid. I documented numerous instances on social media of healthcare professionals insulting and belittling those who wore masks based on what you describe as "poor wording".

Here is a Time article from 4 March that sums up the expert consensus on masks at that point (in fact it has direct quotes from experts, including an infectious diseases professor, a leading psychologist, and the Surgeon General): that masking was "superstitious", didn't work and claiming that wearing a a mask equated to knocking on wood, or not walking under a ladder. https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/

Trump has consistently made a point to not wear a mask, even when the places he was visiting specifically asked him to. Trump has also mentioned several times that he thinks masks should be optional. He has unequivocally and undeniable undermined harmed efforts to promote make mask wearing, and continues to do so.

The US President absolutely launched this when he decided to make the existence - let's be clear, not the severity or the appropriate level of response, but initially it was the existence of a deadly virus - a political issue, and declared it was a hoax while standing in front of the White House.

Can you cite the exact quote where he said that?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/trump-says-the-coronavirus-i...

Do your own Googling next time.

That story doesn't even back up your claim.

My question was rhetorical. I know it's not true. I hoped you would look it up and realize your comment was inaccurate.

Foreign information warfare units absolutely want to be stoking that fire to the fullest extent possible.

Their election interference was so wildly successful that they'd have no reason not be trying to inflict further damage on the US now.

What is the political agenda behind it? care to elaborate?

> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience.

Not arguing that any of this is a good enough reason to not wear a mask right now, but, I find them pretty darn inconvenient.

It's very uncomfortable. It fogs up my glasses when I’m inside, and covers up a large part of my field of view even when I’m outside. I can't ride my scooter at all because with that field of view loss, I'm worried I'll crash into something. Talking is more difficult, both projecting enough to be heard through the mask and straining to hear others.

I've tried several different masks at this point, so I don't think that's it.

When I'm doing construction, I often wear a form-fitting N95 mask (for dust protection) and safety glasses.

The top of the mask, and the nose-bridge of the safety glasses, compete for the same location on the bridge of my nose.

If I layer them so that the mask touches my skin, and the eye glasses rest on the mask, I have no problem with fogging.

If I layer them the other way: the eye glasses' bridge directly on my skin, and the top of the mask resting on the eye glasses' bridge, I get fog.

Maybe you're experiencing this?

I usually avoid this simply by putting my eye glasses on after my mask is in place.

It's almost completely dependent on the masks construction. I never had problems with my n95 from 3m, but the kn95 I have is impossible to wear with glasses no matter how I fit it.

The surgical mask a friend got for me in March looks near identical to the pack of masks I got recently besides the color but the one she got me fogs up my glasses while the pack I have now never does.

FWIW, the mask I was referring to in the GP is the GVS SPR457 Elipse P100 [0].

(As a side note, I haven't tried many masks, but I find this one extremely comfortable and effective.)

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013SIIBFQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

Why do you need to wear your mask while scootering?

I tuck my cloth mask under my sunglasses and this avoids any fogging. Also, don't ride a scooter with a mask on.

Yeah, this part confuses me about GP's description. If any breath is being directed upwards towards your glasses, you're not adjusting the bendable part right to form-fit your nose.

This is why it's mostly meaningless to recommend everyone to wear a mask. Many do not know how to use them properly. And a lot of people can't afford them. If you can even find some to buy that is.

No, this is why the CDC should be running 30 second "how to properly wear a mask" public service announcements.

They've been in stock online, locally at my grocery store, at Target, and at Costco for weeks now. Quite a few stores will hand you a free one if you don't have one (I know Kroger will), and a washable reusable one will set you back a few bucks at most.

If we discovered people weren't wearing their seatbelts enough, getting rid of seatbelts would be a silly mitigation.

Try washing your lenses with a drop of dish soap. That will help with the fogging.

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/08/853009325/how-to-prevent-glas...

So just pull the mask down while you're on your scooter. On the road you're effectively "alone" outdoors.

You haven’t ridden in Manhattan, I suspect. People would get right up to me constantly, even during Covid.

Do you want some nose clips to prevent your glasses from fogging up? Also keeps the mask tight to your face solving your FOV issue.

>I can't ride my scooter at all because with that field of view loss, I'm worried I'll crash into something.

Just how big of a mask are you wearing? No mask I've used or seen would prevent this at all, sounds a bit dramatic to me. Plus, why are you even wearing one while riding your scooter? It's not needed unless you're in close proximity to people.

They're more annoying for some people than others, there's no surprise in that. Still, there are nurses and doctors in disease wards who have been wearing these things full time now for more than three months, so... I think you can deal. Keep experimenting, you'll find something that works.

Or just stay in environments (your home, or outdoors with consistently good distancing) where you don't really need the mask.

Just in response to your comment "It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience.":

I suspect that means you are not out of shape or live in a hot humid place. I wear a mask on those very few occasions when I leave my home but it takes a while to acclimate to it each time and often when I take it off my face is wet. And don't even get me started on the pain of wearing both a mask and glasses in a humid environment. Is it a valid excuse for not wearing one? No it isn't.

Edit: logic correction, I think...

Edit 2: I proofread poorly.

I'm in Fl. When I walk out of a grocery store my glasses fog up. Is that a big enough inconvenience to ask them to turn off the AC? Nah...

My glasses don't fog up nearly so much as that by simply wearing a mask; little bit on some exhales. So, given the benefits to others, I'm okay with it.

> What confuses me is why so much scrutiny is being placed on the practice of wearing a mask. It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience.

In my experience it is a big inconvenience. The air is not properly mixed, so one breathes back part of breathed-out air. With (cloth) facemask, i have shortness of breath after running up a staircase, and after 15 min of regular walk i start hyperventilating.

While i wear facemasks and consider it a reasonable measure, the government mandate was sometimes excessive. For example, at the start of the pandemic, the government mandated wearing facemasks everywhere outside of home, even in nature far from other people. I stopped to do recreational walks in nature, as it was just too burdensome to do that with facemask. Fortunately, after several weeks, the government noticed that mandating masks in nature far from other people is nonsense and made some exceptions.

Wearing masks do not affect oxygen intake.

If what you say is true, all healthcare workers who are wearing masks 8-12hrs a day would be collapsing - and most of them are double-masking with cloth masks on top of N95 masks.

First, it is not an issue of oxygen intake, more an issue of CO_2 elimination. The fact that non-rigid cloth facemasks at least partially block air exchange is obvious just from how they are inflating during exhalation.

Second, i also wondered how healthcare workers could use that for full shifts. Perhaps my experience is related to my health issues (asthma in the past). Or perhaps improvised cloth facemasks are just much worse in this regard than surgical face masks or N95 respirators. Cloth facemasks could have just bigger air 'buffer'. N59 respirators with valve and coth mask on top could be much better, as they would have partially separated in- and out- airflow.

CO2 elimination is also not an issue:

https://twitter.com/MurseWordsworth/status/12767990206738882...

And those with chronic health issues also see no problem with masks, despite having existing pulmonary conditions:

https://twitter.com/G17Esiason/status/1277249837059264512

Basically, the volume of air that your lungs can move, in addition to the force of exhaling/inhaling, easily overcomes any air "trapped" in the mask.

Blood oxygen saturation is not informative in this context, and it's disconcerting to see medical professionals treat it like it is. You can hyperventilate until you pass out without your blood oxygen saturation changing.

> Blood oxygen saturation is not informative in this context, and it's disconcerting to see medical professionals treat it like it is.

Watch the full video. CO2 is addressed.

> You can hyperventilate until you pass out without your blood oxygen saturation changing.

Passing out when you hyperventilate is from too little CO2 rather than “retention.“ The opposite of what is being claimed masks cause.

I did watch the first video in full; the other link, and three others in another post only address blood oxygen. I made no claims about CO2.

I don't think wearing a mask will meaningfully affect the breathing of most people, but blood oxygen isn't meaningful in demonstrating as much.

Passing out from hyperventilation is a second order effect of hypocapnia; the proximate cause is cerebral hypoxia, despite the blood being saturated.

It’s easy to find examples of health care workers complaining about masks interfering with their breathing[1]. That was just the first example I looked at there are plenty more.

[1] https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/trouble-breathing-i...

"I feel from the moment that I put them on that I can't get quite enough to breath." That's what they are feeling - they may be claustrophobic, etc. And I believe they are feeling that.

But let's look at actual data - there's no measurable impact on blood oxygen saturation when wearing masks:

https://twitter.com/MurseWordsworth/status/12767990206738882...

https://twitter.com/AlisonKabaroff/status/127738060548793958...

https://twitter.com/DrRobDavidson/status/1277565585568784385

Arguing with blood oxygen saturation is prety much strawman. Nobody here claims that facemasks impact that. Effects of insufficient CO_2 elimination are much earlier. If you were in badly ventilated room with 2000 ppm CO_2, you would feel dizziness even that you would still have full oxygen saturation.

That’s not data, that’s a few anecdotes.

You seemed fine with anecdotes upthread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23728608

That’s because even one example suffices to prove an existential claim such as masks can interfere with breathing. That’s not true for universal claims such as masks don’t interfere with breathing.

The claim was "Wearing masks do not affect oxygen intake", not "they can't impact breathing in any fashion".

You'd have to rule out confounding variables like panic attacks, nervousness, etc. - especially in first-time medical workers - and obtain actual evidence of impact on oxygen saturation for those anecdotes to be useful.

You must be confusing me with another commenter. I specifically said: “complaining about masks interfering with their breathing.”

I'd just like to clarify that blood oxygen levels is not what makes you feel like you can't breathe. It's the amount of CO2 in the blood that's the issue. The first tweet addresses this point though.

I'm not entirely convinced by the test shown though. Doing a similar test while doing light exercise would be more convincing.

Another important factor to consider is that people breathe differently. Some people breathe more through their nose, others through their mouth. Maybe this can have an effect? Then there's also the fact that some people can take much stronger breaths (pulmonologists are always disappointed by my spirometry test results).

Mask wearing is important, but it doesn't feel right to just dismiss the reports that some people have more difficulty breathing with masks just because it doesn't happen to me.

My mother who has severe issues maintaining her oxygen levels and has to be on oxygen while she sleeps wears a mask while she's out and about fine.

I'm guessing the issues people face is less about the masks and more about the sensation of wearing a mask which spikes anxiety levels and causes the sensation of being unable to breath. If Japan can reach near ubiquitous levels of mask wearing without issues especially given their larger elderly population, I'm sure they'll be fine.

Otherwise if they have an actual medical issue that prevents wearing a mask then by all means.

> My mother who has severe issues maintaining her oxygen levels and has to be on oxygen while she sleeps wears a mask while she's out and about fine.

"It works for me" or whichever other anecdote is given to dismiss a valid complaint has never held any water and never will.

> If Japan can reach near ubiquitous levels of mask wearing without issues especially given their larger elderly population, I'm sure they'll be fine.

Masks aren't fun to wear, I was out in one yesterday in Japan and my wife, who is Japanese and has worn a mask long before this pandemic was a glint in a bat's eye, was complaining about being out of breath and uncomfortable.

They're well known for being uncomfortable even in the winter, and they have plenty of negatives beyond that.

Besides, if you saw the way people wore masks in Japan you'd never use it in an argument.

"... even in nature far from other people"

Yes, some governments issued nonsense warnings like this. But don't let the dumb proclamations of a few politicians impact your overall opinion on mask usage. These days, most guidances seem to be largely fact-based, thank god.

> With (cloth) facemask, i have shortness of breath after running up a staircase, and after 15 min of regular walk i start hyperventilating.

Talk to a doctor. This is not normal. Running up a staircase is done with oxygen in your tissue, it doesn't involve breathing per se, your body buffers all that you need.

And regardless: there's not NEARLY enough air space behind your mask to store a full (~1L) exhalation. What you claim isn't even physically possible. Gas goes through and around the mask and mixes with your environment.

Frankly, (and I don't say this in spite, I promise!) your symptoms track more closely to anxiety than to any physical problem. Talk to your doctor, you'll probably feel better about things.

People with actual breathing difficulties do, in fact, experience symptoms like that with masks, which do aggravate them (I believe by increasing the proportion of rebreathed air, slightly lowering O2 concentration which can be problematic combined with existing breathing problems.)

It's also possible to experience symptoms like that (thought usually also with intense itching and other sensations that make it clear that it's an allergy) if the max contains an allergen to which you are sensitive. (Some masks contain latex, which is a not-super-uncommon allergen.)

> And regardless: there's not NEARLY enough air space behind your mask to store a full (~1L) exhalation. What you claim isn't even physically possible.

According to Wikipedia, normal level exhalation (tidal) volume is ~500 ml and has ~5 % CO_2. If only 10 % of exhalation (50 ml) is breathed back with 90 % of fresh air, then one is breathing equivalent of ~5000 ppm CO_2.

I am sure that improvized cloth facemasks have bigger air 'buffer' than this. Although measure it precisely would be hard.

I have a hard time believing your air mixing argument is a big issue for most people. Tonnes of people go snorkelling and don't experience the type of problems you mentioned. When you inhale the air inside a snorkel is more likely to have just been exhaled since it doesn't have anywhere it can go. To me this suggests your issue is either psychological or you have something else compromising your respiratory system and should definitely be taking every precaution against covid that you can

Apparently this was an unpopular opinion so I went back and checked the math. A snorkel is about 18 inches long with a diameter of 0.75 inches. This gives it a volume of 7.95 cubic inches or 130 ml. The poster I replied to suggested, in another comment, that rebreathing volumes as low as 50ml could be problematic. If that were the case you would run into major issues with snorkeling.

I am not saying that there aren't people that have difficulty breathing in masks. I am saying that having difficulty wearing a mask is not normal and you should discuss it with your doctor to find out why.

> And common sense dictates

Evidence based medicine doesn't exist to protect us against crystal healing (the bullshit that we know cannot work). It exists to protect us against things that sound plausible, against things that sound convincing.

The problem with the "wear a mask" message is how lazily anti-science it is, and how it distracts from the more important message of "keep your distance" and "wash your hands".

People who promote mask wearing say three things:

1) Masks work

2) They work well

3) We have good evidence for this

In healthcare good evidence would be a well run meta analysis of well run RCTs, or well run RCTs. We have lots of randomised controlled trials for mask wearing to prevent spread of respiratory disease. If masks were so strongly effective it would be easy to see the benefit in these RCTs. So why don't we see these benefits in the RCTs?

We have lots of good quality evidence around masks, and it doesn't show a benefit. For use to be able to see a benefit we have to drop the quality of the evidence, and then we start to see some marginal benefits of FFP3 type masks, but not for fluid-resistant surgical masks, and certainly not for cloth face coverings.

The message could have been "we don't know if they work, we don't have the evidence yet, but you should wear one anyway".

Instead we've got this bloke...

> “Back in March, it was difficult to even have anybody take you seriously when the CDC and WHO said the opposite,” said Jeremy Howard, a data scientist and entrepreneur who has become a major advocate of universal mask requirements. In response to the lack of support, he launched a bipartisan campaign called Masks4All that lobbied for widespread mask-wearing and argued that masks were a crucial, if not the most important, part of the COVID-19 response.

...ignoring the science around handwashing and distancing and focusing on mask wearing.

> “The problem with the "wear a mask" message is...it distracts from the more important message of "keep your distance" and "wash your hands"

I don’t get this impression at all. In fact, I was thinking that if someone wears a mask, then they are more likely to be doing the other things (more or less reliably)

I have interacted with some people who insist being "forced" to wear a mask impinges their rights. My response is, you're right it does impinge your rights. Just like your right to drink a lot of alcohol and drive your vehicle has been impinged because it was decided that my right to live is greater than your right to drink and drive.

I'm a huge proponent of individual rights, but what often gets overlooked in these conversations is that my right to do something often conflicts with someone else's right to do something else.

I just post this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

The people I’ve seen who have a problem with masks are just mad that they are being told to do it. They even acknowledge that there is a good reason but won’t do it because authority figures are telling them to wear them. Total eight-year-old mentality in an adult.

No, I hate mask wearing because it's illogical and being presented as "fact based", "caring for others" etc when this has no basis in reality.

COVID-19 has turned out to be no more deadly than any other seasonal respiratory disease. Lockdowns were ineffective. The data on this is clear and gets clearer every day (though you won't find it reading the stories on HN of course).

That means we should not be doing things any differently to other years. Which includes masks.

> The data on this is clear and gets clearer every day (though you won't find it reading the stories on HN of course).

It's amazing how almost universally visceral, impulsive responses such as this fail to provide references to such data.

Jeez, give me a break. I'm not "visceral" or "impulsive", that's just insulting. Scroll through my comment history. I've been posting links to facts on this for months. And they're publicly available and widely covered in some forums.

Try these sites for a flavour:

http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

https://hectordrummond.com/2020/06/29/this-is-what-we-shot-o...

These links have a UK/Europe focus but the story is the same everywhere.

Re: lockdown does nothing. Take a look at the analyses by the major investment banks. They're all reaching the same conclusions because the data is public and anyone can analyse them. No correlation between lockdown severity and course of disease.

Thanks for providing some references, if nothing else it shows a little effort to validate your points. And I wasn't claiming you yourself are visceral or impulsive, simply your referenceless/dataless claim-making comment appeared that way. Apologies for the misunderstanding, I just get frustrated at the ever-increasing amount of (usually) politically motivated counterpoints made on anything today without the slightest piece of data to support such claims.

The people i have talked with that are concerned with the loss of personal liberties are well aware we have to give up many liberties to live is a society. The part everyone ignores is that most of these people want the legal process followed and to not have rules made by non-checked executive order. They want to know that new rules are based on law and granted powers to rule makers. Just because this particular rule might make sense to you now (“i agree we should wear masks”) does not mean you will agree with the some future rule later. And for that, we have a process that makes new laws and gives powers to make executive decisions.

> It just hardly seems like much of an inconvenience.

For me, some who has been wearing masks since before it became government mandated (though I recently stopped outdoors unless it’s crowded, as we barely have any cases; and it’s not as if more than 1 in 100 wear one outdoors anyway), masks are the single biggest inconvenience of the whole Sars-CoV-2 pandemic. I become slightly more claustrophobic (when in a store) and it feels like I have slight trouble breathing properly.

As I said, I’m a mask proponent, but I feel like all those statements of "wear a mask, it’s nothing" are hurting credibility.

I agree, I was in Tokyo at the beginning of this and every one just put a mask on, the subway, everyone wearing a mask, no questions asked.

I believe people there know that it's for the benefit of others but they understands that if everyone does it, everyone benefits? Unusually, this can be hard for people to understand.

Yes, this! Japan's population is 38% of the US population. And yet they have seen about only 1000 coronavirus deaths to date. I have to believe this is because they just do what they're told without defiantly rejecting the advice of health officials or otherwise doing a bunch of armchair sciencing that leads nowhere.

Why trust the figures coming out of Japan? Were the lies around Fukushima not enough to bring a hint of scepticism? Or maybe this blog article[1] which was on the front page of HN[2] a while back?

Japan has a culture of conformism enforced by social pressure, and many places are now mandating that they be worn, that's why the masks are worn en masse of late, but often they're worn for privacy when you've little personal space. People still don't do what they're told and there's basically zero social distancing even where there's markings to guide people.

[1] https://stdio.sangwhan.com/wtf-japan-covid-19-report/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22728674

Mask effectiveness determines how much of the economy we have to abandon and redesign and how much we can restart before it falls apart. Personally I don't have a lot of hope that modest reductions with loose cloth masks change many outcomes; viral load is extremely nonlinear.

Masks don't halt aerosol transmission of the virus. Every breath you exhale is an aerosol. What you feel passing through the gaps in you mask when you exhale is aerosol and, if you have Covid-19, it is Covid-19 infected aerosol.

Nothing except an airtight seaal can stop it.

I think it's mostly a variation of your second option. It's not so much that the people in question are concerned with the minor inconvenience (as discussed in the article, and many of us saw early in the pandemic choosing of sides, they were in favor of masks when it was contrary to the recommendations from experts), and it's not so much that they've been led to believe something unwittingly. The reason it's such a controversy, is because opposing the other side has become reflexive.

Exactly - it’s become an in-group signal due to Donald Trump politicizing mask wearing.

> ... have been led to believe that mask mandates seriously impinge upon their rights.

This is vastly amusing. Before late 2019, folks like me complained about laws against wearing masks in public. At protests, for example. While mailing stuff, or buying money orders. To circumvent facial recognition.

So now when I go out, and everyone is masked, it feels like such a bloody victory! Except that it is uncomfortable, when it's hot and humid. But hey.

> So then why so much effort into deciding if it works or not?

A lot of members of society view not wearing one as an act of courage. A friend's mother will tell anyone she encounters who is wearing one that they are a ninny and a coward. So for some people it is also an indicator of courage/weakness.

A study lets me tell her she is an idiot. Preventing others from being called also cuts into the "ninny" narrative.

In addition, the science has changed over time.

It seems like skin contact isn't quite so likely to spread the virus but breathing in exhaled droplets is.

Incidental interaction doesn't seem to spread the virus that well, so wearing a mask significantly reduces the risk to people like your grocery clerk.

It seems like general contagiousness isn't the primary mode of transmission, but instead the vast majority of cases come from superspreaders.

All of those indicate that mask wearing is probably more beneficial than expected.

If skin contact were the primary mode, then masks would likely have downsides as they tend to provide a warm, wet spot for the virus to hang out until you touch it.

Surely she’ll sit down to read that NEJM paper and be appropriately chastened.

No, but she generally isn't willing to call the doctor who did the study an idiot or fraud.

Just notice that this particular article managed to say nothing in so many words.

Because laws are being made based on weak science.

Like lead paint or Thalidomide masks may only seem to be positive on the surface.

Without proper science it's wrong to make laws about it.

All of that being true, I would like to add that in pursuit of being rational and scientific, I would really like to know to what fraction of spread of virus is affected by any measure that we take (here: wearing masks, when we wear them or where we wear them). For me it's a matter of satisfying my scientific curiousity. Of course one shouldn't stop taking those measures seriously in that pursuit.

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