Comment by starfallg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by starfallg | Hacker News Reader

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It funny you mentioned this because the "science and data" overwhelmingly supports wearing a mask to cut transmission, which is also a major factor in why a overwhelming majority of people support wearing one.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabd3083

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-07-08-oxford-covid-19-study-f...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7191274/

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-abou...

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-0948_article

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8#ref-CR4

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768532

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v3

Who would have guessed that most people are reasonable and take heed of doctors and scientists?

Why have democracy at all if you don't believe our collective ability to make good choices most of the time?

What's telling is that in your original post, you stated: > Why did it take months for the government to be recommending face masks?"

But all of these links you posted are dated after the April 3 recommendation by the CDC for the public to wear masks. https://www.livescience.com/cdc-recommends-face-masks-corona...

"Based on the best evidence available at the time, it was not deemed that that would have a significant impact on whether or not a healthy person wearing a mask would contract COVID-19," Adams said."

There's not a single western industrialized nation or state that can be pointed to now as a mask success story. There were a few countries in eastern europe (specifically czechia) that were heralded as a primary reason for controlling covid in the spring.

We now know that this apparent good result was not because of masks, but because of geography. Czechia is ranked #1 in the world in cases / million in the last week and #3 in deaths / million (and its numbers are still climbing). Every single eastern european nation had low cases/deaths in the spring and now all of them are having their first large surge.

It's abundantly clear that cloth masks, as a whole, do not play a major role in how the virus spreads in a country.

Thank you for this. I knew 93% of Americans support masks and we're about to enter a third wave in America.

I didn't realize masks were that ineffective in other countries as well.

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