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Comment by pbourke | Hacker News Reader

It seems like wearing a mask in some environments (public transit, crowded shops, etc) might be a good practice going forward. I wonder if it will be normalized? Will you stand out if you choose to wear a mask to the mall 5 years from now?

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It became normal practice in East Asia after bad flu pandemics.

To be quite honest, masks are very helpful, given that they are infinitely more effective than covering the mouth with hands or elbow (it doesn't block everything, and people often do not sanitize their hands or elbows afterwards).

Masks are also used in Japan to protect the wearer from allergens during their allergy season. After I read about it, I also started doing this, and I noticed my symptoms were a lot less terrible than previous years. They are also used in China when smog is bad.

Given how cheap masks are, and how we will have a lot of manufacturing left after all this that will drive prices down, to me it is a no-brainer, and I'd definitely prefer it if Americans resume their practice of coming into work sick once we are at least partially back in office. (Now, they do this because we have terrible sick leave, but masks are at least not super-expensive at solving the problem absent some state or federal push for mandated paid sick leave.)

Doubt it. Not wearing masks has become a political hill many have chosen to die on, and there are tons of people who virtue signal by choosing to go without them or judging others for choosing to wear them.

Shoplifting and burglary are a greater concern than respiratory illness most years, so wearing a mask will be viewed as suspicious.

Don't take this as a personal attack, but when I see people regularly wearing masks 5 years from now I'll certainly bias against engaging with them. I'll assume they don't understand risk and prioritize fear and emotion over reason. I won't be mean to them (nor disrespectful at all) but I will keep my distance socially (yes, somewhat ironically.)

From a strictly rational perspective, wearing a mask in public transit is always the correct decision, you are statistically less likely to contract airbourne diseases with a mask on. You're free to attach emotional significance to the act of wearing a mask, but maybe it has the desired effect - I personally would rather not interact socially with anyone on public transit, so maybe we are both the better for it.

>you are statistically less likely to contract airbourne diseases with a mask on.

What are you basing this assessment on? Are all masks equal? Does training in mask application matter? For what duration are different types of masks effective?

Google is good for this. N95 and higher is effective. Mask application matters but they're effective without 100% seal. I don't think they get less effective with time, just harder to breathe through.

I find N95 easier to breathe through than surgical masks. They use static, not mechanical filtration, which doesn't seem to cause much restriction on air flow.

They do get less effective with time, exposure to moisture. Using alcohol to clean an N95 will significantly reduce its effectiveness.

Early on, Stanford did a study on various methods of sterilizing N95s and the change of effectiveness. Heat (70°C for 30 mins) was best.

https://news.stanford.edu/2020/04/01/researchers-show-how-to...

From a strictly rational perspective, avoiding any and all infection is not the correct decision because that way you don’t build up an immune system and remain massively vulnerable to the mildest of diseases.

You can probably safely assume anyone wearing a mask in 5 years is doing so because they are sick but still need to be in public for essential everyday tasks.

Do you feel the same way about seatbelts? If people choose to be safer by wearing masks, judging them is pretty extreme. This kind of attitude is what made the early days of the pandemic a mess.

This is a silly false equivalence but I'll engage with it because it seems annoyingly popular. The evidence of efficacy of seatbelt usage in crash scenarios is abundantly clear. The same isn't true for wearing a cloth/surgical mask in public during a pandemic featuring an airborne virus. I'm aware there are hand-wavy meta-studies and extrapolated surveys on the issue (but 1 RCT from Denmark which showed no statistical significance between control and experimental groups. See https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817) but common sense and being able to evaluate statistics of mask mandated regions vs. not indicates to me their findings are dubious at best. Even n95s are not likely useful against an airborne virus if not properly fitted and regularly replaced.

What wearing the mask does show me is that a person is extremely susceptible to propaganda and likely has conformist tendencies. This isn't necessarily true in all cases but I think it will be for the majority of them. This sort of person is dangerous to bring in to your social circle because they can easily be manipulated into being an instrument of the state. I don't want to have to police my own thoughts and opinions in front of my friends and in an increasing totalitarian "cancel culture" environment this risk becomes increasingly more substantial and existential.

Is it not obvious, common sense and proven that masks stop you from spreading the virus if you have it and don't know yet? Are there still people unaware of that? Out of curiosity, where do you live?

And you should tell frontline medical personnel that masks don't protect them, they'll be glad your non-conformist ultra intelligent mind managed to figure it out.

I seem to have upset the hive. Lol.

Masks cover one's facial expressions. Showing one's own facial expression and being able to see others’ is an important part of social interaction in many cultures. Indeed, whether one person feels he or she can instinctively trust another is often based on getting a view of the other person’s face.

This behavior can be suspended temporarily on a short-term basis when a population perceives an urgent state of pandemic or (as in Japan) when an individual says he has a cold, but it may not be sustainable at a society-wide scale beyond that. Seatbelts faced cultural resistance before adoption, sure, but much less than masks would once the acute COVID risk has passed.

2018, someone has a bad flu, still wants to get groceries or go to the doctor.

In Japan: they'd be worried about infecting others so they would wear a mask.

In USA: Even if they cared about other and could buy a mask, they'd be worried about the weird looks, so they don't wear a mask.

Hopefully in 2026, assuming Covid is solved by then, people wearing masks in the US won't be looked weirdly, or even if people like you do, the sick people would think "Why should I give a shit what you think.".

In some (mostly Asian) countries you're expected to wear a mask if you go out when you're sick. Contrast that to freedomland where it's normal to have people hacking like crazy just about everywhere.

It's required to wear a mask 100% of the time in some medical professions. This is usually so you don't get vulnerable people sick, not to protect yourself. Medicine is highly evidence based. If masks didn't work these rules wouldn't exist.

Most of those wearing masks aren't doing it out of "fear and emotion", they're doing it to protect others. We all know that cloth style masks everyone is wearing offer the wearer almost no protection. The value is primarily in the protection they provide to others by blocking aerosols when you breathe and talk.

I get the feeling you follow some news sources that erroneously claim people wear masks to calm their fear and emotions

Using terms like "Freedomland" expose your biases fairly clearly and make it easy for me to safely ignore you.

But you might be surprised to learn that even as recently as 2016 the use of masks in surgical settings wasn't understood to be backed by very strong science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/

Lol "you aren't likely to share the same opinions as me because of a word you used so I I'm going to ignore you". Very intellectual, rational, and nuanced good brain type thinking.

This article is about surgical masks which are basically tissue paper not N95's. In some healthcare settings N95 is required especially when dealing with immunocompromised or extremely infections diseases like active TB or SARS. The evidence for these is much stronger

We're all biased. You planning to ignore everybody?

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