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nickthemagicman

A condom is the perfect example.

A condom is typically used once and has pores small enough to block designated particles.

This is how medical masks in a medical establishment is used.

Cloth masks at a community level are basically wearing the same condom everyday and the condom is full of holes.

Its a 'rain dance', and just makes people feel better, which does have it's benefits, like religion or nationalism.

That's why Fauci is saying to double or triple up on cloth masks, because cloth masks reused daily are minimally effective, which is what the vast majority of the population does.

Here's a real actual scientific article about it.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

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> Cloth masks at a community level are basically wearing the same condom everyday and the condom is full of holes.

That's not an accurate comparison at all, and I think you have completely missed the point.

Using a condom perfectly results in the fewest pregnancies. Using it typically (ie, once in a while you have one break or slip off) results in more pregnancies than perfect use, but still many less than unprotected sex.

The same logic should hold for masks. Using them perfectly (ie single use, medical grade quality) results in the fewest infections. Using them typically (ie, non-medical grade cloth mask, wearing the same one more than once) results in more than the perfect use but still less than being unmasked. It is not a "rain dance"

If you are trying to make an argument that wearing a mask makes you equally as likely to get infected as being unmasked, I don't know what to tell you. You're just straight up wrong.

Edit - because you added your article link after I was already replying: you cannot generalize the usefulness of masks on healthcare workers who are typically very close to patients and breathing the same air as them, touching the same surfaces as them for extended periods of time to the usefulness to a community of people who are supposed to be sticking 6 feet apart.

Yeah if you are standing a foot from a sick person wearing a mask and they cough in your eye, and you get sick, it's gonna seem like the mask did nothing.

Using a condom that leaks repeatedly results in MORE pregnancies.

Because the biological agent is never disposed of.

And it keeps being applied over and over day after day.

It's why you wouldn't want your surgeon to walk in to your operation with the mask he just used from the previous operation.

It's also basic medical hygiene theory. The same reason that washing hands is effective because germs are transmissable via numerous vectors.

You're doing some serious mental gymnastics here.

Yes, using things that are broken means they don't perform their intended function very effectively.

That doesn't imply that using non-broken versions of those things is less effective somehow. That's not how the transitive property works.

Edit - again because you're super edit happy.

> It's why you wouldn't want your surgeon to walk in to your operation with the mask he just used from the previous operation

No, ideally of course not. But given the choice between "surgeon wearing the old mask" and "surgeon wearing no mask at all" I think I prefer the old mask. Would you seriously just prefer the surgeon to breathe directly into whatever open cavity you have during the surgery?

If the last patient had an infectious disease then yes, no mask is much better than a mask.

Breathing on me > contaminated infectious rag in the O.R.

> It's why you wouldn't want your surgeon to walk in to your operation with the mask he just used from the previous operation.

There is actually no evidence that surgical masks are protective during surgery. Mainly because nobody wants to do the experiment, but still.

There are legitimate studies that demonstrate that masks combined with proper mask usage is at least somewhat effective at preventing disease transmission.

See some of my previous posts for those.

Your cloth mask doesn't protect you from others. It protects others from you.

It does also protect you from others. The "it protects others from you" was propaganda to get around public health officials lying that masks didn't protect you unless you were a doctor in which case it worked for some reason.

It doesn't perfectly protect you, but anything helps. A KN95/N95 is more effective and covering the eyes is better yet.

Yeah the idea that masks somehow are one-way is baffling to me. You’re somehow preventing particles from leaving your mouth while simultaneously breathing in those same particles from the outside.

If that were true you might consider flipping the mask inside out.

I think of it this way: if we are both wearing masks, your mask is going to block way more of your particles than my mask is, and vice versa.

The purpose of cloth/lower quality masks, is to reduce, not eliminate spread. When breathing in, air is drawn around the edges. Thus, if the virus is airborne around you, you'll breath it in.

If you have the virus, and are exhaling, the goal is to stop large droplets of moisture, which carry further, from exiting the mask. They are larger, hence, they get blocked and absorbed by the mask.

Further, when breathing out, air is slowed, and also again passes around the edge of the mask. This reduces the spread, and is also why '6 feet' is recommended as a distance to keep from people.

Again, this isn't about protecting you, but protecting others if you're infected, spreading, and per-symptomatic.

FYI, in most non-US countries ... this isn't a debate. It's just accepted. For example in Canada, politicians of all stripes, left/right/whatever, agree on such basic concepts.

We also didn't have weird things with public servants lying about basic mask protocols.

I'll put this another way.

If you're spreading, and wear no mask? Being a few feet from someone, and talking, isn't going to just get the virus in their mouth. Inhaled. It gets it in their eyes, on their face, their clothes, the list goes on and on.

Masks are about reducing that kind of spread!

Do they help you? A little bit, sure. But thaw's not the point. The point is to protect others!

The cynic in me thinks "What an American attitude. It's all about me, screw protecting others!"

Explain the one way valve mechanism of a piece of cloth.

Not to take a horse in this mask-or-no race here, but the "One Way" thing is about air velocity and distance.

The asymmetry comes from the shorter distance of the mask from the source of exhalation, faster/wetter air, when you breath out vs your intake which is ambient air pressures and speeds.

Your air is pumped in an out by your lungs, not ambient pressure. You determine the velocity of the air with your breath - breath in quickly or breath out quickly - that has nothing to do with the mask.

Wetter air leaves your lungs, but air quickly goes to ambient and then takes on ambient air humidity anyways, so not sure how relevant to the people around you.

And again, ambient air pressure has nothing to do with it. you determine the pressure with your lungs. If you breath in as quickly as you breath out, you will have similar air speeds and pressures.

That article doesn't support any kind of conclusion that masks are ineffective. It ranks the effectiveness of masks, but has no "maskless" group to compare against.

"Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%."

How do you test particle penetration in a 'maskless' group?

Isn't it implied that the 'maskless' group would have 100% particle penetration?

Isn’t that direct evidence that medical masks work? Which doesn’t support your assertion that groups all masks together. Thus, your argument appears against cloth masks, not medical grade (surgical, n95).

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/5/4/e006577/F2.large...

Yes absolutly. There is evidence that masks do work if combined with proper usage.

The evidence shows that changing masks frequently combined with using medical grade material is effective.

The current mask recommendations for the USA though... is folk science akin to using leeches or trepanation.

And no one demands any scientific rigour they just follow along blindly trusting whoever is on the T.V.

I wish the US had gone harder on telling people to get quality masks. Personally I use only n95 from US manufacturers that have a tight seal around my face. I understand before that there were supply constraints, but also there are better fabrics than just cotton that are widely available such as chiffon, which block/filter a ton more than cotton and is widely available.

Mask usage is still hugely important.

Masks need to be changed constantly.

Aerosols aren't particles.

Wearing a cloth mask in a community setting is like leaving your pants on while dry humping someone. It will reduce the chance of pregnancy :)

Except in this case your sperm can also get you pregnant and you wear the same ejaculate covered pants day after day that numerous other strangers have ejaculated on as well.

And you put those ejaculate covered pants directly on your face.

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