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Comment by Kkoala | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty clear at this point that restrictions and masks help reduce the spread. Of course it's another question how does that balance out in the longer term, e.g. how did the lockdowns affect the economy, or the mental and physical healtht of people.

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Is it? Cite the evidence. Editorials and commentaries don't count.

All of the good evidence (RCTs) on masks is extremely marginal, at best, and there hasn't been a single RCT I'm aware of that showed any effect of the other interventions.

https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk...

Surprisingly, masks with poor filtration underperform at filtering. Show a study that demonstrates the ineffectiveness of an N95.

You're making the claim. Provide evidence of effectiveness.

Most people aren’t wearing N95s, and to my understanding, no jurisdiction has a mask policy that requires them.

In a lot of places in Germany public transport was only restricted to using N95 masks. This summer in Berlin all the stores required N95 masks, as did universities. They have relaxed the rules since then and you can see in the recent infection statistics how that worked out for them.

In the US, you can hardly get them. Amazon was restricting them to medical professionals until recently, and all the local stores have been out of stock since spring 2020. Now, if you currently look at Amazon for 3M N95, you'll see that a lot of the purchasers are doubtful that the products offered are genuine.

We've had two years to increase the output of N95s and expand the hospital facilities to handle severe COVID. Almost nothing has been accomplished.

McMaster now has them for unrestricted purchase.

Moldex are domestically manufactured and nobody knows about them. Their process also takes more work to copy. At this point anything "3M" is too risky to buy as it is likely a fake.

Right now FP2/N95 are the only masks allowed for adults in public transport/supermarkets in Bavaria Germany. Cloth or surgical mask are treated like wearing no mask at all, unless it's a child up to a certain age.

Compliance in public transport and supermarkets is extremely high, pretty much never see any adult with just a mask, everybody wearing actual respirators.

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