Well Masks Protect | Hacker News Reader

Well Masks Protect

mpg.de

11 pointsdoener13 comments

I've read the article only once cursively, but enough to ask, if the conclusions are indeed correct, and the reduction is SO DRAMATIC (like in the order 40x reduction with a well-fitted mask using the numbers given), than in theory masks would be enough to basically eliminate the circulation of the virus, but in order to do so we have to accept them as a permanent fixture of daily life.

I, for one, would not find that acceptable. But what if there is no other way, how many more years do we go on living with the visible symbols of the plague all the time?

The other day I had a weird experience where I somehow managed to enter a store without a mask on, and only realized it when I was already in line at checkout (small store, nobody told me). It really struck we how naked I felt and how much I had gotten used to this. It's very strange, I understand the rationale (which is what I want to discuss here), but we can't say it's not having an effect on us, maybe one that's undesirable (I think particularly for children we need to question what that might be doing).

Of course, one last thing we need to discuss is this kind of annoyance is not on the level of the scenario I'm discussing, as most people (myself included) are NOT strictly adherent to best practices the majority of the time (wearers of "fashion" cloth masks being at the most extreme end, as I understand cloth masks don't do much), and certainly I'm not wearing one all the time, not when having a discussion with friend, or in social settings, etc.

Replying to my own comment, re: risk reduction, are masks the new seatbelts, as some like to point out? Are our bodies now to be considered as dangerous as vehicles, and so it's reasonable to enforce security measures when you "take your body out for a ride"? This seems very strange to me, and, along with the vaccine passports, quite disturbing.

Stop spreading FUD. This has nothing to do with the science in the OP or the general public this is a problem just for you. Masks work and as long as they have to work the pandemic or "plague" as you call it is not over. A virus doesn't care about your feelings and it doesn't care about the subjective inconvenience of masks or getting vaccinated. You can decide for yourself if you want to take certain measures but stop spreading FUD based on feelings and bad strawman arguments.

Why are you being so aggressive? What did I say that was so awful? I'm just thinking out loud of the long-term implications of this. What is so unreasonable about what I said?

Sorry but this has nothing to do with aggression or not you are fantasizing about probabilities you seem not to understand. The only thing your comment achieves is spreading misinformation and fud. You can't talk about your ideas or feelings backed by anecdotal evidence as facts. The same goes with you undermining highly regarded sources like the "Max Planck Institute" as fishy in your other comments. I would go as far as to mark you as a bad actor.

Sorry but could you point out the misinformation? As for "FUD", Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is all we see nowadays anyway, don't think my comment read by a few people on HN is contributing much (if I even agreed it's what I was doing :P)

> "medical mask" = "surgical mask" is that it? anyway, this one seems a bit fishy to me, as far I can tell, in the first wave covid wasn't THAT MUCH more widespread, when very few regular people were wearing masks, this claim seems dubious to me

you are going against the scientific based evidence provided in the very op and countless other studies with terms like "fishy" and "dubious" without providing any evidence yourself. You are even making it clear in your very comment that you didn't really understand the article itself. That's misinformation or at least classic misdirection or in other words spreading FUD.

what? I said as I understand it the study is MODELLING infections and it's not studying actual infection events; this is something that's even somewhat admitted in the article itself, my point though was that looking at the case graphs it wasn't obvious in the first wave that the addition of masks had such a dramatic effect that you would expect from the figures given in the article

what the article says and what I'm also saying is that there is a difference between mask types, and I was ASKING if what the article calls a "medical" mask is, in fact, the surgical mask people commonly wear

anyway, the main discussion I wanted to have is how long are we to expect to live like this, granted the effects of masks so dramatic, because, in case you haven't noticed, Covid ain't going away, ever

Also perhaps we could have a more relevant discussion about the methodology of this. As I note in another comment, this study's conclusions are based on modelling transmission and not actual that from real-world transmissions, so I don't think it's fair to conclude the real world necessarily conforms to this.

"Although the detailed analysis by the Max Planck researchers in Göttingen shows that tight-fitting FFP2 masks provide 75 times better protection compared to well-fitting surgical masks and that the way a mask is worn makes a huge difference; even medical masks significantly reduce the risk of infection compared to a situation without any mouth-nose protection at all."

"medical mask" = "surgical mask" is that it? anyway, this one seems a bit fishy to me, as far I can tell, in the first wave covid wasn't THAT MUCH more widespread, when very few regular people were wearing masks, this claim seems dubious to me

This isn't studying the risk of infection per se, is it? It's calculations of probabilities of certain kinds of particles being exchanged between subjects in different situations, and making some assumption on the level of risk of infection those correlate too.

"Masks in schools are a very good idea"

No.

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