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The US conducted zero RCTs, so we don't actually have high quality evidence supporting masking. RCTs conducted in other countries showed a small but not statistically significant difference with masking. When I say masking I mean those silly cloth and "surgical" masks, not N95s and similar which definitely make a big difference.
> The crook of our arms aren't filtering viruses like an N95 mask would but somehow it still helps.
Maybe it helps with other common viruses that spread through large droplets on surfaces, but for an airborne virus like covid that spreads almost like measles it might not at all.
I'm sure many researchers would have loved to do more controlled research, but for some reason people weren't lining up to participate in trails where the participants get infected by Covid and then try to infect others in a lab setting. This is one of those things where it should be easy to devise high quality experiments, but ethics make it impossible.
In the end we got a bunch of people doing the best research they could. That meant studies with serious flaws and limitations. Some variants spread more easily than others, the amount of community spread varied with time/location, some people didn't make it all the way through studies, mask usage couldn't be constantly monitored to ensure compliance, etc. Most research looked only at how many people got sick when masked or unmasked instead of how the virus spread when already infected people were masked vs unmasked.
We still managed to come up with a ton of research (including RCTs done elsewhere) which, taken in totality, showed that any kind of masking helped to some degree.
> Maybe it helps with other common viruses that spread through large droplets on surfaces, but for an airborne virus like covid that spreads almost like measles it might not at all.
Covid also spreads through droplets, but generally airborne ones. Getting any of those same droplets stuck to surfaces like the inside of your arm or the inside of mask keeps them out of the air other people breathe, but obviously you can't get all of them.
Since how much virus gets breathed in matters, reducing the amount of droplets that go out into the air can mean the difference between getting someone sick or not, as well as how sick they get if their immune system can't respond fast enough to prevent the virus from establishing a foothold in the body. I think the effectiveness of cloth masks declined as the virus evolved, and N95 masks were always going to be the better option, but anything is certainly going to be better than nothing.
Did you read the article? No you didn't.
>>> But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks? “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson. >>>
Do you think that COVID is the first virus ever to come to humanity?
Do you think that nobody ever thought about the effectiveness of face masks?
Do you think that somehow face masks lost effectiveness after 2020 but before they were effective?
No. No. No.
Scientists knew all along that face masks didn't work.
Edit:
>>> Compared to masks, N95 respirators conferred superior protection against CRI (...) and laboratory-confirmed bacterial (...), but not viral infections or ILI ...[influenza-like illness] <<<
COVID-19 is a virus, and an ILI.
No.
Masks were not mandatory here [1], they were not even recommended in the beginning. Later masks were recommended [2] in public transport during rush hours during a 6 month period in 2021. The reasoning for not recommending masks in the beginning was that there were too little data supporting the effectiveness of masks. So scientist did not "know" for certain.
I am not sure we can discuss this issue yet, there are still too many with non scientific agenda engaged in the debate.
[1] Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19... [2] EDIT: I said mandatory, it was not.
When actions contradict scientific evidence it's all about politics, no disagreement there.
In your example of Sweden, I'd say it's a prisoner's dilemma politicians are forced to follow suit on what other countries are doing. It happened in my country that the National Health Minister had to resign under pressure of ineptitude, not following international practices, and corruption during pandemic.
But your statement about evidence, it's simply not true.
Go back and read one more time my two scientific pieces of evidence. Here there are again:
Before: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747
After: https://archive.is/sWXis
> This systematic review and meta-analysis supports the use of respiratory protection.
Your second link is to an opinion writer with no scientific background who infamously wrote his first opinion piece in the NYTimes denying the scientific evidence for climate change, but worse, with so many errors it needed a whole bunch of corrections appended to it.
Your “scientific pieces of evidence” are (a) not evidence for what you claim they’re evidence for, and (b) not scientific.
No, I already copied the relevant piece of text. Here is one more time:
>>> Compared to masks, N95 respirators conferred superior protection against CRI (...) and laboratory-confirmed bacterial (...), but not viral infections or ILI ...[influenza-like illness] <<<
> Your second link is to an opinion writer with no scientific background
No. Click on the link on the first sentence and you can read the original scientific study. Here is the link:
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
Read the article. It says that face masks, surgical masks, and N95 provide no benefits.
For example a dentist that wants to prevent having blood or saliva splashed in their face when operating.
I have an actual mask with an air filter for viruses. It costs a lot of money, it covers hermetically my whole face including eyes, and each filter only lasts for 30 minutes under viral environments.
In general the best you can get for virus protection is a pressure positive suit:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_pressure_personnel_...
It prevents saliva which contains bacteria from leaving the surgeons face and causing infections
Aerosol is when water and liquid particles remains in suspension in the air, just like moisture, mist, a perfume or fragrance.
And that's what spreads the virus. COVID transmission is with aerosol.
Face masks, including those in hospitals, don't block aerosol