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Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

Wash your hands when you get home! Try not to touch your face.

I use a mask when I go out because my wife has health issues that would complicate any colds etc. It's really nice to not have to deal with several colds a year.

Masks became political. I've had some double-takes in a couple of stores, but mostly people have ignored my mask wearing. Thankfully the grocery store I frequent serves an aging population who are far more likely to wear masks now.

I know that some, probably even in this thread, will swear that masks are useless. I know you know that, you're not going to convince me and I'm not going to convince you. Can we skip the arguing and try to reach common ground?

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The politicization of it is a thermometer of societal dysfunction and absurdity that has exceeded the measurable range.

I remember the feeling. I wore a 3M N95 mask into a Trader Joe's in the SF Bay Area mid-December 2019 and received gawks and offhand verbal insults (jeers). The nature of the threat was then unknown and epidemiological data later showed community spread was already occurring, so it seemed an entirely prudent precaution even in retrospect.

OTOH, people wearing masks outside now when no one else is around and without evidence to show COVID transmission can happen in these conditions, it must be a practice for non-medical reasons.

Best to apply good, individual judgment with precautions because some people with irrational tribal beliefs are intent on proving cigarettes or COVID "can't" kill them.

> s outside now when no one else is around and without evidence to show COVID transmission can happen in these conditions, it must be a practice for non-medical reasons.

Actually, masking outdoors is fantastic for my allergies, which are one of the main triggers for my asthma. To be clear I use the 3M Aura 9210, which is a very good N95 (actually meets N99 standards based on independent tests, but no one buys those so they are labeled as N95). Very good against my broad spectrum allergies to "the outside" (dust, mold, ragweed, pollen, etc).

My only issue with masks is that they're a bit too annoying to wear and they reduce my ability to understand what people are saying because I can't see their mouth.

I would happily wear masks if they're more convenient.

As a person with Autism, I too have trouble with understanding people with "modified" or muffled speech. I am not sure if it's full-on Auditory Processing Disorder, but it's really annoying in meetings :/

Yeah, that can be an issue, more with some than others.

As a fellow autistic person I find masking pretty helpful honestly, if nothing else it reduces the constant mental strain from having to do so much other the other kind of masking, in terms of facial expressions and what not. I also find it tends to be a interpreted as a signal to not engage in a bunch of performative small talk, which I don't exactly mind either.

As a vulnerable person, I wear an N95 as much as practical when I go out, and frankly at this point expect that to just be a thing going forward. As you said, it's really nice basically not getting sick. I've got multiple chronic conditions (asthma, T2 diabetes are the biggies, but far from the only) that both tend to act up either from being sick or the drugs you take when you're sick.

Ironically I'm about 2 weeks off some sort of what was probably some weird viral infection (not COVID, not traditional flu, not strep). Very well could have been bird flu, although there's a possibility that was also caused by an (insurance forced) asthma medication change that I possibly had a moderate allergic reaction to. In any case, I now have an approved prior auth and am back on the old med.

The last three times I’ve had some sort of viral infection the doctors have not been able to ID it. They even did panel tests for the top 20 viruses and none of them were positive. There are thousands of viruses we have no idea about.

What is the common ground? I for one am happy that the vast majority of people do not find the tradeoff acceptable. Ubiquitous masking during COVID was dystopian and damaging and I couldn't imagine having this indefinitely.

In my opinion, I'd be happy if people masked up if they have any cold-like symptoms. That would prevent some infections being passed, and wouldn't require people to be masked 100% of the time.

Would that be acceptable to your social group do you think?

Personally I'd be happy to never see another masked person again, if you have an infection that you suspect is serious just stay home. If you have to go out you better wear a real effective respirator mask and not a piece of cloth.

But I'd rather prozelitize about taking measures for one's defense (everything to support the immune system, vitamin D, proper nutrition, etc), than the theatrical masking we've seen so far.

Again, if it's serious than at least wear a mask that offers some believable protection.

That sounds nice, but many diseases,including COVID19 have a phase where the person is very contagious BEFORE they get symptoms.

Even with millions of deaths, we were incredibly lucky that CV-19 had only a ~2% case/fatality rate. Many other diseases are far higher, including the Avian Flu H5N1 at over 50% in humans.

Being healthy is a false sense of security (i.e., you don't know what you are talking about and are spreading ignorance). For example the group the 1918 Flu pandemic killed most was yoing healthy males (incl my wife's GGP). Why? Because it caused a huge immune system response called a cytokine storm, and the most healthy males had the strongest immune response, and it killed them (yes, our biological system has a few bugs).

The entire job of diseases is to overcome healthy subjects and spread despite this.

Stop spreading ignorant wishful thinking.

I don’t think there’s any common ground with people who want to normalize masking in public.

I was just in Taiwan and about half the people there just mask, even outside riding bicycles. This conception you are advocating is very America centric, and deadly in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. You can't just wish the material world away.

Well, I do not wish to see that imported in the western world.

Wearing a mask offers much less protection to yourself and others than taking measures for your immune health, but that's somehow controversial and never discussed at a societal level. I'm still shocked vitamin D supplementation was barely mentioned during COVID. But authorities only cared for theatrical measures, and imitating each other so they don't stand out.

This is just wrong sorry. Wearing a respirator will block >99% of all airborne particles, and an N95 will block 95% of 0.3 micron particles.

Your immune system works well, but when we're talking about human pathogens, they are specifically organisms that have figured out how to defeat several levels of countermeasures and will harm you.

More on respirator physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA

EDIT: I see above you've noted respirators work. Masks also work, but not perfectly. See this video as to why surgical masks are still useful. In fact Taiwan achieved zero COVID using almost exclusively universal masking until more transmissible variants showed up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y47t9qLc9I4

What is wrong? That I'd rather have people have proper vitamin D status, a core regulator of the immune system that's basically free to manufacture? Or wear a piece of cloth that does.. What? What does blocking 99% of particles mean for risk of infection?

Why is this an either or question? If you don't want to get sick, take Vitamin D AND wear a mask.

I thought masks protect others not the wearer. Guess I'm just not up-to-date with the science.

They mostly protect others, but they also reduce the number of infectious particles entering (pretty obviously). They're very leaky, so if you wear a non-respirator you will only delay infection not prevent one. However, if many people wear masks, there is filtration going on in both directions (at the source and sink), so they become more effective.

COVID is remarkable among human pathogens because it is so damn transmissible. High percentage mask wearing completely stomps out weaker viruses (we eliminated a flu strain in 2020). COVID is almost as transmissible as measles (R0 for Omicron is commonly estimated above 8 and as high as 24), so it takes an array of countermeasures or high quality countermeasures to arrest it. Still, mask wearing will reduce the number of people infected per a unit time, making environments much safer.

Now that we are in a regime where R0 is less applicable since people have some immunity to COVID, the transmission rate is closer to 1-3. This is something masks can manage to stomp so long as there is partial immunity.

So we're back to needing everyone to mask up given your leading paragraph.

Again, I hope the general public never accepts this ever again. I don't want to live in a world so obsessed with safety and safety theater that it accepts such a radical transformation of the public space. So what Taiwan does it.

I hope the info you shared is valuable to someone, I don't have the inclination to make my case in further detail, so I'll just stay at this level of argumentation: the tradeoff is unacceptable to me, and, I hope, to the majority. If it ever comes down to this again, I'll make a serious effort to relocate to somewhere still sane.

Masks are a radical transformation? Please. It's a minor inconvenience. Keeping kids home from school was a radical transformation.

The traditional surgical with ear loops is mostly for other pills. A properly fitting N95 seals all the way around the mask, and offers substantial protection for the wearer. The ones I wear have been found >99.9% efficient at filtering aerosolized COVID sized particles, which are quite a bit bigger than the 0.3um worst case test particle. Worse case because they actual filter with two mechanisms, one physical that works for large particles (think stuff getting caught in a fishing net) and another that’s electrostatic that works better for ultra fine stuff. 0.3 is the crossover where the combination is minimally effective.

Yes having good vitamin D levels is good, as low levels are associated with more severe CV-19 disease. Seems to be related to the fact that CV-19 is a blood and organ disease (that happens to have airborne transmission), micro-clotting is a big effect, and Vit-D has some anticoagulant effects.

But it will NOT prevent infection.

A properly fitted N95/N99 mask will. It takes about 700 viral particles (early strains) entering the airways to start an infection (obviously variance involved). Cutting out 95-99% of the particles you breath in an exposure event gives you 20X to 100X margin to prevent infection.

When good masks are generally used, those effects are multiplied together, as the contagious person's spreading of viruse particles is reduced by 20-100X, and your mask reduces that attenuated stream by another 20-100X.

These effects are why the R0 of all airborne diseases is cut when most people take measures. We can see this because while the spread of the more contagious CV-19 was reduced, entire strains of influenza went EXTINCT. Wiped out forever. They could thrive in an unmasked population, but died out when people even masked badly and inconsistently.

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