Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

How many of us are actually wearing the correct ones??? Not many…. I can tell you that when I breathe in mine all day it gets damp and if I sneeze or exhale heavily that moisture sprays out.

^I think its the same if you ever stood behind a screen enclosure when it's raining sideways. You will still get a little wet, but not as much as if you were standing directly in the rain. It's not an all or nothing scenario; the mask lessens our exposure and therefore the chances of spreading and catching the virus.

I have disliked wearing these stupid masks since last March. I decided to take a leave from the grocery store I work p/t at becuase I didn't want to work with them last year (not interested in the all the drama/worry at the time).

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine called to tell me he has covid. He got both vaccines in the spring, and months later caught covid. He's older, so it happens. He has recovered well and quick. But after that scare, I'm now more at peace wearing my mask for the time being - if I choose to be around groups of people.

Summary of the Canadian mannequin study finds mask filtration efficiencies of:

Cloth: 10%
Blue disposable: 12%
Fitted KN95: 46%
Fitted R95: 60%
KN95 with 3mm gaps: 3%

Even modest ventilation (2 air changes per hour) outperforms the best mask.

I'd still advise everyone to read it themselves. But this is the nuts and bolts of what these authors found...with nary a personal interpretation of good/bad/etc.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0057100

Again, that's filtration, not dispersion. The latter matters, and I think Schwarzkopf76's comparison to a screen enclosure during horizontal rain is a good example of that.

There are already a few comments in this article about Broadway rehearsals where people are condemning the people shown in the story. Broadway isn't screwing around, you have to be vaccinated. People at one extreme don't seem to care.

I think you/they have it backwards. This study is about “dispersion”…not “filtration.”

The present study experimentally investigates the “dispersion” and accumulation of aerosol particles in indoor environments in the context of the guidelines proposed by national health agencies to control the transmission of COVID-19…

The authors address that their study doesn’t focus on “filtration.”

Furthermore, although the present study does not characterize the effectiveness of masks during inhalation, the aforementioned loss of “filtration” efficiency due to perimeter leakage is also expected to be present during inhalation, although it is to a lesser extent due to the improved sealing effect produced by the negative pressure difference relation to the ambient.

> Even modest ventilation (2 air changes per hour) outperforms the best mask.

Interestingly (a) you don't have to choose between them and (b) you can control only one of them*.

*: If you happen to have the keys to your building's HVAC, you can control both.

I/they should probably change the term “filtration efficiency” to “dispersion efficiency.”

But it isn’t my study to change…

If you happen to have the keys to your building's HVAC..

There’s a decent advertisement opportunity available to those businesses that have superior HVAC systems. 😂

”Come eat at ‘Curly’s Cafe’…Our HVAC is better that the perfectly fitted R95 mask! Trust the science!”

Let’s just go full blown here and put everyone in a bubble. We can bounce off of each other. If I want to pollute my bubble so be it, you can have a plant and air fresheners in yours.

just don’t fart.

Sorry, but that's just gonna happen.

#branmuffin

If the screen & rain analogy doesn’t work, try this…

https://srhd.org/media/documents/PeeTest.pdf

We're discussing masks again? Really?

Anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of masks of any kind is extremely strong. Where people are known to be infected, wearing a mask almost certainly reduced those people's ability to infect others. Lots of stories, all quite verifiable.

Practical evidence for the efficacy of masks is good. Various experiments and studies including the one described here have shows that almost any face covering material can effectively reduce the transmission of virus from an infected person. I have not seen any studies which claim that any mask will reduce or prevent the transmission of virus to a non-infected person, and in fact at least one study of influenza in a hospital setting showed face masks had virtually no effect on preventing people from catching flu. That said, it's equally possible that any positive effect at preventing one from breathing in the virus is suppressed or downplayed due to the obvious liability concerns that could result from such a claim.

Population-level evidence for the efficacy of masks is virtually non-existent. If you look at infection rates and compare to the implementation and discontinuation of mask mandates, there is at best no correlation and at worst a negative correlation. At the population level, masks have virtually no effect, which actually makes sense when you consider that *at worst*, and assuming a highly pessimistic estimate for the number of active cases, only 2.5612% of the population (1:39) was even contagious at any given time. So it makes sense that the population-level effect would be minimal, both because the infected population is actually minimal, plus as it turns out, most of the infection was happening in places where the mask rules don't even apply (at home) anyway. Furthermore, a year ago we were seeing polls that indicated that something like 87% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 claimed to be habitual mask wearers...a figure similar to or slightly above the mask-wearing percentage in the general population at the time.

Incidentally, for all the panic going on right now, that same highly pessimistic estimate of the number of contagious people in Ohio today is 0.7223%, or about 1:138. By comparison, the immunization rate in Ohio is 47.61% among all ages (1:2) and 55.65% (1:2) among those eligible.

When you really dig into it, you find that while there is plenty of evidence that indicates that masks can be highly effective if you put them on the right people, at the population level they really don't move the needle one bit on case rates. The only thing that really does is immunization. At an immunization rate of 50%, the prevalence of immunized COVID-19 hospital patients is <1%, a rate which, unlike the mask survey last year, does not mirror the prevalence of immunization in the community.

If you're over the age of 12, it's past time to stop arguing about masks and concentrate on inoculations instead. At the population level, let's implement the mitigation strategies that actually work!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I'm not sure how you're arguing that something different happens at the "population level" than what happens at the "individual level" given that the population is made up of individuals. Does something magical happen to masks when you put 10,000 of them together that makes them stop working?

I think I know what he means. The aggregate data, at some scale, at least in the second wave, didn't show that the more reliably masked large areas had better results. But the more you zoom in, the more you can see that there is a positive effect. I think that's starting to change though in this third wave. If you look at Florida, for example, its full vaccination rate is actually about the same as the national rate, 52%. But while many places in the US are being cautious in this new wave, Florida's governor is actively preventing mitigation or proof of vaccination in any way he possibly can. (Today he was touting treatments for infection and downplaying vaccination, because you know, treat the symptoms instead of the disease. Stupid.) Mask wearing in Florida goes down, cases per capita are double what they are nationally.

But this big box of stupid that tries to "prove" masks are ineffective, with studies that say they are, no less, shows you just where we are in 'Merica.

The thing that I keep stumbling on: the "costs" of masking are so low that the benefits can be very modest and it's still more than worth it.

Our campus requires everyone to be masked indoors, regardless of vaccination status. But, we are otherwise open with no other distancing/behavioral restrictions--indoor dining exists, we have in-person classes at full room capacity, we can use our own discretion for how many people in our offices for a meeting, spectators at full capacity for athletics and the arts, etc. etc. This is probably because we also have a vaccination requirement for all faculty, staff, and students.

Since we're a company town, this tends to bleed over into many other places beyond campus. For example, I'd say that at least 80% and maybe 90+% of people in stores, waiting to be seated at a restaurant, etc. are wearing a mask this week. But, again, everything else more or less has gone on as it did before re: shopping, dining, etc.

And, my experience and impression is that it just isn't a big deal in practical terms. I sometimes have to repeat myself/ask someone to repeat something. That's it. The disposable masks help and I'm seeing more of them. For me, they are more comfortable; they are reportedly marginally more effective, especially with a nose clip; and they are easier to communicate through. The "cost" to me of wearing a mask indoors is pretty darn low.

So, even if the benefit is only marginal, it strikes me as an easy call. Yes, other mitigation strategies may do more to help, but it's a multi-layered defense; each additional layer delivers additional benefits.

Florida is rocking! According to CNN -

Florida on Saturday had the highest Covid-19 hospitalization rate in the country, with 75 patients per 100,000 residents in hospitals with the virus, according to data from federal health officials and Johns Hopkins University. It also reached yet another pandemic high of Covid-19 cases Friday, reporting 690.5 new cases per 100,000 people each day from August 20 to August 26, state data showed.

I am 10000% in favor of masking and do think it's very simple with very little cost. But just to add another perspective, my daughter is hard of hearing and trying to understand her teacher through a mask is basically impossible. She already had a bunch of tech. accommodations which do help some, but when the batteries die or there's some other hiccup, she essentially loses all verbal input from masked people.

Yeah, that makes sense. My lectures are recorded and it looks like they are auto-cc'd, but we probably spent Real Money making that system happen (and who knows how accurate it is.)

I just thought this was funny.