Yes or no: We should keep wearing masks continually to prevent colds and flus

jamb innn wrote:

We evolved as humans without pieces of surgical paper and rubber bands around our face, why start now.

Evolution brought the long play solution to survival. Biden and Fauci brought the mandates.

So presumably you'll be denying any other modern advances because we "evolved as humans" without them. What are you even blathering know about?

whataworld wrote:

You wont get an answer wrote:

Oooo, oooo, let me play!!

I find it funny your post showcases two completely contradictory making viewpoints:

(1) They help reduce spread or airborne illnesses. Look at how we had no flu in winter of 2020-2021!! Thanks masks!

(2) My immune system still gets plenty of work. Masks aren't keeping out enough germs to possibly have an effect on that.

You are too dumb for words.

Translation: "Woops, my narrative has a bunch of holes in it too."

Titan wrote:

Of course.

And we should wear helmets in cars because most car deaths are from head injuries.

Also we should sleep outdoors in case of earthquakes or house fires.

I've actually thought this for a while, wearing helmets in cars would almost certainly reduce injuries and deaths more than wearing them on bikes?

However, sleeping outdoors is dangerous, so your second idea won't work :)

You wont get an answer wrote:

least surprising post ever wrote:

I still find it funny that this thread showcases two completely contradictory objections to mask-wearing:

(1) They're ineffective and don't do anything to reduce the spread of infection.

(2) They're too effective, so you'll never get any infections and your immune system will wither away with disuse.

Both are extreme edge cases that are astronomically improbable. But I'm pretty confident there are some people out there who manage to hold both these beliefs simultaneously.

Oooo, oooo, let me play!!

I find it funny your post showcases two completely contradictory making viewpoints:

(1) They help reduce spread or airborne illnesses. Look at how we had no flu in winter of 2020-2021!! Thanks masks!

(2) My immune system still gets plenty of work. Masks aren't keeping out enough germs to possibly have an effect on that.

There's no contradiction there. If you assume that masks are partly effective, then yes, they can reduce the spread of airborne illnesses while still allowing germs in. However, the two statements in my previous post are 100% logically incompatible: there's no way they can both be true.

coach wrote:

Long before Covid I've seen many people wear masks during the flu season on the subway and crowded streets.

How is Japan?

You mean the cold season. Man flu is usually just a cold on a wimp.

I am adding to this thread just to say that after a year and a half of virtual school, I have gone back in person at an institution which requires mask wearing at all times and in a city which still has a mask mandate in place and I STILL got two colds this month despite not socializing maskless with literally anyone. Ugh. I DO think masks work but I'm like why me?

middle ground wrote:

I don't understand why so many people have to be all or nothing on things like this? Doesn't it make sense that you should throw a mask on if you go out in public when you have a stuffy nose or scratchy throat? Wouldn't it make sense to have food service workers wear masks when prepping food? I mean honestly, why hasn't that guy that bags up my lunch meat at the deli always been wearing a mask? He wears gloves, but it's totally fine to cough all over my salami?

++++++++1

Would I trade seeing faces of most other humans and breathing air not full of whatever masks are made of / coated with for a week of (usually totally inconsequential) cold or flu every year or two? Of course. That's easy.

Other considerations:

- If masks were to prevent some cold and flu, but not all then one might wonder if the body would become more vulnerable -- making the flu you do get meaningfully dangerous.

- The increased dead space is a concern for people with impaired breathing -- you know the ones who would supposedly benefit in the first place.

- If you wear a mask stupid people might mistake you for a surgeon or a mortal combat ninja.

- Masks contribute to pollution and litter. Masks are an extremely environmentally unfriendly proposition and they're all over the streets.

- If people stopped wearing masks we'd need another way to see who consumes CNN and/or is living is a state of delusional paranoia.

Some have said that for the cost of everyone buying masks for the last two years one could very easily have provided real functional protection to the 5% of the population that is at meaningfully higher risk from flu or other respiratory viruses and let everyone else get on with their lives. But none of this mask stuff, lockdown stuff, or gene therapy stuff is about minimizing overall harm. If it were it would all have looked very different.

What is QED doing here? You boil down what at best would be an extremely complicated cost-benefit analysis to a simple 'if this then this' statement and put QED as if something of meaning was proved. Poor form.

As some other posters have pointed out -- If your simplistic logic is 'anything that creates fewer deaths' then the following hold true as well:

Driving? - Prohibited!

Flying? - Prohibited!

Space travel? - Prohibited and erased from history!

Walking on the city sidewalk? - Prohibited (tripping hazards, lightning, gang violence, errant vehicles, falling masonry - you get the idea...)

Swimming in the ocean? - Prohibited!

Don't even ask about the 'occasionally deadly' activity of running. That's strictly forbidden!

Eating can be deadly, but you also can't live without eating. So that's a tough one... Same for sex, I suppose.

Alcohol (and most other recreational drugs / tasty foods)? - Out.

Also most prescription drugs (definitely including these new gene therapies they're calling 'vaccines'). They seem to kill people as well. Though they may save some people too...

Most of the things that people enjoy and most constructive human behaviors contain some risk. Indeed living for as long as possible (as safely as possible) doesn't seem to be the goal of most people -- and for many good reasons. So sisk of death is acceptable -- even ubiquitous. Surely it can be mitigated (by wearing seatbelts, for example) it doesn't make sense to always mitigate it at any cost. For example, I'm not sure the airplane life rafts or the TSA pencil out. I suspect they don't and they're the results of some kind of accident of history (say when more airplanes landed successfully on water) or garden-variety corruption . Put anther way, the cost of mitigation should not outweigh the actual benefit. This is difficult to calculate when it comes to say weighing the lifelong empathic connections formed by seeing the faces of human beings agains, for example, the least valuable 10% of the most unhealthy 10% of peoples lives. These are not easy things to weigh against one another because they first must be quantified and people seem loathe to quantify such things. Luckily in the real-world scenario you're considering the overwhelming majority of meaningful risks of death from respiratory illnesses accrue predictably to certain demographics -- meaning that they can be dealt with either unilaterally or efficiently on the level of those cohorts without the need to seriously consider the 'should everyone wear masks' question.

Thanks for the links. The DoD released a study early on about masks on a plane - the data was pretty convincing for me (see page 24 - or p26 of the pdf). Browning motion (or diffusion or whatever anyone wants to call it) supposedly helps these masks (regular or n95) do their thing despite not particularly (pun intended) rated to stop viral sized things.

https://www.ustranscom.mil/cmd/docs/TRANSCOM%20Report%20Final.pdf

For your links:

The first study is tough because the non mask group still had to wear masks as part of their duties (from the full article) with only 80% compliance. Also, there's this as there's only so much that the study can control: "Subjects living with children were more likely to have high cold severity scores over the course of the study."

2 other studies just compared n95 versus surgical masks. A lot of the reviews also point to these types of studies - including one with just face shields. The findings also say no difference between n95 and surgical, but, "A secondary per-protocol analysis found that adherent use of N95 or surgical masks significantly reduced the risk for ILI in household contacts (hazard ratio 0·26, 95% CI 0·09–0·77) compared to non-adherent mask use or allocation to the control arm." The community settings portions basically say people suck at adhering to wearing masks (no surprise).

It seems like the different reviews basically point to the same studies. Your quote for one study was pretty disingenuous in the full context: "Eight of nine retrospective observational studies found that mask and ⁄ or respirator use was independently associated with a reduced risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Findings, however, may not be applicable to influenza and many studies were suboptimal. None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask ⁄respirator use and protection against influenza infection."

If people want to wear masks, they are free to do so whenever they wish. They always have been free to do so. What they can't demand is that other people mask up to placate stranger's irrational, illogical neuroses.