Masks

[blumenkraft]

After universal masking was implemented at Mass General Brigham, the rate of COVID-19 infection among health care workers dropped significantly. "For those who have been waiting for data before adopting the practice, this paper makes it clear: Masks work."

Association Between Universal Masking in a Health Care System and SARS-CoV-2 Positivity Among Health Care Workers

Link >> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768533

[Sigmetnow]

A new survey finds hundreds of McDonald's workers have been assaulted by anti-mask customers, as mandatory masks become the norm

As mask requirements becomes the norm during the coronavirus pandemic, companies are facing looming questions on how workers can safely enforce new policies.

A Service Employees International Union survey of 4,187 McDonald's workers shared with Business Insider found that 44% of respondents said they had been verbally or physically assaulted after confronting customers who weren't wearing masks.

While the SEIU only surveyed a small proportion of the chain's more than 800,000 workers in the US, the 44% of respondents alone represent more than 1,800 employees who say they have been assaulted on the job.
...

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union has similarly pushed for retailers to roll out national mask policies, with president Marc Perrone saying on Thursday that Target and Walmart's announcements were "long overdue."

"Every retailer and grocery store across this nation must adopt a mask requirement, and enforcement must be done by trained professionals, not retail workers already stretched thin during this crisis," Perrone said in a statement. ...

https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-face-verbal-and-physical-assaults-from-anti-mask-customers-2020-7

[FWIW, I note that the drivethru photo in the article is not from US (it hasn’t been reversed, because the “Quatro” emblem on car is correct).  The article is by Business Insider, owned by German publishing congomerate with known history of articles with a negative slant (e.g., anti-Tesla).  So be cautious in interpreting it.]

[blumenkraft]

Interesting!

“It has been shown that only those employees who had plastic visors were infected. There was not a single infection among employees with a mask.”: Swiss government warns against face shields

Link >> https://www.thelocal.ch/20200715/only-those-with-plastic-visors-were-infected-swiss-government-warns-against-face-shields/

[SteveMDFP]

Interesting!

“It has been shown that only those employees who had plastic visors were infected. There was not a single infection among employees with a mask.”: Swiss government warns against face shields

Link >> https://www.thelocal.ch/20200715/only-those-with-plastic-visors-were-infected-swiss-government-warns-against-face-shields/

Thanks for this.  It *is* interesting, and potentially quite useful.  I would think that face shields might add a bit of protection against transmission to the eyes.  But probably this is a minor risk compared with the physics of inhaling air (and its suspended particles) through mouth/nose, but not eyes.  The relevant passage from the article here is:
"Plastic face shields should be worn in tandem with a face mask, say cantonal authorities."

Cheers.

[blumenkraft]

Welcome, Steve. Cheers!

[blumenkraft]

Growing Body Of Evidence Suggests Masks Protect Those Wearing Them, Too

Link >> https://www.npr.org/2020/07/20/893227088/growing-body-of-evidence-suggests-masks-protect-those-wearing-them-too

The viral dose is key! If you initially get a very high dose of virus, you turn out sicker. A mask can lower the viral dose you are exposed to even though they don't filter out everything. This might just be the difference between surviving the illness - or not.

[vox_mundi]

[blumenkraft]

Art!

[blumenkraft]

The viral dose is key.

Via Fox News!!

Mounting evidence shows masks may help avoid severe illness, even if you get COVID-19

Link >> https://outline.com/paBagK

[Tom_Mazanec]

Anti-masks from a conservative Catholic canon lawyer:
Can We Be Required To Wear Masks At Mass?
https://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2020/07/30/can-we-be-required-to-wear-masks-at-mass/#more-3245
For some reason I am unable to copy and paste this, but disclosure - I wear a mask at Mass.

[Florifulgurator]

[Tom_Mazanec]

Of course our great-great grandparents were much more sensible than us, right? They would not have protested wearing masks to fight a deadly disease...they knew what disease could do. This anti-mask nonsense is just an example of how stupid the 21st Century is, right?
WRONG!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco

[blumenkraft]

That's a cool video, Martin. Thanks for sharing.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Houston Mayor Orders $250 Fines For People Who Refuse to Wear Masks
https://summit.news/2020/08/04/houston-mayor-orders-250-fines-for-people-who-refuse-to-wear-masks/

“For months, we have been focusing on education and not citations, but now I am instructing the Houston Police Department to issue the necessary warnings and citations to anyone not wearing a mask in public if they do not meet the criteria for an exemption,” the mayor said Monday at a press briefing.

[vox_mundi]

Electric Cooker An Easy, Efficient Way to Sanitize N95 Masks, Study Finds
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-electric-cooker-easy-efficient-sanitize.html

[longwalks1]

The caveats underneath the video on the original Youtube page give one cause to re-evaluate this as a S.O.P. 

Uh... I think this is only good for masks with woven elastic straps.  212F for 50 minutes?  Anything plastic, or nitrile will likely melt with this method.  Not good.  If you only used it on an 1860 model, you should not generalize the study to include all N95s.  Did you even test the 1860S?  I'll stick with UVC for the time being.  I understand there aren't enough studies yet, but if it's good enough to kill C. diff, I think it'll kill SARS-CoV-2 without much trouble.

FreeBird Safety Services
1 day ago
As a professional Respirator Fit Tester with over 1500 people fit tested in the medical and dental 8 since Feb. 2020, I have some questions. Did you only perform this test on the 3M 1860? How did it fare with a 3M 8210? As you know the 8210 has rubber straps for donning. Did they melt.
It, s not just the filtration that's important, but pressure onto the face when Donning a respirator is just as vital.
Do to the KN95 from China saturating the market, was this test conductet on them as well.
One final question. How did you conduct the fit test that proved the 1860 was still achieving a 100% seal to a person's face.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Europe's Top Health Officials Say Masks Aren't Helpful in Beating COVID-19
https://fee.org/articles/europes-top-health-officials-say-masks-arent-helpful-in-beating-covid-19/

The problem with mask mandates is that public health officials are not merely recommending a precaution that may or may not be effective.

They are using force to make people submit to a state order that could ultimately make individuals or entire populations sicker, according to world-leading public health officials.

Irregardless, I am still wearing my masks. Even my Trumpist guardian wears masks.

[blumenkraft]

Well, those are not Europe's Top Health Officials. Never heard of them to be honest. So the article is lying from the get-go.

But of course they do the water carrying since they are the outlet for a libertarian think-tank.

[Villabolo]

I've got an Israeli - old school - military gas mask and a Russian one. The Israeli mask makes me look like a scuba diver from the head up. The Russian one makes me look like an alien, particularly the one that Han Solo shot at the bar in Star Wars. They are both NBC rated, providing protection from nuclear, biological and chemical agents. Their filters don't last long, though.

I wore the Israeli one at the supermarket just to see people's reaction. No one gave me a second look.



Israeli NBC gas mask



Russian gas mask


Other than that, I have a N-95 respirator, like the one that hospitals use. I had to remove the yellow elastic bands which wear out after a few uses. I replaced it with a sturdy elastic band. I launder it along with my regular laundry and hang it in the sun to dry. The sun's UV is a good sanitizer.

[blumenkraft]

Well, there is no debate about the efficacy of those. 

[Tom_Mazanec]

It’s Time to Roll Back the Mask Mandates, Not Ramp Them Up Ridiculously
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/its_time_to_roll_back_the_mask_mandates_not_ramp_them_up_ridiculously.html

Dr. Scott Atlas, who has thankfully been tapped by President Trump as an adviser, suggests that the “goal of stopping COVID-19 cases is not the appropriate goal.”  Rather, “the goal is simply twofold, to protect the people who are going to have a serious problem and die, that’s the high-risk population, and to stop hospital overcrowding.  There should never be and there is no goal to stop college students from getting an infection they have no problem with.”

Incidentally, this is the same approach that Dr. David Katz recommended in the New York Times on March 20, suggesting “a pivot right now from trying to protect all people to focusing on the most vulnerable.”

This is the strategy that American policymakers should adopt in order to get us through this pandemic quickly and with as few deaths, and as little strain on our hospitals, as possible.  It would allow most Americans to get back to their lives with a semblance of normalcy, increase their happiness, and rebuild the economy.  And it seems clear that this is what President Trump wants for Americans.

Well, as a sexagenarian I am one of those vulnerable people. And a small but significant percentage of those younger people end up with long term complications.

[vox_mundi]

https://mobile.twitter.com/samkimasia/status/1297116978964905984

A person sitting under an airconditioner infected 27 others with coronavirus at a Starbucks cafe in South Korea, but none of employees, who were wearing masks, got the virus.



https://m.chosun.com/svc/article.html?sname=news&contid=2020081904509&Dep0=www.google.com&docRefURL=https://www.google.com/

[vox_mundi]

Face Shields, Masks With Valves Ineffective Against COVID-19 Spread: Study
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-shields-masks-valves-ineffective-covid-.html



... To increase public awareness about the effectiveness of face shields alone as well as face masks with exhalation valves, researchers from Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science used qualitative visualizations to test how face shields and masks with valves perform in impeding the spread of aerosol-sized droplets. Widespread public use of these alternatives to regular masks could potentially have an adverse effect on mitigation efforts.

Results of the study show that although face shields block the initial forward motion of the jet, the expelled droplets move around the visor with relative ease and spread out over a large area depending on light ambient disturbances. Visualizations for the face mask equipped with an exhalation port indicate that a large number of droplets pass through the exhale valve unfiltered, which significantly reduces its effectiveness as a means of source control.

"Visualizing droplet dispersal for face shields and masks with exhalation valves," Physics of Fluids, 2020
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/5.0022968

[SteveMDFP]

Face Shields, Masks With Valves Ineffective Against COVID-19 Spread: Study
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-shields-masks-valves-ineffective-covid-.html

Thanks for posting this.  Early in the pandemic, I got a box of N95s--with exhalation valve.  Pretty clearly, I've been protecting myself, but not protecting people I expose.  I'll be covering the inside of the vents with tape.  Glasses will fog up more.  Small price to pay for being socially responsible.

[Bruce Steele]

Steve, Just wear a surgical mask over your n-95.
Do you think enough people wearing masks will modify this years influenza season?  I am going to get nervous around coughing and sneezing that the cold/ influenza season brings. When we get Covid positivity rates at 10-20% I would think people could be spreading both a cold and Covid at the same time and that the coughing and sneezing associated with cold season will make Covid RO even worse.
 It seems like the Southern Hemisphere would already inform this issue but I haven’t seen anything other than reports of a mild flu season forecast.

[interstitial]

a properly fitted mask should not be fogging up your glasses.

[SteveMDFP]

Steve, Just wear a surgical mask over your n-95.
Do you think enough people wearing masks will modify this years influenza season? 

Covid seems substantially more contagious than influenza.  Any measures that reduce Covid's R-nought to near 1 should drop influenza's R to well below one.  I'm expecting the mildest influenza season in recent history.

I read just the other day, somewhere, that there's no sign of influenza spread in the southern hemisphere yet.  So that, so far, supports my surmise.

[vox_mundi]

COVID Karma: An Idaho Pastor Skeptical of Masks Lands in the ICU for Covid-19
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/09/17/us/idaho-pastor-covid-masks-trnd/index.html

A pastor in Idaho who called himself a "no-masker" during a service and repeatedly questioned the veracity of coronavirus case reporting is in the ICU after contracting Covid-19.

Paul Van Noy, senior pastor at Candlelight Church in Coeur d'Alene, has spent two weeks in the hospital with a Covid-19 diagnosis, ministry coordinator Eric Reade confirmed to CNN. Five other church staff were infected with coronavirus, too, but they've all recovered, he said.

In a July 22 service that was posted online, Van Noy said while he doesn't mind if other people wear masks, he didn't "want to be told" he needed to wear a mask.

[vox_mundi]

[Archimid]

Nifty interactive presentation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/30/science/wear-mask-covid-particles-ul.html

[karl dubhe2]

Of course our great-great grandparents were much more sensible than us, right?

Our great-great grandparents were living in the generation after doctors had proposed the germ theory.   Besides which, judging them by 'our' standards  is wrong.  (from the historical pov anyhow.)   Judge them based on what they knew at the time, not by using 2020 hindsight.  Humans are human, and we tend to act like our ancestors acted; almost.

[karl dubhe2]

a properly fitted mask should not be fogging up your glasses.

Sounds like you live in the southern part of the world.   

[Shared Humanity]

I've decided to start smoking again.

[Tom_Mazanec]

SH, if I could like something twice, or love it instead of like it, I would do that for the above.

[interstitial]

a properly fitted mask should not be fogging up your glasses.

Sounds like you live in the southern part of the world.   

no it just means if air flows between the mask and your skin it is not fitted properly. Few people who have not been formally trained for proper mask fit realize this. It is difficult/unlikely to get a proper fit with facial hair.

[Archimid]

I've had formal proper mask fit training. It's not difficult at all. If governments make an effort for better masking, mask efficiency will increase.

I believe mask efficiency will significantly drop during winter. But I also believe that public mask efficiency can be highly increased with proper plans and education.

[Florifulgurator]

I believe mask efficiency will significantly drop during winter. But I also believe that public mask efficiency can be highly increased with proper plans and education.

Yes. This is the significant failure of the West. E.g. Vietnam had a huge public education campaign right at the beginning.


(Image source: https://www.dw.com/en/how-vietnam-is-winning-its-war-on-coronavirus/a-52929967 April 2020)

[Tom_Mazanec]

Face Masks Don't Work as Well in the Community as They Do in the Lab
https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2020/11/24/face_masks_dont_work_as_well_in_the_community_as_they_do_in_the_lab_650823.html

In controlled laboratory situations, face masks appear to do a good job of reducing the spread of coronavirus (at least in hamsters) and other respiratory viruses. However, evidence shows mask-wearing policies seem to have had much less impact on the community spread of COVID-19.
Why this gap between the effectiveness in the lab and the effectiveness seen in the community? The real world is more complex than a controlled laboratory situation. The right people need to wear the right mask, in the right way, at the right times and places.

[vox_mundi]

The U.S. Army finally has its own mask for soldiers and recruits, and it took less a year to bring it from idea to reality, the service boasted Wednesday. (FWIW, the Army says “It normally takes 18–24 months for [the Defense Logistics Agency] to have the item available for order once the technical description, design, and components are approved and submitted.)

https://www.army.mil/article/241816/the_armys_official_face_mask_to_be_issued_to_new_soldiers_in_2021

Maybe they should have watched a YouTube DIY video

[sailor]

I consider one of the worst scandals of 2020 the fact that masks were discouraged by most governments during the first rage of the pandemics: all sorts of health institutions including the WHO, governments in most western countries no matter if Right or Left, the exception several Asian countries already alert to epidemics.

To see them lying to billions of people in perfect sync was abhorrent, while only a handful of outsider epidemiologists, doctors and hillbillies tried to dismantle the lie and risked being canceled by exposing the powers of this world. But they were silenced with the same efficiency the anti-mask conspiranoids are canceled now.

Even the issue was somehow silenced from the COVID-19 thread in this forum, and sort of buried in this thread out of reach. The world powers are capable of exerting enormous influence even in an otherwise independent forum like this.

All that bullshit that we were told in sync: they were not needed; they were more harmful than anything else because they created a sensation of false safety; people would not be able to use them correctly and would touch their face continuously making contagion more probable...

All governments ... all health institutions ... all unison lying to billions of people.

Pathetic. Disheartening. Dreadful.

Look at Vox.com, for instance, that paternalistic and lame manufacturer of virtue at the service of the Corporate America:

[kassy]

Even the issue was somehow silenced from the COVID-19 thread in this forum, and sort of buried in this thread out of reach. The world powers are capable of exerting enormous influence even in an otherwise independent forum like this.

That is quite a wacky way to think about it.

It the main Covid thread we wanted to focus on what is actually happening.

The whole mask debate was not very constructive mainly people going yes/no with no end in side so it was disruptive to the thread and it got it´s own thread.

[sailor]

Even the issue was somehow silenced from the COVID-19 thread in this forum, and sort of buried in this thread out of reach. The world powers are capable of exerting enormous influence even in an otherwise independent forum like this.

That is quite a wacky way to think about it.

It the main Covid thread we wanted to focus on what is actually happening.

The whole mask debate was not very constructive mainly people going yes/no with no end in side so it was disruptive to the thread and it got it´s own thread.

Don't take it personal, my intention was not to discredit the Forum, but to emphasize how powerful governments and institutions were in dis-informing the people, to the point of creating discord, confusion... I know the reason was that Mask discussions were swamping the thread but you see what I am talking about? Disinformation from powers above indirectly caused mask-related discussion to be too-heated and removed from the thread.

[Tom_Mazanec]

More than 1.5 billion masks believed to have entered oceans in 2020
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national/more-than-1-5-billion-masks-believed-to-have-entered-oceans-in-2020

“About six weeks after COVID hit Hong Kong, so late February, we began finding masks, and lots of masks," said Bondaroff. “What’s remarkable is we weren’t finding face masks before COVID.”
Masks are made with polypropylene, which Bondaroff describes as thin fibers of plastic.
"The fact that we are starting to find masks that are breaking up indicates that this is a real problem, that microplastics are being produced by masks," he said.
These tiny pieces of plastic can remain in the ocean for hundreds of years, threatening fish and even polluting the air.

[kassy]

You see them all around the city too. How hard is it too actually put trash in a bin FFS?

[Tom_Mazanec]

On the psychosocial aspects of masks
Masks Can Be Murder
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/masks_can_be_murder.html

This is a "notable person" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author) ). Can someone refute his argument? Is he reliable?

[oren]

I refuse to click such sites - but taking a peek on the Internet, I think he's wrong. Murders are up because of rising social anger, thanks to the Orange Idiot on the one hand and the Covid crisis on the other hand. Masks are annoying and uncomfortable but do not lead to increased murders, or else the East Asians would have murdered themselves to death already.

[Tom_Mazanec]

He is more saying masks "depersonalize" the wearers, but thanks for the reply, oren.

[etienne]

In Luxembourg, insecurity is more related to empty towns because of the curfew, than to masks.

[karl dubhe2]

a properly fitted mask should not be fogging up your glasses.

Sounds like you live in the southern part of the world.   

no it just means if air flows between the mask and your skin it is not fitted properly. Few people who have not been formally trained for proper mask fit realize this. It is difficult/unlikely to get a proper fit with facial hair.

I live in Edmonton Canada, this isn't a season where your glasses aren't going to fog up.  No matter what you do with the mask, when you transition from outside to inside the change in temperature is going to fog your damned glasses.  I've been bitching about it every winter since 1975.   

[vox_mundi]

Three-Layered Masks Most Effective Against Large Respiratory Droplets
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-three-layered-masks-effective-large-respiratory.html



The droplet impacting on the mask surface is recorded at 20,000 frames per second. These time sequence images of droplet impingement on a single-, double-, and triple-layer masks show the total number count of atomized droplets is significantly higher for the single-layer mask in comparison with the double-layer mask, while only a single droplet penetrates through the triple-layer mask.

... Researchers have now shown that three-layered surgical masks are also most effective at stopping large droplets from a cough or sneeze from getting atomized into smaller droplets. These large cough droplets can penetrate through the single- and double-layer masks and atomize to much smaller droplets, which is particularly crucial since these smaller droplets (often called aerosols) are able to linger in the air for longer periods of time. Researchers studied surgical masks with one, two and three layers to demonstrate this behavior.

... "While it is expected that large solid particles in the 500-600-micron range should be stopped by a single-layer mask with average pore size of 30 micron, we are showing that this is not the case for liquid droplets," said Abhishek Saha, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC San Diego and a co-author of the paper. "If these larger respiratory droplets have enough velocity, which happens for coughs or sneezes, when they land on a single-layer of this material it gets dispersed and squeezed through the smaller pores in the mask."

This is a problem. Droplet physics models have shown that while these large droplets are expected to fall to the ground very quickly due to gravity, these now smaller, 50-80 micron-sized droplets coming through the first and second layer of a mask will linger in the air, where they can spread to people at larger distances. ...

Shubham Sharma et al, On secondary atomization and blockage of surrogate cough droplets in single- and multilayer face masks, Science Advances (2021).
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/10/eabf0452