In an interview for 60 Minutes, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook posed that question to Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech University professor specializing in aerosol science.
“They are very helpful in reducing the chances that the person will get COVID because it’s reducing the amount of virus that you would inhale from the air around you,” Marr said about masks.
No mask is 100% effective. An N95, for example, is named as such because it is at least 95 percent efficient at blocking airborne particles when used properly. But even if a mask has an 80% efficiency, Marr said, it still offers meaningful protection.
“That greatly reduces the chance that I’m going to become infected,” Marr said.
Marr said research shows that high-quality masks can block particles that are the same size as those carrying the coronavirus. Masks work, Marr explained, as a filter, not as a sieve. Virus particles must weave around the layers of fibers, and as they do so, they may crash into those fibers and become trapped.
Marr likened it to running through a forest of trees. Walk slowly, and the surrounding is easy to navigate. But being forced through a forest at a high speed increases the likelihood of running into a tree.
“Masks, even cloth masks, do something,” she said.
Not that I expect most people to believe it at this point…
Even if the research had come out that masks did absolutely nothing to protect against Covid, I would have absolutely no regrets for masking up. We did what we thought was the right thing based on the evidence available and it harmed no one. The worst that would’ve happened if we were wrong (outside of a false sense of security) is that we looked silly for awhile. The people that were vehemently against wearing masks were tool-sheds who were manipulated into their position by an Administration who assumed it would affect Democratic-leaning cities/states more and who are so blinded by their anti-science views that they didn’t even understand the threat posed by Covid. Mask wearers did the right thing and the evidence backs us up. Anti-mask idiots hopefully learned an evolutionary lesson, but I doubt it has really ever sunk in.
I remember reading a while back that MAGA counties had significantly higher death and serious disease rates. Probably still do. I’m not sure about the apartment Republican strategy of actually working to kill their core voters, but I guess we’ll see how it works out for them.
I’ve read that TrumpCo wasn’t as concerned with it out of the belief that more populous Democratic counties/states would be more heavily impacted by Covid. If anything, they tried to take advantage of Covid to use it as a natural bio-weapon and this is probably their worst, yet least talked about crime that they’ll likely never face charges over. The strategy apparently blew up in their faces though, but by the time anyone realized, it was already too late to do anything about it. The damage had already been done.
Yup. I wiped my groceries down in the early pandemic. Turned out that probably wasn’t needed, but it’s a minor act that if the virus was in a different form could have helped.
The people that need to know this- won’t listen, and the people that don’t need to know- don’t need to know because they already know it.
It’s not about the morons that refuse to wear mask. It about people that believes in truth checking that the things they know are correct. If we wore masks and never tested if that did anything we would be as stupid as any anti-vaxxer.
Yea but there was already ample evidence. This isn’t enlightening anyone with anything new. (not that revalidation is bad, but revalidation isn’t changing anything)
The real problem for the Right Wing is that masks are at their most effective stopping the wearer’s germs from getting OUT, even though they’re also pretty effective at stopping others ’ germs from getting IN. They can’t stand the idea of sacrificing even a tiny bit of comfort for anyone else to benefit. Even if it also helps themselves.
So fucked up masks became politicized: I had hoped that the pandemic would help normalize them so people would just mask up whenever they feel sick. It could’ve mitigated the spread of all sorts of airborne disease.
Instead, they’ve been demonized by insane fascists. What a stupid world we live in…
Sometimes I just wear a mask to piss them off lol.
God I remember when this happened.
Right at the beginning of the pandemic, masks were being recommended by the CDC and everyone just sort of did it. COVID was novel and we were still trying to wrap our heads around it and being over cautious.
Weeks earlier, Trump was lamenting his polling numbers and complained that he didn’t have a “Katrina” that would rally his favorables.
Trump could have done something simple and just worn the damn mask. He could have told people that until they had better data, let’s be cautious and following the CDC guidelines.
But when he was asked point blank, he said he wouldn’t wear one.
Before that, conservatives and liberals were wearing masks. It wasn’t a “tribal” signal. But the second he said it, it was. You could tell immediately after that who conservatives were.
The funny thing is had Trump handled COVID better, he probably would have won re-election. Or at least it would have been closer.
But nope. That’s not the kind of person he was.
He could have made a MAGA mask and told his cultists that it was more effective and blessed with holy water or something, and then go on to make piles of cash. At the time, that’s what I was expecting to happen, but sadly I was wrong.
There was so much happening around this time. There was a story that didn’t get a lot of runtime about some company that he or someone who was connected to him set up where the federal government purchased masks bought a bunch of boxes from them but never got delivered.
The internal audit found that they basically the funds were misappropriated. The whole management of funds were so…shady to say the least.
Blue Flame (take your pick of articles). These were a group of politically connected people who were using official avenues to divert (steal) desperately needed PPE away from hospitals and municipalities to resell for profit, often to the same destinations they diverted it from.
Trump’s administration, especially Jared Kushner were all up in it, right around the time that asshole also thought it would be an effective political tool to withhold supplies from blue states as a punishment, as though viruses would all cave and go “oh, okay, I’ll stay in New York and not board EVERY FUCKING FLIGHT in existence to every other location just because I can” regardless of political affiliation.
It was also around that time that the bodies were piling up in NYC requiring the use of refrigerated trailers because not even all the morgues could hold them, and healthcare workers were having to buy their own PPE (if they even could) or be forced to re-use the same mask for weeks on end.
These were the folks that thought it would be great to profit off of massive human suffering, and make coin off of stealing by the literal truckload from their local and state governments and neighbors and heroic healthcare workers to do it.
May every single person involved in Blue Flame fucking rot in hell, rotating eternally on a spit that goes up their ass and out their mouth with a bit of hot, stank, fume-emitting turd stuck to the end of it that they have to huff unto the end of time, with passersby laughing at them periodically just to remind them that no one else made them do it, it was their own bright idea, and when it comes to being a sentient human being, all of them are a total fail.
Unfortunately, the recommendations from most (all?) top-level officials in the US right at the beginning of the pandemic was for the general public NOT to wear masks (including Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, etc). This absolutely didn’t help matters when later they had to change their tune and recommend then mandate masks, after they had said that they were not needed.
Here’s a nice compilation video of these statements over the first couple of months of the pandemic: https://piped.video/watch?v=tRE59LJc6CA
This is not what happened, they recommended people not to wear masks at the start. This might have undermined their later recommendation to wear a mask
This is true. They didn’t want to cause a mad rush for N95s and other medical masks, because they knew medical professionals needed them more. Because then as soon as they recommended the masks, there was a huge shortage.
But some people took the changing recommendation as some kind of conspiracy, that the government is just making it all up.
He would have had more voters at least.
I’m Asian. So I could wear a mask and not get the stink eye even before covid.
Things that should become obviously acceptable often doesn’t seem to do so due to some sort of cultural acceptance.
Like in regions most susceptible to malaria, they hate mosquito nets. Yet if I lived there, I’d mosquito net everything even without malaria!
They’re normalized in some places. I see people wearing them and not just the “Covid isn’t over!” folks.
I mean, COVID isn’t over lol: It didn’t go anywhere, we’re just dying from it a little less often. Must be nice avoiding colds and flu if masks are common in your area though, getting sick sucks.
Is COVID over though?
Covid has reached a ubiquitous state where it’s a constant presence around us. Similar to how cold and flu virus are. So in a sense, the high concern and detailed tracking is over. And we must simply accept that there is one more virus as part of our lives. It’s not over in the sense that it’s gone. That certainly will never be now.
It is over in the same way that the Spanish Flu is over, still around but not a massively infectious and deadly threat in the way it was originally due to vaccinations and herd immunity.
Which was what experts said from the start. Small chance it could get worse. But likely it’ll become endemic? And when it does it’ll just be like the cold. All we need to do is make sure we keep deaths low until it does by following some things like distancing and masking. Shut downs were terrible for many but it saved lives. Meanwhile everyone I knew kept telling me how they were lying about those steps and really it wouldn’t be temporary it was ushring in a NWO under the WHO
I wore a mask in crowded places for three and a half years without getting sick. Then I stopped and two weeks later I got COVID. It wasn’t much fun and it took weeks to get over. Maybe that was coincidence, but now we’re back into flu season I’m wearing masks in crowded places again. I figure each person who wears one makes it a little easier for those who would like to but don’t want to go against the social tide.
The problem is the cdc basically lied at the start and killed all their credibility before things even got started. Then you had apologists claiming they didn’t lie, making everything even worse.
It had (almost) nothing to do with the cdc. In other countries the same happened.
Source: am german
They did not provide the context, which was misconstrued as lying.
Everyone did not need to wear a mask at first because it was not widespread enough for them to be effective for the general population compared to making sure medical staff who were far more likely to be exposed had masks. Masking by the general public at the very beginning was a waste of masks compared to just reducing the time spent in groups. It became effective as time went on and the mask supply ramped up.
That context doesn’t make it not a lie. They could have said mask supplies were needed for medical professionals first, but they chose a convenient lie.
The context makes it like saying life jackets won’t keep you from drowning in a boat. They will if the boat starts sinking.
That is not a lie. What you are doing is twisting the first statement into the second to call it a lie.
They were trying to keep it simple, and while I agree that they should have said it was for medical professional use first I can see why they would leave it out to avoid panic buying since so many people are idiots.
I don’t necessarily think someone wanting to protect themselves against a potentially deadly infection makes them an idiot. I don’t think it’s fair to shame people who want to protect themselves and others by wearing a mask. Having a limit per customer prevents panic buying fairly well, at least it did during the pandemic where I live.
I also don’t entirely fault people for not believing the CDC when they said that masks weren’t effective for the general public, they could have said that they were for medical professionals first who were more likely to be exposed to the virus. They weren’t being entirely upfront and I could see why people would feel burned about that. Personally I’m not huge on the way they framed it either.
I basically agree with you but I’m not huge on the way you’re wording it, whatever I’m probably in the wrong here but I still wanted to get my thoughts out there.
With that said, even as early as the middle of 2020 they recommended mask usage for the general public.
People aren’t idiots for wanting to protect themselves.
They are idiots who panicked and hoarded toilet paper when there was no indication there would be a toilet paper shortage. Of course they would do the same thing with medical supplies.
The worst part is, in the actual post, there is a 30 second video explaining that they do indeed recommend medical professionals and others in close contact with the infected wear masks. So it even specifically had that context, and somehow people got the message that masks don’t help from it.
But I’m willing to bet most people who thought it said masks weren’t effective never saw the actual source. Just had one snippet of one sentence read to them on fox News with the “hosts” filling in what they should think about that half sentence.
The post also only say “not recommended -for the general public- at this time” which is not at all saying they wouldn’t work. Just don’t hoard them away from the people that need them, at this time. So, literally not even a lie anywhere in there. Directly stating exactly the message everyone that actually read the post took away from it.
That was a problem, but I wouldn’t say it was the problem.
The political body responsible for messaging and action during a pandemic immediately ruining it’s credibility is a pretty big problem. It creates the opening for a masks don’t work campaign, when the cdc opens with masks aren’t useful.
I can’t recall their exact messaging anymore, but I know at the time I got the impression that they said to save the limited supply of masks for the people that really need them. I remember constantly arguing on the internet at the time that that was what they said. They didn’t say that they don’t work, they just said not to start buying and hoarding them away from the people that need them.
But I guess one specific sentence caught “the other side’s” attention more than the rest of the message. Probably because they never actually check the source for what was actually said, and only read small clips from it that they have been told to react against.
Now you are lying. Just like CDC blatantly lied saying masks don’t help, against any common sense. What kind of medical group would ever say this in the face of an airborne novel respiratory virus. It’s inexcusable. They lied, you are now lying.
https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1233134710638825473?lang=en
It literally says “does not recommend for the general public” implying it is recommended for people that are actually in need if it, yes that is indeed the post everyone cherry picked from and never read the whole thing. Good find and good job reminding me of those idiots from years ago.
The video in that link even says they are recommended for medical professionals and other people in close contact with the infected. Literally saying, yes masks do work, but the general public shouldn’t be hoarding them yet, save them for people that need them.
Opens with “at this time” not recommended for public, yet. Like they will be at some point.
Nowhere at all does it say masks don’t help. In fact it says the opposite several times… but if you cherry pick parts of individual sentences, not even any one full sentence, you can misconstrue the message, I guess.
What is the specifics of the lie that they said?
They initially stated masks weren’t effective for general population use. This was a lie. There were reasons at the time for the lie, but it doesn’t make it not a lie.
I remember that now. Yeah, no idea why they said such at the beginning. It’s not like masks were a new invention with covid. Asian countries regularly use mask with flu.
They did it because the US didn’t have enough masks if they said anything positive about masks. So they lied initially to prevent people trying to buy masks, so they could go to hospitals first.
Also, they never actually lied, you can see the post here in some of the other comments, people were just idiots at the time and didn’t actually read the full post, just saw “not recommended for general public use at this time” and somehow took that to mean masks didn’t help. Instead of that they do help, but save them for the people in need, not general use. The post actually has a video in it that also specifies masks should be worn by medical professionals and other close contacts with the infected. Which is very much specifically saying masks do actually help.
But of course, at the time, the detractors wouldn’t link the actual source, they would just pick one sentence and “…quote…” it, completely removing all the context and making it look like it said the opposite.
Also it’s not like the idea of masks helping was ever in doubt among educated people. It’s literally been a go-to for more than a hundred years already. It was only the uneducated that needed to be told.
They literally didn’t lie, the post is linked in this thread. Of course at the time people weren’t linking the source, they were quoting part of one sentence and getting inflamed that half of a sentence seemed to say the opposite of what the actual post said.
It literally says “not recommended -for the general public- at this time” how is that miscontrued to “they don’t work”? It doesn’t say that at all. In fact the video in that post, I know it’s a full 30 seconds long and slow and boring… but the video specifically says to save them for medical professionals and others in close contact with the infected. Again very much stating specifically that they do help.
The fact that the idea of an air filter is controversial is frankly amazing.
They apparently only work in every situation except when put over your face.
Many think that it takes only 1 virus to catch the disease when, in reality, your body will easily deal with a small amount of unknown pathogens and does so many times a day.
Masks work because they reduce the overall viral load, so your immune system isn’t overwhelmed.
What also doesn’t help is how unintuitively percentages scale. A mask that is 90% effective doubles the viral load if compared to a mask with 95% effectiveness, even tho the difference is “only” 5%.
Influenza data shows that it takes about 1000 viral particles to infect a human. Assuming COVID 19 is similar, reducing viral load also significantly reduces severity of disease if you get it.
Do you know if the infection threshold is similar across different influenza strains or are some more infectious than others?
I do not. I’m sure it varies quite widely and it’s very presumptuous to assume coronavirus is similar but I think the general point is valid. You’d rather be exposed to 300 viral particles than 30,000 and masks absolutely have a reductive effect. One thing that has been mentioned that I hadn’t thought about is the concept that if you are exposed to a sub-infectious level of virus the immune system might still develop response/immunity and that it’s actually healthy to be exposed to sub-infectious level of viruses.
Not only that but those percentages are for a given particle size. They will both stop 100% of ping pong balls, for instance. As mentioned in yoher comments, the virus is usually in aerosol, microscopic droplets of varying size.
There’s something to be said for masks that aren’t 100% effective that isn’t often said: letting in a little virus when out in public, but not enough viral load to cause an infection, very likely has a positive effect on your immunity to the virus.
Most people think it is an all or nothing thing, including some doctors.
My immune system is apparently very good against noroviruses or whatever was giving my family the “all exits no waiting” treatment. A doctor argued that I must not have come in contact with the virus since I had no symptoms aside from feeling icky for a couple of hours. I was bothered that they had such a bad grasp on how viral infections work and I don’t consider myself an expert by any stretch. Even after I told them I had been having to clean up my toddler and infant messes, do diapers, bathe them etc. I had come in contact with saliva vomit poo pee breath etc- of course I came in contact with it.
I had the virus, I just didn’t have the disease/nasty symptoms. Maybe I had built immunity, maybe I had been able to build immunity quickly, maybe insufficient viral critical mass for rapid onset- who knows?
Yeah, I’m the same way, I always get about 10% as sick as the rest of my family when something is going around. I just assume my immune system is well trained. But I am also always cautious when new stuff is around, as an immune system can’t be trained to stuff it hasn’t seen yet. But I don’t go for a zero tolerance approach. I go for a minimize exposure approach. Avoid contact with mucous membranes and other external weak points, and keep distance. But don’t completely avoid everything. Still do stuff, just more carefully.
“all exits no waiting”
I’m stealing this.
Norovirus is fucking EVIL. The worst part is your body doesn’t maintain immunity indefinitely. Which is why people will often complain they get it seasonally.
When I’ve had it I like to say “my organs have been liquified and my skin suit is blasting the soup out of both ends”.
Nothing worse than jetting hot shit out of your ass then puking into the bath at your side - repeatadly.
Then when you’re ‘empty’ you curl into a ball on the bathroom floor.
That’s awful. My weird immune system has its own issues, but not noroviruses thus far.
I have had your experience caused by food poisoning and it ended putting me in the ER so you have my sincere sympathy.
That’s the same as what we knew about masks a century ago?
I thought doctors and nurses were wearing this just for fun.
All “Security Theatre” …, according to Qult45.
Seriously… if masks don’t work, then I’m sure you’ll have no problem with your surgeon coughing into your open chest without one on, right?
I thought it’s so that doctors don’t lick the scalpels.
Assuming a mask blocks 50% of particles or droplets in either direction (preventing yours from escaping if you’re sick, preventing outside particles from getting to you), when 2 people wear masks that reduces the chances of transmission in a given retail encounter by 75%.
Reducing those odds by that much, when (from an epidemiological POV) the biggest math factor is to drive the r number down below 1, it’s a huge deal. If you do that consistently, the virus becomes rarer and rarer and has fewer opportunities to mutate and more importantly, you’re feeding fewer and fewer human beings to it.
It’s such a tired topic. Most pathogenes of this kind travel by attaching themselves to little droplets, aerosols and larger spit particles. Thinking that even cloth masks aren’t at least reducing those to a certain degree by catching said particles just feels dishonest, and medically related masks have been in use in hospitals and other locations for ages. Do people think they are worn out of fashion? And now we’ve got even more studies and data that confirms all of this even more, but covidiots will just continue with their idiocy. 🙈🙉
I hope I won’t have to witness an even deadlier disease turning into a pandemic, but at the rate things are going it is probably not very unlikely.
Removed by mod
If you are sick and breathing into your own mask and it catches your exhalations, helping reduce your contagiousness for others, and you touch your own germs to throw them away, others are still better off.
If your only concern is protecting yourself then you need to use masks a bit differently, but they still offer improved protection over doing nothing.
If you are still confused I doubt any more comments from me will help you.
This article covers that. In fact, the article I linked is the article you commented on.
Here’s the part from the article.
"Early in the pandemic, some guidance from health professionals suggested that wearing a mask might actually lead to infection: A person might encounter a contaminated mask and then touch their eyes, nose, or mouth. But research in the ensuing years has shown that fear to be misplaced.
“There wasn’t any evidence really that that happens,” Marr said.
Marr said her team aerosolized the coronavirus, pulled it through a mask, and then examined how much virus survived on the mask. The study reported some viral particle remained on some cloth masks, but no virus survived on the N95s or surgical masks.
Marr’s team also touched artificial skin to masks and looked at how many virus particles transferred to the artificial skin. No infectious virus transferred.
“I hope the study kind of shows that it’s something we don’t need to worry about as much as we were told,” Marr said."
That makes no sense. All infected particles caught by the mask are particles that could’ve found their way into other peoples lungs instead.
This might be the case with bacterial infections, but most viruses can’t live that long without a host, especially if daylight is involved. ( L Meister · 2022 · Transmission of infectious SARS-CoV-2 via fomites is possible upon extensive moistening, but it is unlikely to occur in real-life scenarios). So if you’re not touch your mask all the time, it should help defend against infection significantly
We know that they help prevent spreading disease to other People and that a large subsect of Americans hates that it helps others.
We have known that masks help reduce the spread of diseases transmitted through the air for decades, they just have evidence it works for Covid specifically.
Yes, that is indeed what I posted. The second half was the important part of the comment.
Yeah but a guy on YouTube said they don’t work and he said “trust me” so what now?
“you can still smell farts”
sigh
At the same time, you have the people claiming they immediately turn blue and pass out within seconds of putting a mask on.
Millions of people in this country apparently have problems keeping two thoughts in their head at the same time.
To these people, COVID is simultaneously not as bad as the flu, a Chinese hoax, something to be fought with ivermectin, a liberal hoax, something so infectious it can get through even the best fitted filtration mask, fought by going to the gym, fought by getting more sunlight, overblown in death count, etc etc.
Masks are the same. They’re simultaneously stifling and damaging to your health because they disallow O2 ingress or whatever and you can’t use them because you have some private health condition, and they’re completely ineffective at keeping out COVID somehow.
My diagnosis is that they’re brain wormed from the maga mind virus, and probably got some damage from COVID too.
Who probably also think that they are physically superior to others, while in reality have admitted to being pretty fucking pathetic if they can’t handle a mask for a few minutes let alone hours.
I’m not even worried about covid anymore but continue to mask in busy places in the fall/winter because it’s nice not being congested half the season, and it’s easy. And the fact that my mask doesn’t perfectly filter out virus particles is even better because my immune system still gets some exposure to do some local updates with.
This means nothing. I’d be willing to bet that anyone unwilling to wear a mask is also unwilling to listen to science/medical experts.
Yeah… you’ve either got people who absolutely refuse to believe masks are effective, or you’ve got people that are so done with the whole thing that they just don’t care anymore. Hearing an expert say they work isn’t going to convince either of these groups to wear them.
“Science knows now that they were right for the past 3 years”
More like decades if not centuries, since masks have been used in medical setting for a very, very long time.
The plague doctor full body costume worked. Kept the fleas away, especially from the lungs, and any airborne bacteria. Sure, they thought that it was the scented shit they put inside the beak that was helping and that someone asking them to wash their hands was insulting, but either way, there was Renaissance PPE, and possibly even medieval PPE.
Most people do believe this. I doubt that the unbelievers will be convinced though.
maybe the video is more informative than the article, but the article has no new science information in it.
If anything its even spreading a very slight misinformation. The blown plastic material of n95 and similar masks doesn’t operate in the way the article describes, they work on the principle of static electricity grabbing the particles as they pass through. If a mask loses its static charge, say, through washing, it loses a significant amount of its effectiveness.
I’m not sure why it suggests that particles smash into the fibers (some do, but its the static electricity doing the heavy lifting.
Articles are written at a 6th grade level. What you’re describing requires a higher level of understanding.
