You are being willfully stupid now. Twisting and distorting is not valid argument. It isn't about doing what I am told, it's about doing what I am aware would help, and if nobody was discussing it, and they weren't, I had no such knowledge. It's pretty obvious that for better or worse with the pandemic there is an entirely different level of public discourse and awareness.

As to the topic of whether masks in fact help, I do have some skepticism, but so far I've been persuaded I should err on the side of they might given what I've read.

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And you should read fully. I'm guessing you didn't click on the link that provided a table.

I don't really understand what you're saying. You participate in society and are well aware of societies niceties and simple signs of respect. For example, saying bless you after someone sneezes. Saying excuse me if you bump into somebody. There is a general respect in life and in your interactions with people. I believe simply wearing a mask in public is something that falls under the same umbrella at this moment.

I did read it. That is ONLY for persons at high risk of severe illness. Look at the top of the column. For persons not at high risk, the table says not recommended.

In 2018, the CDC said this about wearing a mask during flu season: “very little information is available about the effectiveness of face masks and respirators in controlling the spread of pandemic influenza in community settings.”

The flu has been around forever and yet “very little information is available" about the effectiveness of masks? :confused:

What changed from 2018 to 2020 that the CDC could have “very little information" to "follow the science"?

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Are you not a high risk person? Even if you aren't, shouldn't you consider some of that "respect" Pack's is referring to and wear one for the people who are high risk?

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Perhaps there is room to consider that this may be a singular moment in time where for about a year and a half you're being asked to wear a mask in public.

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I don't know what you mean when you say that. We're in the middle of something our generation hasn't experienced before. It seems like you're upset it wasn't solved immediately.

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For me, it's the liberal hypocrisy. When the mean orange man stated something about the virus that wasn't true, he was spreading misinformation. When the CDC or...(fill in the blank) states something about the virus that isn't true, it's given a free pass because we're in the middle of something we've never experienced before.

My bad on the ad hominems. From what I've seen of your generation though including my own family, the ageism is somewhat justified. :D

What rules do you mean? I'm talking about wearing a mask in public still. I'm not talking about restricting you from doing anything while you're at it.

Again you are overlooking my basic point that I was not aware of any information in 2019 that would have led me to consider wearing a mask. It has nothing to do with the state other than that the state typically would be a major source of information.

I do wear one. In 2009 I was completely unaware of this -- it certainly was not widely discussed -- and in any rate back then I would not have considered myself high risk so the CDC would not have advised me to wear a mask.

Except that President Trump eventually admitted he intentionally downplayed the risks.

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And no other politicians did the same?

Oh, please bite, Peter. Please!!!

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No, my argument is that when one has good reason from whatever source to believe his conduct may be detrimental to others, and there is a way to mitigate that that isn't terribly restrictive, one should do that. You keep conflating this point with other issues and trying to twist my argument.

Whether in fact masks help is a separate point certainly worth discussing, but my argument assumes (as I have conceded) that they are helpful to others.

For example, I am pretty diligent about recycling what I can. Nobody knows if I do or don't, there is no state or social pressure, but I do it because I feel it's the right thing to do so in a miniscule way I do my part.

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Specific criticisms please.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19

Abstract

The science around the use of masks by the public to impede COVID-19 transmission is advancing rapidly. In this narrative review, we develop an analytical framework to examine mask usage, synthesizing the relevant literature to inform multiple areas: population impact, transmission characteristics, source control, wearer protection, sociological considerations, and implementation considerations. A primary route of transmission of COVID-19 is via respiratory particles, and it is known to be transmissible from presymptomatic, paucisymptomatic, and asymptomatic individuals. Reducing disease spread requires two things: limiting contacts of infected individuals via physical distancing and other measures and reducing the transmission probability per contact. The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. Given the current shortages of medical masks, we recommend the adoption of public cloth mask wearing, as an effective form of source control, in conjunction with existing hygiene, distancing, and contact tracing strategies. Because many respiratory particles become smaller due to evaporation, we recommend increasing focus on a previously overlooked aspect of mask usage: mask wearing by infectious people (“source control”) with benefits at the population level, rather than only mask wearing by susceptible people, such as health care workers, with focus on individual outcomes. We recommend that public officials and governments strongly encourage the use of widespread face masks in public, including the use of appropriate regulation.

Also.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2776536

When the hysteria and anxiety around getting the disease is 99% WORSE than the disease itself, there is some sort of disconnect. I'm talking in the low risk category. People under 60 with no comorbidities.

Could have been Cuomo/deblasio, here in NY and their:


"It's like fighting air, we cant control it" comment

Call for 50,000 ventilators

Call for aircraft carrier and javits center to be used as hospitals.

People didnt use their common sense. They wore masks outside because they were told to. Many looked down on others as "doing the wrong thing for the country". Now CDC says it fine. Well actually there was never a risk of contracting it outside. There was 100 cases attributed to a Singaporean construction site that were miscatagorized.

Believe half of what you see and none of what you read or hear. Rely on what you know to be true. The same thing happened in 1918 and we didnt understand the science behind, but we've acted the same. Wait until these roaring 20s pass, to see how we really fared.

How would I "know what is true" about a complex (and novel) infectious disease, when I am not a scientist by training?

It's sure easy to be smarter than other people with the benefit of hindsight.

Conversely, we were told from the very beginning to listen to the experts. How can one be an expert in something for which very little is known? The "experts" (WHO) told us there was no evidence of human to human transmission of Covid. So how do you determine what you believe and what you don't?

Question for the people who resist wearing masks around others:

When you sneeze or cough, do you cover your mouth? Why or why not?

I wear a mask most of the time, but I'll answer the question. When I sneeze? Yes, and I turn my head away from others as well. When I cough? No.

That's an interesting approach. Why one and not the other? I find my hand reflexively covers my mouth either way.

If I sneeze, it's because something has triggered my sinuses. I don't want to spread my germs.

If I cough, it's because I'm choking. I wouldn't cover my mouth...the only way for the obstruction to exit.

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What ill motive do you ascribe to this group of scientists and statisticians around the world?

 View ORCID ProfileJeremy Howard, Austin Huang,  View ORCID ProfileZhiyuan Li,  View ORCID ProfileZeynep Tufekci, Vladimir Zdimal,  View ORCID ProfileHelene-Mari van der Westhuizen,  View ORCID ProfileArne von Delft,  View ORCID ProfileAmy Price, Lex Fridman,  View ORCID ProfileLei-Han Tang,  View ORCID ProfileViola Tang,  View ORCID ProfileGregory L. Watson,  View ORCID ProfileChristina E. Bax,  View ORCID ProfileReshama Shaikh,  View ORCID ProfileFrederik Questier, Danny Hernandez,  View ORCID ProfileLarry F. Chu,  View ORCID ProfileChristina M. Ramirez, and  View ORCID ProfileAnne W. Rimoin


afast.ai, San Francisco, CA 94105;


bData Institute, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94105;


cWarren Alpert School of Medicine, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903;


dCenter for Quantitative Biology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;


eSchool of Information, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599;


fInstitute of Chemical Process Fundamentals, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-165 02 Praha 6, Czech Republic;


gDepartment of Primary Health Care Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, United Kingdom;


hTB Proof, Cape Town 7130, South Africa;


iSchool of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7925, South Africa;


jAnesthesia Informatics and Media Lab, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;


kDepartment of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139;


lDepartment of Physics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR, China;


mComplex Systems Division, Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing 100193, China;


nDepartment of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China;


oDepartment of Biostatistics, Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095;


pPerelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104;


qData Umbrella, New York, NY 10031;


rTeacher Education Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050 Brussels, Belgium;


sOpenAI, San Francisco, CA 94110;


tDepartment of Epidemiology, Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Your appeal to authority mantra is a straw man by the way. I am not suggesting anything is true simply because someone in authority said it is. By your logic nobody could ever cite to any study.

That makes a certain amount of sense. In the unlikely event I was choking, covering my mouth would not be very high on my list of priorities. However, I have coughed far more often than I've nearly choked on food.

That makes sense. But I don't get sick, so I really don't cough. And I only sneeze if something aggravates my sinuses. Funny, but it just happened. I'm cooking some bacon and it's very heavily peppered.

Go vegan. LOL.

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It is a logical fallacy in the abstract I agree, but I am not appealing to authority. I am citing the CONTENT of the study and asking why you disagree with its apparent conclusions. Certainly one can consider the credentials of the authors as supporting the conclusions without being guilty of a naked appeal to authority argument.

If you say something and I point out it's inconsistent with Einstein's theory of relativity, have I only appealed to authority?

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Yes controls are always preferable but sometimes not practical.

Science changes constantly, and at least reading the article suggests they did a really deep dive and critical reexamination of the data. If there was bias, financial self-interest, etc. that would certainly be a factor to consider, but I don't see that.

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Well for one you're in the middle of an active pandemic, pretty hard to set up an RCT for masks on a global basis.

They certainly discussed the RCTs in this section.
Reviews and RCTs of Mask Use for Other Respiratory Illnesses.

Also, they noted this:
The standard RCT paradigm is well suited to medical interventions in which a treatment has a measurable effect at the individual level and, furthermore, interventions and their outcomes are independent across persons comprising a target population.

By contrast, the effect of masks on a pandemic is a population-level outcome where individual-level interventions have an aggregate effect on their community as a system.

I'll even assume that this is true and it is now impossible to use controls. Does it not still suggest that the earlier studies are better, because they use controls? Why should I ignore the science before March, 2020 and just accept whatever the CDC says after March 2020?

See my addendum quoting what they said about RCTs. And I am relying at the moment on this article, not the CDC.

I'll repeat the quote so it's in one place with your question.

"The standard RCT paradigm is well suited to medical interventions in which a treatment has a measurable effect at the individual level and, furthermore, interventions and their outcomes are independent across persons comprising a target population.

By contrast, the effect of masks on a pandemic is a population-level outcome where individual-level interventions have an aggregate effect on their community as a system."