Face masks don't even have to work especially well to be effective:
Advice on whether or not to use face masks to limit the spread of the pandemic has varied from country to country, even differing by location within countries. These policies have had to balance whether there were sufficient supplies for medical personnel to divert some to the general public. And the whole issue was decided without a clear idea of whether face masks were actually effective against SARS-CoV-2.
But there has been reason to think masks would at least be somewhat affective, based on studies of the spread of droplets of material we expel while coughing or sneezing. And a recent analysis suggested a large group of individual studies collectively pointed to their effectiveness. But that analysis left a large degree of uncertainty about how effective they'd be at the population level and how face mask use would interact with other policy decisions.
The situation left us needing population-level modeling, which a group of UK scientists has now provided. The group's model indicates that face masks don't have to be especially effective to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and can even bring benefits if they make people more vulnerable to infection. But to really control the pandemic, they will have to be combined with a lockdown if we want to see the total infected population shrink.
[...] Right now, we just don't know enough about SARS-CoV-2 and protective gear to evaluate which of these models best reflect reality. But the models do set some reasonable bounds about what we might aim for. For example, they indicate that masks don't need to be especially good if we get enough people wearing them and couple their use to other policy initiatives.
Journal Reference:
Stutt, R., Retkure, R., Bradley, M., Gilligan, C., and Colvin, J. A modelling framework to assess the likely effectiveness of facemasks in combination with lock-down in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2020) (DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2020.0376)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @04:50PM (6 children)
Masks, even bandanas, helps prevent stuff from the mouth spreading out. It probably provides a level of protection for the wearer, but it's more effective in protecting others from you.
So, wear a mask, at least when in indoors with other people around. You may be an asymptomatic carrier. It's a common courtesy in times of epidemic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @07:25PM (4 children)
This comment seems to be factually incorrect:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/who-now-recommends-the-public-use-masks-good-masks-in-covid-19-areas/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @07:42PM (3 children)
That's because you are illiterate. From the piece itself:
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:06PM (2 children)
Keep reading.
Cotton, handkerchief, filtration efficiency: 1.1%. Filter quality factor, 0.48. (Minimum Q-factor: 3)
A bandana is largely equivalent to doing nothing at all. What you quoted is a four-layer cotton mask of t-shirt-like material, in no way similar to a "bandana".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:30PM (1 child)
Ok kids today we will br doing some hands on science! You'll be running your own experiments to gather data about the effectiveness of wearing face masks.
First wearing no madk at all breathe outward normally through your mouth five times and theougg your nose five times. Hold your hand in front of your nose or mouth and see how far away you can feel your breath.
Next tie a bandana around your head to make a mask covering your nose and mouth. Repeat the 5 bresths for nose and mouth and see how far away you can feel your bresth.
Bonus points for repeating the steps with more forceful breathing and sneezing or coughing.
If the bandana reduces how far you can feel your breath then it will be effective in limiting the infectious area around someone with air born virus or bacteria. You could still pass your infection so maintaining distance and no physical contact is still recommended when interacting with others.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday June 15 2020, @09:47PM
Now let's "real world" that experiement and use COVID.
COVID is not an airborne virus. The size of COVID particles are somewhere around 10-12 microns and nominally require attaching to exhaled droplets. Viruses that can float on air (airborne) are about 5 microns in size. It is suspected, although not confirmed, that forceful coughs and procedures which can disturb large amounts of phlegm and greater respiratory rates can cause these particles to become temporarily airborne.
For your experiment, this means it doesn't matter at all how far you can "feel breath." It matters both how far your droplets extend and the individual patterns of the virus. The end results would probably be the same. A person infected wearing a mask will stop those 10 micron particles from escaping. A person wearing a mask may be prevented from receiving any stray droplets or aerosolized particles (although an N-95 is then recommended is the person is, for example, coughing).
What wouldn't be the same is the response of truly airborne viruses like active Tuberculosis and Measles. While a surgical mask may help limit their spread somewhat the mask is porous enough to allow the particles to float through to the outside, and they are light enough to then float on any air currents in the rooms. Hence any persons in the same room (or connected by airflow) need to wear a better mask (N-95) that will filter the inspiration of those particles. And it's best if the person is in a negative-airflow room where the particles won't exit through a doorway.
The difference would be when your student thinks that maintaining social distance and a bandanna will prevent them from getting their friend's Measles or Tb and are in error.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday June 14 2020, @03:17AM
Yes. A paper on the subject:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2 [nature.com]
and condensed for the layman, with a Handy Chart:
https://www.wormsandgermsblog.com/2020/04/articles/miscellaneous/routine-mask-use-in-vet-clinics/ [wormsandgermsblog.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @04:59PM (9 children)
A cough can travel as fast as 50 mph and expel ~3,000 droplets. Sneezes can travel up to 100 mph and create ~100,000 droplets.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by fustakrakich on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:05PM (8 children)
One of the reasons we cough and sneeze is to expel the demon virus, amongst other bits of dust and plastic, out of our bodies as far as possible. Do you really want to keep re-breathing them? Let's not make masks a permanent thing. Use them in close quarters when necessary.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:10PM (6 children)
We should wear some kind of funnel that amplifies outgassing events into a coronavirus cannon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by fustakrakich on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:24PM (4 children)
In reverse, a megaphone, and be upwind.
Now, watch the silly people go out and buy a bullhorn
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:12PM (3 children)
Troll
How funny! Democrats attack even when nobody is talking about them!
Three in a row. That's quite a grudge you're carrying there :-)
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:18PM (1 child)
Poor victim!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @12:07AM
Poor democrats!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @10:05PM
If the shoe fits my stupid caricature of Cinderella.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @06:03PM
It's already proven that feces carries the virus. Just eat beans or taco bell and you'll charge the cannon dispersal system.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday June 14 2020, @08:18AM
On the contrary, let's make them permanent.
We could even start fashions - like the more eyes [theguardian.com] the less likely face recognition AI will detect you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:12PM (6 children)
Masks, by them selves, are NOT EFFECTIVE.
Masks, when combine with SIX FOOT separation don't need to be especially effective!!
This is a DANGEROUS headline.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DrkShadow on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:19PM (3 children)
Consider this set of graphs posted to ArsTechncia:
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Screen-Shot-2020-06-11-at-3.04.49-PM.png [arstechnica.net]
It shows that only _the_most_effective_ medical-grade masks, when being worn _constantly_, will limit a highly infectious situation to leading to infecting less than one other person. For _less_ infectious situations, then a 75% effective mask can limit things to less than one (0.6 additional?) person being infected. For comparison, cloth masks, per additional recent research, came out as being maybe 30% effective.
Given the common masks in use, you can expect each infection to spread to 2-3 additional people. EACH infection.
Research says: Masks by themselves are worthless.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @06:05PM (1 child)
You do realize going from, say, "3-4" down to "2-3" gives us significantly more time before the exponential growth of a local outbreak outstrips available hospital resources? And we can use that time to identify the outbreak and apply more severe measures (e.g. state or county level lockdowns) as needed, while letting parts of the country that don't have outbreaks carry on with life?
Hardly "worthless".
(Score: 1, Troll) by DrkShadow on Saturday June 13 2020, @07:39PM
What you're talking about is what the lockdown was for. Stay-at-home orders.
We're past that. We're talking about conquering the disease, not keeping from overwhelming our medical system. Masks are not effective in controlling the disease without other measures. For those who are especially susceptible, masks are a false sense of security, and enforced mask-wearing will lead to unknown risk-taking.
Mask wearing, in combination with maintaining distance, is helpful. Effective masks (which the vast majority that I have seen are not) in situations where you can not actually maintain proper distance, is helpful. The article shows that masks, even less-than-ideal masks, are more effective when combine with distancing practices.
Quote the article,
That's hardly taken out of context. Not everyone is wearing masks now, and no one wears one always (at home, with family). Almost no one is wearing an N95 mask, and of those that are, I've seen three people in the last two weeks wearing such a mask effectively.
Again: Masks, by themselves, will not lead to a decrease in infections. Distancing with masks will lead to a quicker resolution than distancing alone, and masks alone will _not_ lead to a decrease in infections. See seven of the eight graphs in the article, where the last graph is visibly not being obided by by people anywhere.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @07:02PM
It don't show me shit because it is presented without any context. No figure captions, no nothing. Is this about different types of masks protecting the wearer, i.e., the ability of homemade masks to filter things like viruses, or is this about the masks preventing the spread of viruses from a person who is coughing/sneezing? That is a big big difference there. Nobody is claiming a bandanna is working like a Hepa filter, for instance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:37PM
The group's model indicates that face masks don't have to be especially effective to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and can even bring benefits if they make people more vulnerable to infection.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:51PM
We should not let the truth interfere with our quinquennial plans huh?
maybe the mask is as effective as coughing into own elbow and sneezing into a handkerchief, probably it's more effective.
but a lot of other effective things are not being implemented because of ideology, incompetence, criminal conduct, sociopathy.
#abbracciauncinese
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @06:23PM (3 children)
I would like to see epidemiological studies on face shields (without masks) if everyone wore them. The shields don't seem to reduce oxygen levels nearly as much (ie: it seems much easier to breathe wearing them instead of the masks) so if they offer some level of protection that might be a good balance between not restricting oxygen levels (which harms the immune system and may have other health costs) while still offering some level of protection.
Plus the shields might be more convenient to clean/disinfect and if they cover the eyes they might also provide the wearer, and not just others, with better protection.
To what extent can everyone wearing only face shields reduce the R0 (R-naught) value of various infections.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @07:44PM
I wear a K&N air filter around my head.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @01:40AM
Also it might be easier to tell if others have cleaned their shield or not.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday June 14 2020, @03:20AM
The problem with face shields is being basically open on three sides. So you still have a lot of potential for exchanging spew, both incoming and outgoing.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DrkShadow on Saturday June 13 2020, @07:53PM (7 children)
That second line immediately follows the first on Ars, but it's left out here, leading to a dangerous suggestion that masks alone are sufficient to deal with this virus.
From the summary,
With masks alone, the infected population will grow. This is a dangerous headline.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:35PM (3 children)
With proper social distancing masks should be enough to get us to a limited re-opening, but that will always be a risk. Simple fact is there are a lot of idiots who think COVID is no big deal and the mortality rste is low enough that they don't think it could kill them. I've met multiole people who think the masks are stupid and who wanted to shake hands, hug, whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @10:25PM (2 children)
> I've met multiple people who think the masks are stupid and who wanted to shake hands, hug, whatever.
Where do you live? Nothing like that going on around here, everyone is tip-toeing around each other in grocery stores and other shops that are starting to open. This is western NY State (a few hundred miles from NY City).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @03:38PM (1 child)
Smallish semi-rural California town. Most people are taking it seriously or at least being considerste to those who are, but there are still some trying to behaveike nornal. They usually lighten up when I point out the mask does little to protect me and more to protect others. They can't really argue when "liberal pussy" doesn't fit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @05:55PM
Pretty similar experience in Michigan - the majority of people are wearing masks and distancing when indoors, but outside all bets are off.
Personally, I like the masks and distancing, because they keep chatty people quiet.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:59PM
you should look at infection data correlated with lockdown measures in places that are ahead of yours in the crisis. except italian data which seems to push or justify an agenda, becoming worthless.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by shortscreen on Sunday June 14 2020, @01:24AM
Masks can both be effective, and also not enough to stop the pandemic. Slowing the spread was seen as a worthy goal by many, remember "flatten the curve"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @01:30AM
It just so happens that in Latvia, for example, the infected population has shrunk with neither. So much for "models" and for true believers.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @01:20AM (1 child)
They have yet to account for their previous load of bullshit. Now doubling down and excreting another?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @08:37AM
What do you want, to scrap those 68 surveillance cameras per 1000 people in London?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @04:27PM
i am "wasting" my precious N95 when i have to shovel 5 months worth of chicken shit out of the chicken coup.
and even when downing that mask i smell the stink for 3 days even after a swim plus shower and bath.
the stink just "hides" somewhere *shrug*.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Sunday June 14 2020, @09:51PM
Mike Osterholm from the CIDRAP - Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, Podcast:
(Critical of cloth masks, but very supportive of mass-deployed special N95 masks)
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/special_episode_masks_6.2.20_0.pdf [umn.edu]
Timo Mitze et al.: Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach
(Mostly math modeling how masks brought down the spread in the city of Jena)
http://ftp.iza.org/dp13319.pdf [iza.org]
Renyi Zhang et al.: Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19
(Very supportive of any kind of face covering)
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/10/2009637117.full.pdf [pnas.org]
Osterholm brings very valid expertise, but might have to investigate further to explain the rather sound looking findings of the other papers. I am entirely with him on the "Volksmaske" idea, which shouldn't be hard to make in an industrialized country. (Look in what masses e.g. cookie carton inlays are made!)
Zhang lashes out to the politicians as hard as he might get away with in a scientific paper: "It is also important to emphasize that sound science should be effectively communicated to policy makers and should constitute the prime foundation in decision-making amid this pandemic."