I'd have just walked past the woman and not said anything and gone about my business. You won't win any debate or argument with a pro-masker no matter how wrong they may be.
Reminds me of the country (can't remember the name) that refer to their infections as a WAVE when they went from 10 to almost double their infections to like 21 Covid infections with 1 death from those infections. Reality, everybody would love to have only 21 Covid infections and 1 death. wrbtrader
https://www.rcreader.com/commentary...f-science-relevant-to-covide-19-social-policy There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles. Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective dose is smaller than one aerosol particle. The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.
Face Masks Do Work You can follow whatever science that's out there to support your narrative. Regardless, countries with high compliance to face mask wearing having been outperforming countries with low face mask wearing compliance in this Covid Pandemic. Simply, you have a choice...look at real life examples in a Pandemic or follow laboratory studies that prove / disapprove the science of face mask wearing. The good thing...vaccinations are here and getting countries closer and closer to vaccination herd immunity. ---------- Conclusion Our review of the literature offers evidence in favor of widespread mask use as source control to reduce community transmission: Nonmedical masks use materials that obstruct particles of the necessary size; people are most infectious in the initial period postinfection, where it is common to have few or no symptoms (45, 46, 141); nonmedical masks have been effective in reducing transmission of respiratory viruses; and places and time periods where mask usage is required or widespread have shown substantially lower community transmission. The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce Re" role="presentation">Re to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained. Economic analysis suggests that mask wearing mandates could add 1 trillion dollars to the US GDP (32, 34). Models suggest that public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high (39). We recommend that mask use requirements are implemented by governments, or, when governments do not, by organizations that provide public-facing services. Such mandates must be accompanied by measures to ensure access to masks, possibly including distribution and rationing mechanisms so that they do not become discriminatory. Given the value of the source control principle, especially for presymptomatic people, it is not sufficient for only employees to wear masks; customers must wear masks as well... https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 ---------- The bad news, in the past +100 years...the world has been having more Pandemics because people are becoming more unhealthy and more ignorant to respect of their neighbors plus the growing dangers of antibiotics...that encourage some bacteria / viruses to become more resistance and encourages their ability to mutate. Simply, we'll see another Global Pandemic in our lifetime. wrbtrader
Marxists just will not relinquish any power once they have it no matter how wrong they are. Study after study, and common sense, shows that mask do not work and are simply a tool of The Marxists to exercise control.
Of course you would not look at the waves... It goes against your theory. But... any model attempting to prove the opposite of an increase in infections... is a model... which does too much manipulation of the data. Seriously.... act like a scientist instead of a paid troll poster... posting bullshit. ---- a. By the way wrbs study... was pretty much lying like GWB when it left out the Danish study which used a 3000 person control group and found masks did not offer any statistically verifiable protection for the wearer.... that was direct evidence... b. after admitting they had no direct evidence for masks be efficacious... with a that misleading excuse...they use models to support their "finding" that masks work to stop the spread from sick people. their model is obviously massively manipulated if they find mask somehow work... even the there were many waves of spread. ---- Here is where they admit they have no useful evidence... Direct Evidence of the Efficacy of Public Mask Wearing If there is strong direct evidence, either a suitably powered randomized controlled trial (RCT), or a suitably powered metaanalysis of RCTs, or a systematic review of unbiased observational studies that finds compelling evidence, then that would be sufficient for evaluating the efficacy of public mask wearing, at least in the contexts studied. Therefore, we start this review looking at these types of evidence. Direct Epidemiological Evidence. Cochrane (7) and the World Health Organization (8) both point out that, for population health measures, we should not generally expect to be able to find controlled trials, due to logistical and ethical reasons, and should therefore instead seek a wider evidence base. This issue has been identified for studying community use of masks for COVID-19 in particular (9). Therefore, we should not be surprised to find that there is no RCT for the impact of masks on community transmission of any respiratory infection in a pandemic.
Get out and enjoy the weather...its getting nicer outside and face mask wearing is becoming less of an issue as each day goes by with more and more people becoming vaccinated. That's right, we are at a point in this Pandemic when Sweden failed at Natural Herd Immunity (Sweden health officials and Tegnell admitted such) and have only recently seen their Covid numbers decline due to strict Covid Restrictions and Vaccinations. The other spectrum, countries with high face mask compliance have in fact been outperforming countries with low face mask compliance...its a fact that must not be ignored. With that said, know your facts...don't be ignorant and fall for misinformation campaign by anonymous forum posters. Remember, the key issue about face mask is to protect those in your environment that do not have a face mask or not vaccinated. Simply, you wearing a face mask...you're protecting your family and friends from your germs. This isn't rocket science...you wearing a face mask...you're protecting those near you. Back to Japan (not Sweden), they begin removing their Covid Health Guidelines slowly in January and then removed them in key populated areas by March. What has happen after doing such ? Japan's Covid numbers have been going UP although overall in comparison to the world are still very low. Yet, Japan's current problem is not face mask wearing...its their vaccination problem. Have a nice day. ---------- Q: Did a recent study in Denmark show that face masks are useless for COVID-19? A: No. The study found that face masks did not have a large protective effect for wearers — not that masks provide no protection at all or don’t offer benefits to others. FULL QUESTION Are masks proven to be useless for COVID-19? FULL ANSWER News of the results of a recent randomized controlled trial in Denmark testing a face mask intervention has led some to conclude that masks are ineffective against the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2. But scientists say that’s the wrong takeaway — and even the authors of the study say the results shouldn’t be interpreted to mean masks shouldn’t be worn. The trial evaluated whether giving free surgical masks to volunteers and recommending their use safeguarded wearers from infection with the coronavirus, in addition to other public health recommendations. The study didn’t identify a statistically significant protective effect for wearers, but the trial was only designed to detect a large effect of 50% or more. And the study didn’t weigh in on the ability of masks to prevent spread of the virus from wearers to others, or what’s known as source control, which is thought to be the primary way that masks work. As a result, the most that can be said is that this particular study, under the conditions at the time in Denmark, didn’t find that the face mask intervention had a large protective effect for wearers — not that masks provide no protection at all or don’t offer benefits to others. Social media posts nevertheless latched onto the study to claim that the trial “proves masks offer NO protection from COVID” or that masks “don’t work,” as several posts claimed. Another post inaccurately described the results as “conclusive,” despite the fact that the authors specifically wrote that their findings were “inconclusive.” Other articles shared on Facebook failed to provide sufficient context for the study, with one headline from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity reading, “Your Face Mask Is Not Protecting You.” Yet another from Sharyl Attkisson, who has previously spread misinformation about vaccines, misleadingly states that there was “no statistically significant difference when it comes to wearing a mask or not outside the home to prevent Covid-19 spread.” Again, the study only assessed the personal protective effect of a mask intervention, not the potential for masks to hamper spread of the virus to others. The Danish trial, known as the Danish Study to Assess Face Masks for the Protection Against COVID-19 Infection, or DANMASK-19, was published in Annals of Internal Medicine on Nov. 18 along with two editorials to provide more context to the findings. It’s the first randomized controlled trial involving face masks and COVID-19 to report results. Around 6,000 people who left their homes for at least three hours a day participated, with approximately half being given a box of 50 surgical masks and being told to wear a mask whenever outside of their homes, while the other half was not given masks or such a mask recommendation. The study was conducted at a time when Danish authorities were not recommending masks to the general public, so most people both groups would encounter were not likely to be masked. Both groups were told to follow national public health guidance, which included physical distancing, avoiding crowds and washing hands. After a month, 42 people in the mask group, or 1.8%, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, as measured by at-home finger-prick antibody tests, a positive PCR test result or a COVID-19 diagnosis, compared with 53 people, or 2.1%, in the control group. While fewer people in the masked group became infected — equivalent to an 18% reduction in risk — the difference was not statistically significant, meaning the result may have come about by chance. Given the observed number of infections in each group, the plausible effect of the mask intervention ranged all the way from a 46% decrease in infection to a 23% increase. It’s this negative result that some have interpreted to mean that masks are ineffective. But that’s not how the authors frame their findings. Bundgaard, et al.: Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon. Yet, the findings were inconclusive and cannot definitively exclude a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection of mask wearers in such a setting. It is important to emphasize that this trial did not address the effects of masks as source control or as protection in settings where social distancing and other public health measures are not in effect. Elsewhere, the authors noted that the data were “compatible” with a less than 50% degree of self-protection and emphasized that their results “should not be used to conclude that a recommendation for everyone to wear masks in the community would not be effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections, because the trial did not test the role of masks in source control of SARS-CoV-2 infection.” University of Hong Kong infectious disease epidemiologist and mask researcher Benjamin Cowling told us he was not surprised by the findings and said it was important to distinguish between an absence of evidence and evidence of absence on the utility of masks. “In the Danish mask study, their results are consistent with maybe 20% protection conferred by face masks, which is in line with my estimates for influenza,” he said in an email. “While some readers seem to conclude from the Danish study that masks are not effective, I would only conclude from the Danish study that masks are not /highly effective/, which we already suspected,” he continued, adding that it does not mean that masks are ineffective. “Even 20% protection would be very valuable when we are trying very hard to slow down COVID transmission as much as we can with a range of public health measures.” The paper’s lead author, Dr. Henning Bundgaard of the specialty hospital Rigshospitalet and Copenhagen University Hospital, told Forbes much the same. “Even a small degree of protection is worth using the face masks,” he said, “because you are protecting yourself against a potentially life-threatening disease.” An accompanying editorial penned by the editor-in-chief of the journal and colleagues explained that while the study suggests that the personal protective effect of masks is “likely to be small,” the study “does not disprove the effectiveness of widespread mask wearing.” On the contrary, the editorial argues that together with the other existing data in support of masks, the “results of this trial should motivate widespread mask wearing to protect our communities and thereby ourselves while we await more definitive evidence during this pandemic.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an updated scientific brief earlier this month that for the first time emphasized the ability of masks to protect wearers, based on lab studies that find masks can block virus particles and some observational and epidemiology studies. The other editorial — by experts with the public health initiative Resolve to Save Lives, including former CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden — highlighted several limitations of the study. For one, the trial was done in April and May when there was relatively little virus circulating in Denmark, which might have made it more difficult to pick up a protective effect of mask wearing. Not everyone in the mask group followed through on the advice to wear a mask, either, with 46% of people self-reporting that they wore the masks “as recommended”; 47% “predominantly as recommended”; and 7% “not as recommended.” Most critically, Frieden and colleagues suggested that the antibody tests used to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 infection could have led to a fair number of false positives, especially given the low prevalence of the coronavirus at the time. Even with those false positives evenly distributed between the two groups, that would have biased the result to be negative. Other scientists at Stanford University and George Washington University previously expressed concern with the study design, including the fact that the study was not large enough to identify protective effects less than a 50% reduction in risk, and the likelihood that any results would be misinterpreted. The takeaway about masks, then, is still quite similar to the earlier public health advice, which is that people should wear them, but not assume that they will be protected. That means continuing to follow all public health guidelines, including washing hands and staying physically apart from other people whenever possible. Editor’s note:FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made throughour “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. Sources Bundgaard, Henning et al. “Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Annals of Internal Medicine. 18 Nov 2020. CDC. “Scientific Brief: Community Use of Cloth Masks to Control the Spread of SARS-CoV-2.” Updated 20 Nov 2020. Laine, Christine et al. “The Role of Masks in Mitigating the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: Another Piece of the Puzzle.” Annals of Internal Medicine. 18 Nov 2020. Frieden, Thomas R. and Shama Cash-Goldwasser. “Of Masks and Methods.” Annals of Internal Medicine. 18 Nov 2020. Cowling, Benjamin. Professor and Division Head, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Hong Kong. Email to FactCheck.org. 20 Nov 2020. Rosenbaum, Leah. “Lead Researcher Behind Controversial Danish Study Says You Should Still Wear A Mask.” Forbes. 18 Nov 2020. Godoy, Maria. “Wear Masks To Protect Yourself From The Coronavirus, Not Only Others, CDC Stresses.” NPR. 11 Nov 2020. Haber, Noah et al. PubPeer comment on “Face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 – Rationale and design of the randomised controlled trial DANMASK-19.” 8 Sep 2020. McDonald, Jessica. “COVID-19 Face Mask Advice, Explained.” FactCheck.org. 6 Apr 2020. CDC. “Coronavirus Disease 2020 (COVID-19): How to Protect Yourself & Others.” Updated 4 Nov 2020. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/danish-study-doesnt-prove-masks-dont-work-against-the-coronavirus/ ---------- wrbtrader
Masks don't work! Kevlar vests don't work! Walls and doors don't work! Locks don't work! Cups don't hold water!
Masks protect the wearer. Covid spreads on surfaces in significant quantity There is significant asymptomatic spread Lockdowns work... they prevent the spread long term. Lockdowns save more harm than they cause We have to lockdown beaches and playgrounds Covid spreads outdoors in signficant quantities Millions of people are going to die in the areas that refuse to lockdown There will be a Covid death apocalypse in Sweden and Florida and Texas. The list of unsubstantiated Covid bullshit goes on and on and on.
My mom laughs at these types of debates considering she's old enough to still remember similar like arguments about requiring seatbelts to protect people in their cars when they get into an accident. There were idiots back in those days that came out with their scientific data that seatbelts do not help to save lives as laws were being passed that required automakers to install seat belts in their automobiles. Yeah, back then...some people protested about losing their rights and handed out newsletters with conspiracy theories about seat belt reqirements. --------- "In this country, saving freedom is more important than trying to regulate lives through legislation," wrote one staunch opponent in a 1987 Chicago Tribune editorial. The auto industry actually supported seat-belt requirements, mainly to circumvent legislation that would have mandated airbags. But the public bristled. Some people cut the belts out of their cars. Others challenged seat-belt laws in court. Massachusetts radio personality Jerry Williams transformed his talk show into a crusade against seat belts, gathering 45,000 signatures in three months. He managed to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal the state's new belt law... https://www.businessinsider.com/when-americans-went-to-war-against-seat-belts-2020-5 --------- wrbtrader