Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm aware public health officials flipped the script on masks.
Can you find ANY example of a public health official publicly stating how effective cloth masks are? Not that they ARE effective, but HOW effective? As in how much disease spread is prevented from wearing cloth masks.
I believe you will not be able to find any record of a public health official making a claim like "Wearing cloth masks reduces COVID spread by approximately X%."
My hypothesis for why you won't find this is because the % is extremely low, in the < 5% range.
I don't think a public health official averaged out all the research on masks and came up with a percentage. A lot of public policy was binary: masks prevent spread, but COVID can also spread through eyes and ears. We do not want general public to think they are fully protected with masks, and they will never understand nuance, only clear directions. So, do not wear masks, they are not effective for you. Ivermectin, Vitamin D, and HCQ are 100% ineffective, so get your shot.
You should test your hypothesis. Masks clearly help spread. But these are better at preventing spread to others, than for preventing catching COVID. So a larger percentage of people has to wear masks for it to be effective. I protect you, you protect me. There is a ton of research from before the pandemic (if you allow me to extrapolate influenza to a novel coronavirus with common sense, not wait on the randomized trial to finish), and now also a lot of reviews and aggregations of mask effectiveness.
I agree there is a lot of research pre-pandemic on the effectiveness of various types of masks in preventing the spread of virus. The consensus before the pandemic was that the spread prevention was so low that it could not justifiably be recommended for the purpose of preventing spread of virus.
If you believe that wasn't/isn't the scientific consensus, then I welcome you again to find any public health official willing to state on the record how much viral transmission they believe masks are preventing. I'll expand the challenge to include heads of top tier medical universities. And I'll even accept a range, like "between x and y%." You will not find such a thing.
> The consensus before the pandemic was that the spread prevention was so low that it could not justifiably be recommended for the purpose of preventing spread of virus.
Heh. This was the CYA they put out. Maybe it pays to publish only in the authoritative media channels if that's only what a large percentage of people read.
This was the public health consensus they themselves agreed on. Anyone who was in that room justifying not having people wear masks, has not rode in public transit in the last 20 years. Wear a mask and try spitting on the floor or picking your nose.
Scientific consensus was that masks clearly work to combat pathogen spread, and that's why they are in use in hospitals for at least 100 years. There even was scientific research on SARS-COV-1, comparing how many nurses got sick under different PPE policies, and how mask usage affected their recovery / long-SARS decline.
For a while, it was possible to define the (government) status of a person by the level of their PPE recommended to them. I think they ran their global pandemic surveillance systems searching for their own names and "N95 mask" and did not like the communities they were being discussed at. But not 100% certain of course.
I bet you won't find more than a few, if any, public health officials left willing to draw attention to their failures, or have been fired/retired in 2020 after spending their lives in pandemic control. Though it must hurt to leave with such a legacy, I can live with that. If you still need them to decide whether your kid should wear a mask at school or not, I sincerely feel for you. Information gathering and judging what is true absolutely sucked the past years, and it would have been nice if at least authority could have been trusted, more than, say, 4chan.
>Despite common use of cloth masks in many countries in Asia, existing infection control guidelines do not mention their use (13).
>Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups. This finding suggests that risk for infection was higher for those wearing cloth masks.
The contempt for the general public from these people bordered on the perverse. How can they sleep at night? "We acted with the best information available at the time, and followed the scientific consensus to make our policy". Not even close to the truth, but maybe it helps a bit.
The hypothesis in the article was that the cloth captures droplets/water vapor that is carrying virus. And then it's captured there for you to continually suck it out of the cloth when breathing. Without a mask it would've drifted away.
>If you believe that wasn't/isn't the scientific consensus, then I welcome you again to find any public health official willing to state on the record how much viral transmission they believe masks are preventing. I'll expand the challenge to include heads of top tier medical universities. And I'll even accept a range, like "between x and y%." You will not find such a thing.
>A range of new research on face coverings shows that the risk of infection to the wearer is decreased by 65 percent, said Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital.
>The consensus before the pandemic was that the spread prevention was so low that it could not justifiably be recommended for the purpose of preventing spread of virus
Source? Mask wearing was quite prevalent in Japan and some asian countries.
>Despite common use of cloth masks in many countries in Asia, existing infection control guidelines do not mention their use (13).
>Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups. This finding suggests that risk for infection was higher for those wearing cloth masks.
Can you find ANY example of a public health official publicly stating how effective cloth masks are? Not that they ARE effective, but HOW effective? As in how much disease spread is prevented from wearing cloth masks.
I believe you will not be able to find any record of a public health official making a claim like "Wearing cloth masks reduces COVID spread by approximately X%."
My hypothesis for why you won't find this is because the % is extremely low, in the < 5% range.