Its 100% proven by now majority of masks people wear are ineffective.

I am talking about actual tests done that showed many of these masks have large thread holes where covid goes right through.

Imagine being less than 6 feet from someone with covid and you are talking through a mask thinking you are safe when without a mask you are more likely to distance yourself 6 feet or more.

Max Cut is a perfect example of how masks have become a religion and facts and science left by the wayside. Look at the losers in this thread:

- Claims masks are highly effective outside of flu season (actual science from even mask proponents: "the evidence for the use of masks is of very low quality, and the effect small at best")

- Claims that discussion about the utility of masks should be censored

- Claims that people who aren't wearning masks are the ones spreading it (fact: corona spread is far higher in mask mandate countries)

- Claims that we should now listen to the very people who said NOT to wear masks for months after they changed their mind (why?)

- Ignores the vast body of real-world data showing that masks aren't helping at all in the real world and are in fact making things worse.

Yeah.

Cloth and surgical masks stop between 10% and 70% of large droplets, which are really only winter flu coughs and sneeze
Cloth masks stop 0% of small aerosols. Surgical masks can stop up to 30% of small aerosols.

The both two statistics require perfect fit, which few people have.

And there's the rub, and why masks are so harmful. The science is overwhelming that distancing >>>>> masks for reducing spread. If masks reduce distancing behavior even a tiny bit, they're a net negative

That and the public policy differences when people in charge falsely believe (like the Czech health minister) that masks are "very effective preventative measures" and thus think they can keep corona under control by mandating masks have led to some real messes.

So does anyone actually disagree with this as the best advice:

Don't do anything social just because you have a mask
If you must do anything social then wear a mask

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.ct...1_5063976.html

This is just 1 example of a mask that is 100% useless. Many other clothe masks are just as bad.

Some surgical masks don't stop small droplets.

What should have been done is forcing people to stay 7 feet away or wear tightly fitted n95.

Telling everyone to wear masks without educating them on mask effectiveness and types of mask effectiveness is crazy. But here we are 8 months later.

I would agree that one thing (among many) that has been badly lacking is education on mask usage.

It really doesn't help when the politcal debate degenerates to mask good vs mask bad.

Ok, great. Then next steps if you are going to assert your view as nearing certainty is to provide your work. It is not possible to get to that level of certainty without having solid underlying data.

We can see the exponential growth of the virus and the growing number of people being taken into the hospitals.

So in those jurisdictions saying they are under threat of running out of capacity, show us how much total capacity they have to start, how much the have left, how many people are being admitted in to those remaining beds currently, and how quick that number is growing, and when, if that growth is not stopped, the beds available will be exceeded. Also what your assumption is based upon for the plateau level for infection growth.


If you do not have ALL of that information you have to admit you are not making guesses based on any type of certainty but rather a bunch of assumptions you are making and accepting as 'strong' whether they are or not.

I look forward to reviewing.

I love that you are so dumb and naive that you think the collapse is more a function of the beds and supplies and not the people.

Never change Tooth, as you are completely unable to understand and submit and assess the proper data until someone awakens you and then you pretend you knew that all along.

Well if you tell the population to go out and wear masks you give them false sense of security that they are good to go that doesn't help either. 90% of the masks I see are clothe masks because they look "cooler" than other forms of masks. Nobody knows.

Most people would have been better off told not to wear masks and stay 7 feet away.

I think a lot of people ignore the intuitive reasons of what make masks effective.

I always use the comparable of being around a smoker when you are a non smoker and intolerant to smoke. Smoke makes for sufficient proxy to virus spread despite its spread zone being larger.

What matters is :

- the proximity to the smoker
- the air circulation
- the time you are near them
- the efforts they make to contain their smoke or direct it away from you


So when you use a mask you impact the 'proximity' making it easier for people to not get within the proximity bubble where infection can incur.

'Air circulation' (being outdoors, etc) helps massively in diluting the virus before it reaches you.

The 'time' increment if shortened (you are focused on social distancing and getting distance as soon as is available) helps massively in cutting exposure.

Whether purposefully or not if the person is 'containing their smoke' (virus) (blowing it away, wearing a mask), that helps massively iin cutting exposure.


But as people let down their guards, and return to normal routines which involved more prolonged times in ever closer proximity, in spaces with poor ventilation then masks will do less and less to protect them. Just as a smoker blowing his smoke the opposite way of you, will do little if you are in a similar space. You do not get the direct, blown in your face exposure, but you do get the general air concentration 'build up' exposure.

THat is why you see masks less and less effective as things 'open up' here and why you do not see it as much in societies were they still practice social distancing and avoidance of places where concentration risk is higher.

I remember when you said that Trump bungled everything and then edited that post but it was caught in a quote and so you had to eat it.

Good times.

You act as if the guidance is "only get close unless you wear a mask" when the advice is "don't get close, and wear a mask".

It's funny, your argumentation against masks almost makes it sound as if you'd prefer a policy where getting within 6ft is impossible (harsh lockdown of any activity where getting closer than 6 feet is guaranteed or likely) to a less harsher lockdown where masks are mandatory. Is that accurate? Or are you just trying clinging on to your anti-mask argument that what you're saying makes even less sense than usual?

This was Belgium's Minister of Social Affairs and Health from 2014 to 2020:

Looks like she could fill three or four positions all at once.

This is a lie.

And this is one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

Do not read Tooth's posts? I understand, a lot of people have him on ignore. Here is his conspiracy theory regarding masks:

This thread has become the #1 place to laugh at corona conspiratards

Yes I read TS and he wears an N95 mask.

He goes OTT about other masks but when he says masks increase the spread of covid he doesn not mean that the mask itself makes things worse. He means the false security of masks is worse than not wearing a mask - this is debatable but there's no doubt at all that in Europe at least, false security has been a very serious problem.

It's not just masks. People talk all the time about places such as pubs being safe because they have taken all the suggested precautions about masks, distancing, cleaning etc. It's bollocks sadly and the only 'safe' is people not going to these places.

That's an interesting way to read:

It's almost like you are changing what he said to make it more palatable.

Maybe more a case of the boot on the other foot.

I seriously disagree with TS over many things but I'll still strive for reasonable interpretation rather than the worst possible interpretation.

Also, where I strongly diverge from TS is on the need for lockdowns. But it's implicit in my support for lockdowns that masks are not very effective as an anti-covid strategy.

7 feet away suffers from much the same problem. It wasn't lightly that i arrive at the conclusion that the it should all about keeping R below 1 (in practice not in theory) even if that means locking things down.

chez,
I definitely agree on the need for lockdowns in some areas, and highly aggressive distancing attempts in others.

tgiggity,
I have to assume you have something intellectually wrong with you at this point. Forgive me for taking so long to realize this; I'm really not used to people with low IQs.

chezlaw summarized exactly what I said accurately (mask effects are small at best and they create big negatives - reduced social distancing and poorer policy relying on masks, which far outweigh the small positives) and that take is very likely correct looking at the data we have now. It was a harder thing to argue before the European surge. It will take a few months for the scientific publishing to catch up to the new data, just as it did when they went from "don't wear masks" to "wear masks" because of the purely correlated, not causative data from March-May. Such is the sad, incompetent, slow state of science.
Did she die of corona? Holy hell. Interesting country they have there:

Wonder if she still has that title after the world's worth death rate (by far)?

Chez, I agree with your point that society can't just go about life as normal with a mask and everything will be ok.

That's not at all what Tooth has been arguing. He has repeatedly made the case that mask usage increases the spread of corona, and that mask usage is to blame for why Europe's case #'s are increasing.

Both of these statements are lies, and neither is remotely close to saying, "Masks might provide a false sense of security, so we need to be vigilant about avoiding unnecessary interactions and continuing strict social distancing for essential activities."

As usual, Tooth resorts to ad-hominems when he's cornered. Sad

95% of the guidance should be to be 7 feet away from other people.

When you tell people that it's 7 feet + masks, people wear garbage clothe masks and reduce the distance to less than 7 feet during communication and talking. This happens all the time. Literally all the time, everywhere. There are 0 n95 mask wearers in public. Only Tooth wears one. I don't even have one.

I see this happened to me today.

Went to visit an apartment, broker and I had a mask on. He's yacking his mouth off behind his mask while we are walking and I find out he's only 2 feet behind me.

The false sense of security is very real when people are wearing crappy masks.

We have to distingush between when he is talkign about the strategy/policy of masks wearing vs the effectiveness of a mask in itself.

It doesn't seem that tricky to me but this, as it it appears to me, lack of comprehension has been astounding me in the politics forum for years.

Metaphor and simile seems lost on a lot of people. It's quite interesting how intensely many leftists/fundamentalists are humorless literalists (not you chez). I think it's the source of much disagreement and aploplexy. Monty Python would certainly be lost on the witch hunters/village mobs.
Why has every Western country (except the ones which avoided masks) failed to achieve this, though? I'd like your thoughts on this.

Contact tracing is possibly the most effective tool there is - if R = 2 you only need to catch and isolate 50% of passed-on infections to keep R below 1. Summer infection rates were really low and spread rates close to or below 1.

Why did every single country (except Australia, New Zealand and a few others) screw up on contact tracing? I understand 80% screwing up (fat useless cucks like the "most popular woman" Belgium health minister gonna be fat useless cucks), but why 100%? They had the funds, they had the centralized healthcare system, they had the mandatory isolation laws, and they had tracing compliance levels needed (apart from immigrant/minority areas) of the general populace needed to bring this home.

I don't understand it. I understand why contract tracing doesn't work in America (35% compliance in NY for example), but why hasn't it worked in the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Czech Republic, Holland, Spain, or even Greece or Croatia (which nailed it first round)....?

Canada Quebec contact tracing had 30% non compliance.

People just don't want to answer the phone from government. They don't care.

We all have very poor leadership. As I've opined before, Boris who so wanted to be Churchill actually had the rare chance to do it. But opportunity and desire aren't enough - he didn't the necessary will to actually do the tough job of leading.

Contact tracing when you have very large numbers of cases all over the place is basically nonsense. Especially when the system are being developed on the fly.