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Widespread mask-wearing could prevent COVID-19 second waves: UK study finds
- Thread starter SilentPanda
- Start date
- COVID
Voted Yes But. I wear masks when doing groceries or other shopping, or anywhere a lot of people are and social distancing is sometimes harder to adhere to. But I don't wear them systematically everywhere when I'm going out. I don't put a mask on while walking in the park or on city streets for instance.
Waves meaning sharp increases in peaks, like a sine wave. Most first world countries (not America, unfortunately) are getting it under control via judicious use of social distancing, reduced need to travel outside via e.g. work at home initiatives and masks.
This image of the spanish flu numbers from somewhere shows three clear waves of the flu, which is the sort of thing we might or might not see for COVID.
I really don't think we'll see a a second wave/third wave of that magnitude for this, at least in Canada.Waves meaning sharp increases in peaks, like a sine wave. Most first world countries (not America, unfortunately) are getting it under control via judicious use of social distancing, reduced need to travel outside via e.g. work at home initiatives and masks.
This image of the spanish flu numbers from somewhere shows three clear waves of the flu, which is the sort of thing we might or might not see for COVID.
i experienced a "Karen" moment in the grocery store the other day when I was walking down a one-way aisle that she and her friend, who were standing nearly face-to-face, were blocking. Neither were wearing masks. The "Karen" in question was complaining that our neighborhood bookstore is no longer letting people in the store unless they wear a mask and she apparently was very proud that she went off on the worker that refused her entry for refusing to wear even a freely-provided one from the store. She then ranted about how wearing a mask "makes her breath in her body's output of carbon dioxide" and "it will break down her immune system if she wears a mask". I interrupted her and was like, "Lady, what antivax group on Facebook are you reading this shit?" and boy did she get mad...
lmao I expected more of a melt-down and for her to get in my face but she just cursed me out as she walked away, freeing up the aisle so I could get cocoa powder.
I'm sure people a hundred years ago thought the same thing about the Spanish flu.
It's entirely possible to meet that goal of no second waves but it will require constant diligence the world over and from all citizens, and keeping people acting in their own best interests isn't so simple, unfortunately.
It's been mandatory to wear a mask when leaving the house since march here in the UAE. If you get caught not wearing one you will get a fine of £600 and companies since reopening are obliged to provide masks for free to their employees or risk even heavier fines.
When I see the news or talk to my family back home in the UK I'm baffled that basic and simple preventative measures like face masks and face coverings were actively discouraged in the beginning.
When I see the news or talk to my family back home in the UK I'm baffled that basic and simple preventative measures like face masks and face coverings were actively discouraged in the beginning.
Had to go to B&Q. Of the people in the queue (55), 6 were wearing masks, and two of those were me / my missus.
And a hundred years ago, doctors were smoking in hospitals. we're in totally different times than it was then.
My grocery store still has security checking for masks before entering. Every time I've gone it's been 100% wearing masks.
If people were still unconvinced. There's a recent study that looked at masks' efficacy and had city data in Germany (from back in April) to back it up:
mAsKS aRe ViRTuE_sIGnALliNg
what a dumbass take, so sick and tired of pseudo-science bullshit overriding rationality.
mAsKS aRe ViRTuE_sIGnALliNg
what a dumbass take, so sick and tired of pseudo-science bullshit overriding rationality.
This German study is much more convincing. It's hard to interpret, because it would take a lot of work to really check how they've constructed their "synthetic control group". However, they seem to have tried multiple checks against other regions, doing "placebos" to validate their predictions (i.e. if we check the control Vs. regions with no mandatory face masks. They also did some time shifted placebo checks too. These attempts to disprove their hypothesis make me trust the study a lot more.
There's a lot of variation in COVID case rates, so you can't be 100% sure the low rates in one region are due to face masks and not random chance. I'd still like to see similar assessments of other datasets from other regions. But it looks pretty damn likely that mandatory masks helped.
I think they were trying to say that it's hard to match a synthetic control group per city because each city has different trends for their Covid-19 outbreaks, and each city has different policies centered around mask-wearing (In Jena's case, mask-wearing was introduced as an intervention, quite early on during the outbreak. Other jurisdictions may not fare as well, or maybe adherence to wearing masks is significantly weakened). So this helps for creating a weighted average, but makes it more difficult to trace mask-wearing protocols with other cities and the correlate it to reduction in cases, as you mentioned. Even so, the researchers still found that masks had a robust effect on other cities. As you also mentioned, the researchers went to great lengths to minimize as many biases as possible with the various implementation of control groups. This is why I wanted to highlight this study since there seems to be an anti-mask sentiment that is not rooted at all in rationality, and we have essentially the best evidence at the moment to say that there is reason to believe that masks contribute positively.
If it weren't tedious to tailor synthetic control groups per city, it would be interesting and more convincing evidence (beyond simply showing a model of transmission as seen in other studies) to show that masks do have a clear effect in reducing transmission of Covid-19. I hope we get to that point, but it seems problematic now since we're in a different landscape now in mid-June vs. in March/April.
Having said that, I think another question that would help significantly for a study that's doing multi-region tracking, would be to have an understanding of why there's some variance in Covid-19 responses (particularly, why do people react so harshly and have their immune system go to overload to the point of organ failure, while others may experience just mild symptoms).
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didnt the spanish flu second wave hit way harder than the initial one? I'm expecting something like that with covid...