The science and
history of masks.
SUMMARY:
Let's forget about
wild guess predictions
of the future climate
for one day.
Those predictions
are always wrong.
It's amazing to me that
anyone takes 100 year
climate predictions
seriously.
They come with computer
games ... that make wrong
climate predictions ...
and have been doing so
for 50 years !
Yet there are many
coming climate crisis
believers.
With the
Covid-19 virus,
people turned
to scientists
for advice.
The pandemic is still
in progress, so there
are no experts yet.
With no experts,
COVID-19 predictions
and advice are likely
to be wrong.
Medical data
are incomplete
and have not even been
reviewed for accuracy.
But there is still a huge
demand for predictions
of the future.
So we get predictions.
The scary predictions
get the most media
attention.
Some are obviously wrong,
after just a few months, but
there are new predictions
to replace them.
This is very much
like climate predictions.
Except that Covid
is a short term problem,
where bad advice will
have a steep cost --
physical suffering
and deaths.
Today's subject is masks.
DETAILS:
Since this is an election
year, politics has become
very important
(the coming climate crisis
is much more politics than
science, too).
Democrats seem to want
the economy shut down
at least until Biden becomes
president.
Republicans seem to want
the economy opening up
at least until Trump is
reelected.
So I guess it is no surprise
there is a political divide
over wearing masks !
But the science
supporting masks
was clear over 50 years
ago -- they are useful,
but not particularly useful.
But they can also become
potentially dangerous,
if you keep adjusting them,
or wearing the same mask
day after day.
They are a partial physical
barrier for water vapor
from coughs, sneezes
singing and loud speaking.
If someone is speaking
normally to you
from less than six
feet away, masks
should be useful too.
But better to keep
your distance.
I hate masks.
I have worn one four
times in four months,
for a total of about
four hours
-- one use for each
mask, then it went
into the trash.
Cheap "three layer"
masks that cost $6
or $7 dollars for ten.
The elastic band snapped
while taking off the first
mask after just an hour
of use.
The fourth mask elastic
band snapped when I was
putting it on in the car
before a doctor
appointment.
So I carried it in my hand,
and did not wear it -- no
one complained because
no one else was in the
waiting room.
So my bias is anti-mask.
But I'm also in the vulnerable
age / medical condition
population, so would prefer
everyone else to wear a mask !
Why?
Because if any infected person
coughs, sneezes or hollers in
my direction, the water "spray",
which could carry the virus,
will NOT travel as far if they
are wearing a mask.
Masks do nothing else,
except to remind everyone
about social distancing.
About social distancing --
there is no science
to support six feet,
or any other
specific distance.
A violent cough with no mask
on can spray water vapor
25 feet -- so a six foot social
distance would mean nothing.
A mask does not
cover the eyes,
and if you keep touching
your face to adjust it,
wearing a mask could
become counterproductive.
“People have seen
me wear one",
President Trump
said about masks.
“It was a dark black mask,
and I thought it looked OK.
Looked like the Lone Ranger.”
(Note: The Lone Ranger’s mask
covered his eyes too.)
In the early days of COVID-19,
the World Health Organization (WHO),
and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, warned people
against using masks.
They wouldn’t protect people
against getting the disease,
all those organizations said.
Supplies looked short for
the personal protective
equipment that health care
workers were going
to need.
Face coverings went
from being discouraged
by the world’s top public
health officials to being
encouraged by them—
and from being opposed
by US political leaders
affiliated with the
president to being
accepted, if not
demanded.
Senate majority leader
Mitch McConnell and
former vice president
Dick Cheney both made
pro-mask statements.
Sean Hannity too.
Only three states
neither require
nor recommend
masks.
In the early months
of 2020, public health
officials around the world
responded to Covid-19
as a relative to two other
coronaviruses—Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)
and Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS).
SARS hit Asian
countries
particularly
hard.
When early signs of a
new respiratory disease
started appearing
in China in late 2019,
Taiwan deployed its
equivalent of the
US Defense
Production
Act to produce
more masks;
army personnel
actually
went to work
in mask-making
factories there
to crank
out supplies.
That didn’t happen
in Europe or the
United States.
The White House invoked
the Defense Production Act
to accelerate mask production
in April.
“The word that we got
was that we were struggling
to make sure we get
personal protective equipment,
including masks, for the health
care workers, so the initial
recommendation was:
Don’t put masks on,
because we’re going to be
taking them away from health
care workers,”
says Anthony Fauci,
director of the
National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious
Diseases.
“That understandably
got interpreted as,
we didn’t think masks
were of any benefit.”
In late February,
CDC director
Robert Redfield
testified before
the U.S. House
Foreign Affairs
subcommittee,
and was asked
if healthy people
should wear masks.
“No,” Redfield
responded.
The day after that,
US surgeon general
Jerome Adams tweeted
“Seriously people—
STOP BUYING MASKS.”
Fauci himself,
in early March,
told a Senate committee
that the general public
didn’t need to wear them
because COVID-19
wasn’t widespread
enough.
The World Health
Organization (WHO)
was even more explicit
in its advice: Tightly-fitted
N95 masks, which filter out
particles as small as
0.3 microns, are for
health care workers
dealing with sick patients,
and they’re in critically
short supply.
Public health experts
worried that if people
started wearing masks,
they’d overestimate
their level of protection
and get careless.
Nahid Bhadelia, head of the
special pathogens unit
of the National Emerging
Infectious Disease
Laboratories at Boston
University, said:.
“Very truly, I think that
a big reason why public
health folks did not
recommend widespread
use of masks in the public
was we were running out
of masks in the health care
setting.”
A study, later published
in Science, suggested that
before Wuhan officials
imposed a strict lockdown,
the virus had been spreading
in stealth among people
with mild or no symptoms.
The researchers estimated
that more than 80 percent
of infections were going
undocumented.
“These findings help to explain
the lightning-fast spread
of this virus around the world,”
they would later write.
People sometimes pick up
respiratory viruses from
surfaces like door handles
or cutlery—so-called fomites.
Another main route
is usually droplets
people cough or sneeze
into the air.
But no symptoms
means no coughing,
which means
no droplets.
Evidence began
to accumulate
that the virus
also spreads
through exhalations
from infectious people
—whether or not
they feel or know
they are sick.
Anyone could be
a source of transmission.
And the best way
to cut that down
was masks that minimize
not so much the inhalation
of those aerosol particles
but their exhalation.
A mask didn’t have to be
an N95—any mask could reduce
the amount of virus a wearer,
who is infectious but does not
know they are ill, gives off
just from speaking, not coughing
or sneezing.
That opened a path
for civilians to mask up
without parasitizing
the supply of N95s.
The idea was
to stop the virus
from from getting out
from asymptomatic or
pre-symptomatic people
shedding of the virus,
who have no idea
they are infected.
Aerosol scientists
had been saying
since the mid-2000s
that respiratory viruses
like influenza could be
transmitted in the
infinitesimal particles
people give off from
talking or even breathing.
In February 2019,
a team of engineers
at UC Davis had even
shown that talking louder
and singing made
a person emit more
of these “expiratory
particles” than speaking
in a subdued tone.
Instruments that can detect
airborne particles
have only been around
for a few decades, and
they’re not common
in laboratories.
Aerosol experiments
often have to be done
in a clean room, to reduce
any background interference
from the atmosphere.
To aerosol scientists,
any particle—liquid or solid,
nanometers to micrometers
wide—is an aerosol if it’s
suspended in the air.
Kimberley Prather,
an atmospheric chemist
at UC San Diego, said:
“The aerosols are there—
for every drop you visibly see
when someone coughs,
there’s 100 to 1,000 times
more aerosols produced.
And now we can
measure them.
But that work
has been slow
to be accepted by
the medical community.”
Aerosol experts have
long been ignored
by most medical
professionals.
Reports in March 2020
showed that infectious
particles of the new
coronavirus could float
in lab-generated aerosols
for up to three hours, and
that a single sneeze could
propel them up to 25 feet.
On April 3, 2020, the CDC
put out new guidelines,
recommending that people
wear cloth or fabric face
coverings (not “masks”)
when entering public spaces.
Trump said:
“It’s voluntary;
you don’t have to do it,”
“I don’t think I’m
going to be doing it.”
There still aren’t randomized,
controlled trials of mask wearing
against COVID-19—how would
you even do that?
On June 5, 2020, the WHO
announced updated guidance
recommending that all citizens
should wear cloth masks
in areas where community
transmission is ongoing.