Face Coverings .Do we really need these now?

So, you relax and control your breathing. It's not that difficult. It's not the cloth that made it hard to breath, it was your reaction to a situation.

 

I posted this on another thread, repost here

Popular blue surgical face masks do NOT stop people from being infected with COVID-19 | Daily Mail Online

• University of Waterloo researchers find most cloth masks are only 10% effective
• Researchers warn most cloth masks do not cover the face properly
• N95 or KN95 masks were found to be the most effective at filtering aerosols
• Study also found that even 'moderate ventilation' matches the best of masks in terms of protection against COVID-19
• Mask debate remains contentious in the country as delta variant spreads

 

I've had both shots, and I have relative confidence in the vaccines. In our rural county (the most sparsely populated in the state), the "breakthrough" infection rate is 3%. Not bad odds...unless you're one of the 31 vaccinated people who got infected anyway. While the vaccinated can expect a much lower risk of becoming ill, and lower still the risk of hospitalization or death; that risk is not nil; a fully-vaccinated dear friend of my father's just died after a week on a ventilator. The fact that two thirds of our neighbors refuse vaccines, much less masks, does not exactly inspire confidence when out in public. But as I said, I don't wear masks solely for my benefit. Vaccinated people with breakthrough infections carry the same viral load as the unvaccinated and are therefore just as contagious, and those infected are contagious 2 to 3 days before becoming symptomatic, and are most contagious 1 to 2 days before they even know they're ill. 40% of those infected are asymptomatic, but 75% of those asymptomatic carriers of the virus are contagious. Despite my vaccination status, without a mask there's an elevated risk that I might inadvertently severely sicken or kill you, or someone you love. Regardless of how low the odds of that happening, that's simply not a risk I'm willing to presume on your behalf. It's unfortunate two-thirds of my neighbors are unwilling to extend to me the same courtesy.

What the family of an 8-year-old COVID-19 victim wants you to know
Mississippi girl dies a day after positive coronavirus test - CNN
3rd child dies from COVID-19 in Arkansas

 

Best use for face coverings is to keep your nose warm in winter

 

I simply don’t trust those organisations. Especially given that there are plenty of equally, if not better, qualified experts who think the opposite. What’s remarkable is the fact that their expert opinions were and still are being hushed up and labelled as “‘fake news”. At the end of the day, I go by the information laid out before me, paired with my own gut feeling/intuition. It’s a moot point for me anyway as I was exempt from wearing one as I have COPD.

 

That's patently untrue.

When we collectively stopped roaming the fells poking at boar with sharpened sticks, we developed an agrarian, then industrial society based upon division of labor into specialities; a community network of experts in their given fields, instead of a mob of piss-in-the-corner "jack-of-all-trades, but masters of none". Through our collective efforts and reliance upon each other's expertise, we've done some rather amazing things, like the elimination of smallpox, or microprocessors, or putting a man on the moon.
Then there's people like you. You're an idiot, complicit in so many of our collective troubles. Sorry; there's simply no more polite way to phrase it.

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I have COPD AND Pulmonary Fibrosis too, I've also had five pulmonary emboli, and my lungs are now totally knackered. I could on that basis claim exemption too, but I didn't, haven't and will not do so. I prefer to protect people in my community and show them respect, in like manner they show respect to me too by also wearing a mask.

 

Sorry, but I simply don’t believe the “official” narrative. If you believe it then you just carry on. I don’t.

 

Lol… good luck with that imbecile-like thinking… Sorry, there’s simply no more polite way to phrase it

 

Since you began this thread 10 weeks ago, face covering requirements have returned in some places in the US. Regarding whether they're "needed" anywhere, in the UK or elsewhere, the answer is generally "no." A surgical mask worn during surgery in an operating theater is an obvious exception.

Masking requirements are controversial for a number of reasons having little to do with science. With regard to science, they're also controversial. No one has bothered to conduct a controlled study in the over year and a half since the virus began spreading on the efficacy of masks.

Medical grade masks worn properly are highly effective. If you aren't a surgeon or surgical nurse, you probably aren't wearing it properly even if you have one on your face right now. A single-ply cloth mask worn for 8 hours and touched by the wearer's fingers hundreds of times during that 8 hours provides neither the wearer nor anyone around her any protection - zero, nil, none. The published studies involving statistical inference, which is not controlled study, so far have concluded exactly this. One shouldn't ask or expect a child not to touch his mask, and having most children wear them is totally wasteful of time and money. In most settings, a face covering requirement is useless from a public health standpoint. Most masks worn are not designed to protect anyone, and most aren't used in a way that would provide anyone with protection.

It's a public confidence measure, a feel-good one. It's not scientifically based, and it provides no public health benefit. As long as we understand that, everything is fine.

 

Masks work. Wearing a single mask for 8 hours and touching it multiple times isn’t the masks fault, it’s the wearers. Switch out your mask halfway through the day and don’t touch the outside (cuz ya know that’s kind of where all the bad stuff is)

COVID-19 ARCHIVED WEBPAGE

Can face masks protect against coronavirus?