DOD and United Airlines had a study out last week that backs this up. There was also a report from iata with studies from Airbus, Boeing and Embraer. Flying is almost certainly not as dangerous and people perceive it to be.
Perhaps. But masks are most effective on preventing someone contagious from infecting others and only secondarily in preventing you from being infected. As a result, you may find the risks are higher on airlines that are less strict than Emirates.
I wish airlines would introduce flights that require everyone to test negative before boarding. It could even be a low frequency special flight in their schedule instead of every flight in the route.
15min tests are possible, we have a health center here in the bay area that does them. I'm guessing the difference is actually having the testing machine present vs sending it out.
"The FDA recently granted emergency use authorization to a new rapid antigen test for COVID-19. How is it different from other tests on the market?
"The FDA recently granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for a new diagnostic test for COVID-19. Results from this inexpensive test are available within 15 minutes.
"The BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card, as the test is known, detects antigen proteins on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Unlike other diagnostic tests for COVID-19, BinaxNOW does not require a laboratory or other equipment to process or analyze the test results. This makes it portable and fast.
"This test is approved for use in people who are suspected of having COVID-19, and must be done within seven days of when their symptoms began....
"Positive test results are highly specific, meaning that if you test positive you are very likely to be infected, particularly if you are tested during the first week of infection when you are experiencing symptoms. False negatives are a bigger concern. As with other antigen tests, BinaxNOW can miss infections, producing negative test results in people who are actually infected."
They also say, previously,
"Antibody tests can tell if someone has been infected with COVID-19. But the infected person doesn't begin producing antibodies immediately. It can take as long as three weeks for a blood antibody test to turn positive. That's why it is not useful as a diagnostic test for someone with new symptoms."
So if the test is positive, you probably are infected. If it is negative, you may be infected. Presumably the reports on BinaxNOW have the actual numbers.
Also,
"The time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) is thought to be three to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure.
"We know that a person with COVID-19 may be contagious 48 to 72 hours before starting to experience symptoms. Emerging research suggests that people may actually be most likely to spread the virus to others during the 48 hours before they start to experience symptoms....
"Most people with coronavirus who have symptoms will no longer be contagious by 10 days after symptoms resolve. People who test positive for the virus but never develop symptoms over the following 10 days after testing are probably no longer contagious, but again there are documented exceptions. So some experts are still recommending 14 days of isolation."
It's bad enough having your life upended. Sometimes sent to a country where you have never been and knowing nobody.
Or more mildly, and getting more common, just stuck in a country and wanting to go home, but overstaying a visa because you feel there is no safe way to travel home at the moment.
Now imagine being forced to face catching Covid on the flight if you know you're in a high risk category (eg. asthma) but the officials do not care.
Some people would give anything to be able to take that "low frequency special flight" you've described.
Masks aren't about personal protection. In fact the masks that do offer personal protection often have vents which undermines the entire point of wearing the masks in the first place.
You wear them because you might be infected and not know it, and it helps to stop spittle from your exhalations and speaking from atomizing into the air.
The last part is very true. The first part is not true. It's one of the surprising things we have discovered about this unusual pandemic. Unvented, even single layer, masks do offer some degree of protection to the wearer against COVID-19. Perhaps it just keeps your hands out of your face. Anything that lowers R0, even a little is beneficial. Masks work. Better masks work better.
There's no ethical way to run that experiment now. But they do provide an anecdotal example of a maskless flight causing lots of transmission at the start of the article.
Every airline has mask policies in place so natural experiments comparing masked and unmasked flights as the control group are impossible. Deliberately running unmasked flights as a control group is ethically fraught. A statistically rigorous analysis can't be done in this case. This is the best we can get.
Requiring masks on flights has very little downside or cost, and potentially big upside.
That’s fine but then you can’t present it as a scientific argument. Choosing a few anecdotes and talking about it as if it is science is dishonest.
Face masks are a perfect ‘red herring solution’:
- They are very visible so you can see who’s using them
- They are slightly inconvenient so it makes users feel they’ve done their part
- However slightly, they infringe on the basic right to breathe so people have a reason to rebel against them
This causes conflict and gives the users a reason to feel superior
- They come with a plausible though difficult to prove or disprove story
But don’t forget there just is not a whole lot of convincing evidence masks and especially the kind used by the general population actually have any effect on the spread of COVID-19.
You forgot one benefit of masks. They act as a persistent, physical reminder to socially distance.
The presence of Covid is an infringement on my freedom of movement. I'm happy to try something that might work, if it may help me get that freedom back, particularly if there are no major downsides. Compared to the massive restrictions on personal freedom in a pandemic, an ever so slight difficulty in breathing with a mask is nothing.
> But don’t forget there just is not a whole lot of convincing evidence masks and especially the kind used by the general population actually have any effect on the spread of COVID-19.
This is still a very new disease. Conclusive studies conducted with statistical rigor will take a long time. Right now, we have a plausible explanation for why cloth masks or N95s without outlets work (they block large droplets from being emitted), and lots of anecdotal evidence in favor. Masks look like a decent bet to make, compared to the alternatives. If we find out later they don't work, we haven't lost much by trying them.
It’s all conjecture mixed with a bit of ‘if it doesn’t help it doesn’t hurt’. Whatever you want but don’t pretend there’s any evidence when there isn’t. Because there isn’t.
There's plenty of evidence. If you want to live in denial I can't help you. I do worry about how we'll respond to climate change when there are attitudes like this.
Also, I've been assuming so far that you were debating in good faith so I didn't ask. Where is the evidence that masks don't work? Can you cite any studies?
> even if they disagree with that, is not a benefit.
The time for "disagree" is long past. Viruses and pandemics aren't a matter of opinion. Facts don't care about your feelings.
I'm a coward. Got no problems admitting that. I also have elderly relatives who I don't want getting sick and potentially dying. The sooner this pandemic is gone, the better I'll feel.
I actually want everyone to get their freedom of movement, freedom of religion (are churches open yet?), freedom to earn a living and pursue happiness back. I'm not just thinking of myself. Sorry if that calculus (freedom of movement + religion + others > freedom from masking) seems wrong to you - maybe we value different things.
Please tell me how "The benefits of social isolation outweigh the benefits" is not a matter of opinion.
I also want the pandemic to end ASAP. Which is why I'm opposed to mandatory mask wearing and especially to social isolation. These measures actually prolong the pandemic by delaying infections.
> I also want the pandemic to end ASAP. Which is why I'm opposed to mandatory mask wearing and especially to social isolation. These measures actually prolong the pandemic by delaying infections.
Yeah...I'm not interested in risking long-term lung and organ damage in the pursuit of an as-yet-unproven "herd immunity victory condition", just because some people don't want to wear a piece of cloth on their face. It's clear we won't find much common ground, probably best for us to stop discussing this further.
Also, elderly folks will still be left in social isolation with your solution, so it's not like it's a real win.
Long-term damage is fortunately a myth. There is no evidence for it -- people may need more than a few weeks to recover, but ultimately they do.
Whereas herd immunity is inevitable. Either we reach it naturally or we wait for a working vaccine. If people couldn't develop immunity against Covid, developing a vaccine would be impossible.
> Also, elderly folks will still be left in social isolation with your solution, so it's not like it's a real win.
Only for a limited time, and only them. That is clearly better than forcing everyone to isolate themselves for months.
> Long-term damage is fortunately a myth. people may need more than a few weeks to recover, but ultimately they do.
Nope.[1] And I don't care if long-haulers are a small percentage. Explain to me why you or I should take the tiniest bit of risk of becoming a statistic, instead of wearing a mask. You talk as though even a few weeks of suffering is nothing, compared to the agony of wearing a mask in public.
There's no heroism in contracting a disease. We're not fighting a war. There's no point being "brave". Getting corona isn't like falling on a grenade to save your buddies.
> Whereas herd immunity is inevitable. Either we reach it naturally or we wait for a working vaccine.
There are already documented cases of reinfection,[2] so everyone has to either contract corona or get the vaccine, in order to protect those vulnerable to reinfection. Waiting for a vaccine will cost far fewer lives.
> That is clearly better than forcing everyone to isolate themselves for months.
Or the alternative: wear a mask, socialize outdoors or in well-ventilated areas. Strictly isolate the truly vulnerable.
Despite being published in Nature, the two articles you cited aren't scientific papers. I've been looking and asking for evidence that long-term damage and reinfections occur except in rare cases for months. This isn't it.
Maybe social isolation until we have a (necessarily rushed) vaccine (if we ever get one) and of which we then have to produce billions of doses does save a few lives. But that is not guaranteed and it's not worth the suffering till then.
> Explain to me why you or I should take the tiniest bit of risk of becoming a statistic, instead of wearing a mask.
Because live is inherently risky. If you truly wanted to avoid every tiny risk, you couldn't even leave your house.
> You talk as though even a few weeks of suffering is nothing, compared to the agony of wearing a mask in public.
A few weeks of suffering for some of the population is nothing compared to months of suffering for all of them.
And please, stop pretending being forced to wear masks is the only measure we have to endure.
FTA: "Planes have excellent air ventilation and filtration systems, which remove coronavirus particles from the air about every six minutes, the U.S. Transportation Command reported Thursday.
"So the only opportunity to breathe the virus in comes from the air that passes by you before it goes through that ventilation system," says engineer Linsey Marr at Virginia Tech. "And so that's only going to happen if you're sitting close to the person who's sick.""
Try proposing that to your local government and see if you can convince them. We still live in a democracy.
For that matter, churches can already hold services in the parking lot or a nearby public park or some other place outdoors, right? That's how Jesus did it - He didn't preach inside a church building. Why not adapt?
Churches often have windows of stained glass that they'd like to remain undamaged, so the glass is covered with a transparent cover that does not open. Of those church buildings not old enough to utilize a lot of stained glass, the ones I've seen are built like office buildings: windows don't open.
But as sibling comments point out, your comment is missing a lot of subtleties. Starting, IMO, with the difference between an apple and an orange.
1. They also shut down schools and bars and restaurants. It was not only churches.
2. It is possible to hear the word of God without physically going into a church. It is not possible to move from one place to another without being in a vehicle to move from one place to another. There is no way to virtually get in an aircraft.
3. Church is a habitual destination; most people do not ride an aircraft every week. This means that the total volume of people affected in this risky way is a lot lower because the total number of people flying is lower and the number of times that those people interact with others is lower. The mere cost alone is enough to deter people from getting in an aircraft each week to fly around.
4. There are fewer aircraft and airports in this country than there are churches. This makes it easier to verify mask compliance. Churches have been shown to defy common-sense mask restrictions very often.
5. There have been many cases of churches being the epicenters of serious outbreaks that kill many congregants because people said that God would worry about it. There were videos in March of Christians saying that they didn't need to wear masks because they were "bathed in the blood of the lamb", and no one was able or willing to do anything about that, whereas maskless passengers get kicked off aircraft. To my knowledge, there haven't been very many or any high-profile cases of many people dying because they all got on the same flight, yet the same cannot be said for churches in the United States.
Even considering churches in the middle of the pandemic is, from an atheist point of view, equally warped. Isn't God supposedly anywhere by the way? Why do you have to stuff all the people in a specific building in the first place.
npr is an awful source for good information about covid, as it's especially partisan and fearmongering on this issue. and this article just continues that tradition with poor reasoning that's not meant to provide proof but rather political fodder, division, and (they hope) donations.
Did you read the article? The main takeaway was to wear your mask and you will be less likely to get covid on a plane. They mentioned that the air is filtered every 6 minutes. Showed statistics where infected people on a plan with people who were all mandated to wear masks infected no one. That isn't fear mongering, that is letting people know they can fly safely, just wear a good mask.
The presentation though does a backhanded attack on the science by clickbait headlining implying the matter is more dubious and promoting doubt while fearmongering the masks as ineffective. Publishing a high visibility "Did the Holocaust really happen?" headline in the New York Times would rightfully anger people even if the article answer is "yes, duh".
it's poor form (and against site guidelines) to question whether someone read an article. like many other npr stories, it insinuates a lot and provides a wholly and intentionally incomplete narrative to construct a solid argument in hopes that you miss the missing pieces and just nod along. it's entirely plausible that the filtration system did all the work and masking was merely performative. as others have pointed out, they completely skipped comparisons with other flights where people weren't all rigorously masked (just pick another airline in hong kong). it's hysterical, and it only distracts from the primary community transmission risk, the private social gathering, because it's uncomfortable and harder to tackle that issue instead.
> During those three weeks, Emirates had five flights with seven or more infected passengers on each flight, for a total of 58 coronavirus-positive passengers flying on eight-hour trips. And yet, nobody else on the planes — none of the other 1,500 to 2,000 passengers — picked up the virus, Freedman and his colleague report in the Journal of Travel Medicine.
That's amazing. Though, importantly:
> Planes have excellent air ventilation and filtration systems, which remove coronavirus particles from the air about every six minutes, the U.S. Transportation Command reported Thursday.
49 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadOne thing that I couldn't find and will re-read the article: seems that they are just concluding this from one airline that enforce masks.
Comparing the numbers from other companies would give better information.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/if-yo...
"The FDA recently granted emergency use authorization to a new rapid antigen test for COVID-19. How is it different from other tests on the market?
"The FDA recently granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for a new diagnostic test for COVID-19. Results from this inexpensive test are available within 15 minutes.
"The BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card, as the test is known, detects antigen proteins on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Unlike other diagnostic tests for COVID-19, BinaxNOW does not require a laboratory or other equipment to process or analyze the test results. This makes it portable and fast.
"This test is approved for use in people who are suspected of having COVID-19, and must be done within seven days of when their symptoms began....
"Positive test results are highly specific, meaning that if you test positive you are very likely to be infected, particularly if you are tested during the first week of infection when you are experiencing symptoms. False negatives are a bigger concern. As with other antigen tests, BinaxNOW can miss infections, producing negative test results in people who are actually infected."
They also say, previously,
"Antibody tests can tell if someone has been infected with COVID-19. But the infected person doesn't begin producing antibodies immediately. It can take as long as three weeks for a blood antibody test to turn positive. That's why it is not useful as a diagnostic test for someone with new symptoms."
So if the test is positive, you probably are infected. If it is negative, you may be infected. Presumably the reports on BinaxNOW have the actual numbers.
Also,
"The time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) is thought to be three to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure.
"We know that a person with COVID-19 may be contagious 48 to 72 hours before starting to experience symptoms. Emerging research suggests that people may actually be most likely to spread the virus to others during the 48 hours before they start to experience symptoms....
"Most people with coronavirus who have symptoms will no longer be contagious by 10 days after symptoms resolve. People who test positive for the virus but never develop symptoms over the following 10 days after testing are probably no longer contagious, but again there are documented exceptions. So some experts are still recommending 14 days of isolation."
It's bad enough having your life upended. Sometimes sent to a country where you have never been and knowing nobody.
Or more mildly, and getting more common, just stuck in a country and wanting to go home, but overstaying a visa because you feel there is no safe way to travel home at the moment.
Now imagine being forced to face catching Covid on the flight if you know you're in a high risk category (eg. asthma) but the officials do not care.
Some people would give anything to be able to take that "low frequency special flight" you've described.
You wear them because you might be infected and not know it, and it helps to stop spittle from your exhalations and speaking from atomizing into the air.
To really reach any valid conclusion he’d also have to analyse flights where people did not wear masks.
Requiring masks on flights has very little downside or cost, and potentially big upside.
Face masks are a perfect ‘red herring solution’:
- They are very visible so you can see who’s using them
- They are slightly inconvenient so it makes users feel they’ve done their part
- However slightly, they infringe on the basic right to breathe so people have a reason to rebel against them
This causes conflict and gives the users a reason to feel superior
- They come with a plausible though difficult to prove or disprove story
But don’t forget there just is not a whole lot of convincing evidence masks and especially the kind used by the general population actually have any effect on the spread of COVID-19.
The presence of Covid is an infringement on my freedom of movement. I'm happy to try something that might work, if it may help me get that freedom back, particularly if there are no major downsides. Compared to the massive restrictions on personal freedom in a pandemic, an ever so slight difficulty in breathing with a mask is nothing.
> But don’t forget there just is not a whole lot of convincing evidence masks and especially the kind used by the general population actually have any effect on the spread of COVID-19.
This is still a very new disease. Conclusive studies conducted with statistical rigor will take a long time. Right now, we have a plausible explanation for why cloth masks or N95s without outlets work (they block large droplets from being emitted), and lots of anecdotal evidence in favor. Masks look like a decent bet to make, compared to the alternatives. If we find out later they don't work, we haven't lost much by trying them.
Also, I've been assuming so far that you were debating in good faith so I didn't ask. Where is the evidence that masks don't work? Can you cite any studies?
Forcing people to remind everyone around them to socially isolate, even if they disagree with that, is not a benefit.
> The presence of Covid is an infringement on my freedom of movement.
Are you particularly at risk or just a coward?
> I'm happy to try something that might work, if it may help me get that freedom back, particularly if there are no major downsides.
You are willing to force everyone else to wear masks and socially isolate to get your own freedom back. No wonder you don't see any major downsides.
The time for "disagree" is long past. Viruses and pandemics aren't a matter of opinion. Facts don't care about your feelings.
I'm a coward. Got no problems admitting that. I also have elderly relatives who I don't want getting sick and potentially dying. The sooner this pandemic is gone, the better I'll feel.
I actually want everyone to get their freedom of movement, freedom of religion (are churches open yet?), freedom to earn a living and pursue happiness back. I'm not just thinking of myself. Sorry if that calculus (freedom of movement + religion + others > freedom from masking) seems wrong to you - maybe we value different things.
I also want the pandemic to end ASAP. Which is why I'm opposed to mandatory mask wearing and especially to social isolation. These measures actually prolong the pandemic by delaying infections.
Yeah...I'm not interested in risking long-term lung and organ damage in the pursuit of an as-yet-unproven "herd immunity victory condition", just because some people don't want to wear a piece of cloth on their face. It's clear we won't find much common ground, probably best for us to stop discussing this further.
Also, elderly folks will still be left in social isolation with your solution, so it's not like it's a real win.
Whereas herd immunity is inevitable. Either we reach it naturally or we wait for a working vaccine. If people couldn't develop immunity against Covid, developing a vaccine would be impossible.
> Also, elderly folks will still be left in social isolation with your solution, so it's not like it's a real win.
Only for a limited time, and only them. That is clearly better than forcing everyone to isolate themselves for months.
Nope.[1] And I don't care if long-haulers are a small percentage. Explain to me why you or I should take the tiniest bit of risk of becoming a statistic, instead of wearing a mask. You talk as though even a few weeks of suffering is nothing, compared to the agony of wearing a mask in public.
There's no heroism in contracting a disease. We're not fighting a war. There's no point being "brave". Getting corona isn't like falling on a grenade to save your buddies.
> Whereas herd immunity is inevitable. Either we reach it naturally or we wait for a working vaccine.
There are already documented cases of reinfection,[2] so everyone has to either contract corona or get the vaccine, in order to protect those vulnerable to reinfection. Waiting for a vaccine will cost far fewer lives.
> That is clearly better than forcing everyone to isolate themselves for months.
Or the alternative: wear a mask, socialize outdoors or in well-ventilated areas. Strictly isolate the truly vulnerable.
1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6
2. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4
Maybe social isolation until we have a (necessarily rushed) vaccine (if we ever get one) and of which we then have to produce billions of doses does save a few lives. But that is not guaranteed and it's not worth the suffering till then.
> Explain to me why you or I should take the tiniest bit of risk of becoming a statistic, instead of wearing a mask.
Because live is inherently risky. If you truly wanted to avoid every tiny risk, you couldn't even leave your house.
> You talk as though even a few weeks of suffering is nothing, compared to the agony of wearing a mask in public.
A few weeks of suffering for some of the population is nothing compared to months of suffering for all of them. And please, stop pretending being forced to wear masks is the only measure we have to endure.
"So the only opportunity to breathe the virus in comes from the air that passes by you before it goes through that ventilation system," says engineer Linsey Marr at Virginia Tech. "And so that's only going to happen if you're sitting close to the person who's sick.""
For that matter, churches can already hold services in the parking lot or a nearby public park or some other place outdoors, right? That's how Jesus did it - He didn't preach inside a church building. Why not adapt?
But as sibling comments point out, your comment is missing a lot of subtleties. Starting, IMO, with the difference between an apple and an orange.
2. It is possible to hear the word of God without physically going into a church. It is not possible to move from one place to another without being in a vehicle to move from one place to another. There is no way to virtually get in an aircraft.
3. Church is a habitual destination; most people do not ride an aircraft every week. This means that the total volume of people affected in this risky way is a lot lower because the total number of people flying is lower and the number of times that those people interact with others is lower. The mere cost alone is enough to deter people from getting in an aircraft each week to fly around.
4. There are fewer aircraft and airports in this country than there are churches. This makes it easier to verify mask compliance. Churches have been shown to defy common-sense mask restrictions very often.
5. There have been many cases of churches being the epicenters of serious outbreaks that kill many congregants because people said that God would worry about it. There were videos in March of Christians saying that they didn't need to wear masks because they were "bathed in the blood of the lamb", and no one was able or willing to do anything about that, whereas maskless passengers get kicked off aircraft. To my knowledge, there haven't been very many or any high-profile cases of many people dying because they all got on the same flight, yet the same cannot be said for churches in the United States.
That's amazing. Though, importantly:
> Planes have excellent air ventilation and filtration systems, which remove coronavirus particles from the air about every six minutes, the U.S. Transportation Command reported Thursday.