Sure, no single thing is 100% effective, but that was never the claim for a mask, any mask. But wearing masks, distancing, washing hands, vaccinations, etc, all together, is a lot better than doing nothing.
And also the basic ideas of probability – it isn't _guaranteed_ to protect you, but if it reduces the average rate of infection by x% that's a _huge_ difference at the population level!
I guess that had to be expected given how people flaunted their ignorance of basic calculus curriculum around in the past. Turns out uneducated citizens lead to suboptimal decisionmaking.
And no mention how much do they slow down or redirect exhaling of viral particles (esp when eg coughing), thus enabling those air filtration systems to do their work (eg. in an airplane).
When you can't tell if you are infectious or not, by wearing a mask, you are reducing a risk to them, and signalling that you care even if you are confident you are not sick (eg. you've had it a month ago).
I am not sure why is such signalling considered useless: it makes everybody around you more relaxed.
I'm not sure it does make everyone more relaxed. It's a signal that there's a danger around so heightens tension. In the UK I'd guess that less than 10% of people are still wearing masks based on observation so when the culture of mask wearing goes it seems likely that most people relax.
Since there is some activity here, I'll mention two of the discussions that seem like a credible overall assessment of "masks work" to me:
- A meta analysis of mask research indicating that they do work, and results to the contrary suffer from low statistical power [1] [2]
- Studies on masks are not all born equal; some have better chances of adding to an overall sensible picture than others. Especially the implementation of concrete RCTs seems to have produced some discussion [3] [4].
I am not an expert on medicine, but I trust these authors and the statistical arguments make sense.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 42.8 ms ] threadWhen you can't tell if you are infectious or not, by wearing a mask, you are reducing a risk to them, and signalling that you care even if you are confident you are not sick (eg. you've had it a month ago).
I am not sure why is such signalling considered useless: it makes everybody around you more relaxed.
- A meta analysis of mask research indicating that they do work, and results to the contrary suffer from low statistical power [1] [2]
- Studies on masks are not all born equal; some have better chances of adding to an overall sensible picture than others. Especially the implementation of concrete RCTs seems to have produced some discussion [3] [4].
I am not an expert on medicine, but I trust these authors and the statistical arguments make sense.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8499874/
[2] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/02/24/masks-bloc...
[3] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/10/22/how-did-th...
[4] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2021.001...