Swaglord_the_real_one_1_one_1 wrote:
huh what wrote:
I also expect that post-pandemic analysis will show masks did little to slow COVID spread.
Why do you think so? Doesn't it seem like most places with people truly using masks had low transmission (Taiwan for example), whereas places where little masks were used had super high transmission (NYC in early March, Florida most of the time).
Well...
It's what the evidence points to?
The largest study done on this is the danish one published last month.
About 6000 participated.
1,8% of the people that wore masks got infected, while 2,1% in the control group got infected.
The results actually suggests masks reduce the risk of infection 15-20%, but since the effect was so marginal it wasn't statistically significant.
I saw people here (Hi Allen53) saying this proved masks doesn't work.
That is of course a complete misinterpretation of the study's findings, the evidence actually suggests other wise, it only means that for the results to have been statistically significant they would have needed more community spread at the time of the experiment or more people taking part in the study.
Needs to be said that if infected, wearing a mask will reduce the chance of you infecting others as the mask will collect quite a lot of virus on the inside of the mask.
This has been shown in laboratories.
How much it reduces the chance of others becoming infected ain't known, and regretably we can only speculate as to how big the effect is.
A proper scientific study would mean the researchers would need to let infected people, with and without masks, expose healthy people to the virus, so for obvious reasons that's a no go.
Anyways: based on current science it's actually fair to say that masks have only a small effect if any in protecting you from contracting the infection.
The low infection rate in Taiwan probably have very little to do with masks, but rather very much with controlling access to the country combined with RIGOROUS quaranteening.