Posted by:
Concrete Zipper
(
)
Date: July 06, 2020 02:19PM
We've had a couple of posts lately that question the effectiveness of masks in the Covid-19 era. It's important to wear a mask when you're around other people, but perhaps not for the reason you might think.
There are two different scenarios for wearing a mask to prevent infection:
1. Medical personnel wear special masks to protect them from getting infected from people they are treating. These are not the same masks that public health professionals are asking everyone else to wear. A proper medical mask does a pretty good job of keeping the wearer from getting infected. It must be appropriately designed from specific materials and be individually fitted to the wearer. The wearer must be trained on how to properly put the mask on and take it off. Do this right and the person wearing the mask is well protected, even around lots of infected patients.
2. The general public needs to wear something over the mouth and nose to decrease the disease's transmission rate. Such masks protect the wearer from others a little and protect others from the wearer quite a bit. The real reason we are asked to wear masks in public is statistical: it cuts down on the "reproduction rate" of the virus. The reproduction rate is denoted with the letter R and is the average number of other people that an infected person will infect over the course of the disease. If R equals 1, each infected person infects one other person (on average) and the level of the disease stays steady. If R is greater than 1, each infected person infects more than one other person (on average), so the pandemic grows. If R is less than 1, each infected person infects fewer than one other person (on average), so the pandemic shrinks. It's vital to get R below 1 to stop the pandemic.
This article from the Atlantic does a good job explaining how things work:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/dont-wear-mask-yourself/610336/One of the takeaway statistics from the article is this:
"Models show that if 80 percent of people wear masks that are 60 percent effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R of less than one. That’s enough to halt the spread of the disease." The graph of outcomes for different use rates and mask efficacies is also enlightening.
If we can get R down to less than 0.5, the pandemic will be largely gone in a few weeks. This is why it is vital for everyone to wear a mask in public. The more people wearing masks (plus social distancing and all the other guidelines that we've been asked to follow), the sooner this damned disease will stop bothering us.
Masks are not a silver bullet. I don't know of anyone who said they were. Nor are they a conspiracy theory or quack protection (like temple garments). They are an important tool in the public health toolbox for ending the pandemic. If people wear them, they also allow us to keep the economy largely open instead of everyone being in lockdown.
Masks are a good thing. Please wear one.
CZ
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2020 02:54PM by Concrete Zipper.