How can anyone who can read still think masks offer ANY source control?
#cochranereport
Mask wearing increases chance of infection of the wearer by up to 40%. People who are fooled to believe that masks offer any protection tend to be people who fixate on perfecting their protection by constantly adjusting their masks to the perfect protection placement unwittingly contaminating their useless PPE with whatever they have touched while simultaneously further contaminating their hands with their own exhaust to further contaminate whatever they touch. Touchscreens, door handles etc etc etc. Insanity.
As a hearing impaired person, I think mask wearing is an acute danger. Questions and answers in the doctor/patient interaction cannot be understood. I was a patient in a hospital with clear and repeated instructions of hearing impairment to medical personnel who many times walked out of the room with their back to me while talking. Even while facing medical personnel, the inability to lip read interfered with communication. My wife and sister would have to call the nurses to say “what did you tell him ?” I never wore a mask while a patient except when I was in the wheelchair on the way to the facility exit. This was medical theater which was a farce. It was theater to cause fear and compliance in employees and visitors. I think it was also a power trip for administrators. 😡😡
Don’t forget the harm of lost opportunity. Focusing on mask mandates takes away from actual proven methods to reduce nosocomial infections. For instance, it has been shown that revisers washing hands in between touching patients reduces nosocomial infections. Additionally, more complete cleaning of rooms and equipment helps (special attention to wiping down door handles, toilet handles, bed rails, etc). Making people mask is easy for the admins to see and so they go with that instead of with the more difficult tasks of promoting handwashing and proper cleaning in between patients. Shameful.
And so I am sitting on a ten hour flight with coughing and sneezing all around. Nobody wears a mask. So what is likely hood of capturing some droplets or breathing in suspects of viral or bacterial agents? 95 or no N95?
You are simply misinformed about the value of masks. Stopping viruses with a mask is like stopping mosquitoes with chain link fences. I must assume from your reply that you believe that the health care workers are the vulnerable populations. The masks will not protect them from viruses shed by sick patients.
I am not in favor of forced mass reinfections. I am an RN how else are you going to protect the vulnerable populations? We know that if we healthcare providers wear a mask others will as well.
Protect the vulnerable from what? Life? Covid - they can get vaxxed if they choose. Evidence of protection for the vulnerable of a primary series. Then they can wear a fit tested N95 themselves if they want - my advice to a vulnerable individual who is concerned. But there's a fundamental difference of orientation between us - I think the vulnerable need to acknowledge their mortality, and they need to know the efficacy - or lack of it - of the protection they are using. Very few vulnerable use best practice masking strategies, (fit tested N95s that they don't contaminate with their hands etc) presumably because they are either impossible to do in practice, or they don't think the effort is worth it. Take personal responsibility for your personal index of risk, and don't make everybody else responsible for someone else's risk perception, especially when the intervention is marginally effective at best.
Don't do interventions without clear evidence of benefit in the real world - this idea that we should do something rather than nothing is a core fallacy of medicine.
I remember the days when we put pneumonia patients in open wards and nobody masked - and we weren't dying like flies. We accepted risk as a normal part of life. Everybody needs to accept risk as a healthy party of everyday life, accept that everyone will die, and that an individual should control their own behaviour but not everyone else's.
Masking negatively affects quality of life - let the vulnerable choose the trade off between (arguable) quantity versus quality of life priorities, in whether they themselves want to mask. Some of us value quality of life more highly, and consider that by negatively affecting the quality of life of the vulnerable, you're harming them, not helping them. My elderly demented parent would have been far better off with a shorter life, but no enforced quarantine to "protect" them, than having their stressful dementia existence prolonged because it makes you feel better.
Thank you for your comment. Most of the proposed harms are common sense, and some would not lend themselves well to RCTs. However, the burden of proof of safety lies with those who would impose a new medical intervention. Few of the published studies on masking even acknowledge the possibility of harm.
The mentality of people who insist on masking publicly (and I guess also when alone in a car with windows rolled up for some reason?) with almost no nuance is proof enough of a lack of common sense.
In terms of medical facilities, though, I think masking is pretty normal. Mandating though seems a bit extreme, but you know ultimately this is some administrator who is stuck in an endless loop of rationalization with zero responsiveness to actual facts in the real world, or perhaps forgot that getting a cold every once and a while is normal and part of living in the real world. And occasionally, colds or flus kill people. Yep. Since time immemorial. But ultimately it probably wasn't the flu that killed them. A feather could land on a broken bridge and cause it to collapse. Is it the feather's fault?
You can see how much this whole thing strikes out against even our most basic notions of causation.
My dementia patients take cues from visualizing expressions. Many of them are HOH so voice recognition is not a thing. When wearing a mask, a vital form of human communication is lost.
Behaviors in this population were through the roof and decline was rampant during Covid and I also saw an increase in those issues last winter during the seasonal mask mandate in the blue state where I work. Thankfully many of the regular staff chin-mask when with the residents.
Stop masking with no proof of benefit.
Now don’t get me started on the gowning and face shields for care of asymptomatic patients…
Our brains our so profoundly attenuated to the most subtle movements in folks' faces. Cutting that off is socio-neurologically like cutting off a limb. But that's how much people understand how authentic communication works, and value it.
All great points on the medical and psychological aspects of wearing masks to prevent the spread of an aerosolized respiratory outbreak. But these mask mandates are not driven by medical motivations - these are political motivations. Fear and submission worked in 2020 and may contribute to the desired political effect this November. The only ones I see wearing masks are the anti-MAGAs and those who lack the social and political courage to follow their truths and not bend to intimidation. Unfortunately, health care workers often value their social and political tribes more than their science and medical liberty truths
How can anyone who can read still think masks offer ANY source control?
#cochranereport
Mask wearing increases chance of infection of the wearer by up to 40%. People who are fooled to believe that masks offer any protection tend to be people who fixate on perfecting their protection by constantly adjusting their masks to the perfect protection placement unwittingly contaminating their useless PPE with whatever they have touched while simultaneously further contaminating their hands with their own exhaust to further contaminate whatever they touch. Touchscreens, door handles etc etc etc. Insanity.
As a hearing impaired person, I think mask wearing is an acute danger. Questions and answers in the doctor/patient interaction cannot be understood. I was a patient in a hospital with clear and repeated instructions of hearing impairment to medical personnel who many times walked out of the room with their back to me while talking. Even while facing medical personnel, the inability to lip read interfered with communication. My wife and sister would have to call the nurses to say “what did you tell him ?” I never wore a mask while a patient except when I was in the wheelchair on the way to the facility exit. This was medical theater which was a farce. It was theater to cause fear and compliance in employees and visitors. I think it was also a power trip for administrators. 😡😡
Mask wearing is about compliance. It is showing what side you are on. The equivalent of wearing a CND badge in the 1980's
Why mask in the operating room?
Don’t forget the harm of lost opportunity. Focusing on mask mandates takes away from actual proven methods to reduce nosocomial infections. For instance, it has been shown that revisers washing hands in between touching patients reduces nosocomial infections. Additionally, more complete cleaning of rooms and equipment helps (special attention to wiping down door handles, toilet handles, bed rails, etc). Making people mask is easy for the admins to see and so they go with that instead of with the more difficult tasks of promoting handwashing and proper cleaning in between patients. Shameful.
Providers not revisers
And so I am sitting on a ten hour flight with coughing and sneezing all around. Nobody wears a mask. So what is likely hood of capturing some droplets or breathing in suspects of viral or bacterial agents? 95 or no N95?
You are simply misinformed about the value of masks. Stopping viruses with a mask is like stopping mosquitoes with chain link fences. I must assume from your reply that you believe that the health care workers are the vulnerable populations. The masks will not protect them from viruses shed by sick patients.
Yes!! You have the power to say NO!
Great read. Thank you for your time. Keep them coming.
Sorry but this is so wrong on so many levels
I am not in favor of forced mass reinfections. I am an RN how else are you going to protect the vulnerable populations? We know that if we healthcare providers wear a mask others will as well.
Protect the vulnerable from what? Life? Covid - they can get vaxxed if they choose. Evidence of protection for the vulnerable of a primary series. Then they can wear a fit tested N95 themselves if they want - my advice to a vulnerable individual who is concerned. But there's a fundamental difference of orientation between us - I think the vulnerable need to acknowledge their mortality, and they need to know the efficacy - or lack of it - of the protection they are using. Very few vulnerable use best practice masking strategies, (fit tested N95s that they don't contaminate with their hands etc) presumably because they are either impossible to do in practice, or they don't think the effort is worth it. Take personal responsibility for your personal index of risk, and don't make everybody else responsible for someone else's risk perception, especially when the intervention is marginally effective at best.
Don't do interventions without clear evidence of benefit in the real world - this idea that we should do something rather than nothing is a core fallacy of medicine.
I remember the days when we put pneumonia patients in open wards and nobody masked - and we weren't dying like flies. We accepted risk as a normal part of life. Everybody needs to accept risk as a healthy party of everyday life, accept that everyone will die, and that an individual should control their own behaviour but not everyone else's.
Masking negatively affects quality of life - let the vulnerable choose the trade off between (arguable) quantity versus quality of life priorities, in whether they themselves want to mask. Some of us value quality of life more highly, and consider that by negatively affecting the quality of life of the vulnerable, you're harming them, not helping them. My elderly demented parent would have been far better off with a shorter life, but no enforced quarantine to "protect" them, than having their stressful dementia existence prolonged because it makes you feel better.
Can you point to any RCT data proving those suspected harms?
Thank you for your comment. Most of the proposed harms are common sense, and some would not lend themselves well to RCTs. However, the burden of proof of safety lies with those who would impose a new medical intervention. Few of the published studies on masking even acknowledge the possibility of harm.
The mentality of people who insist on masking publicly (and I guess also when alone in a car with windows rolled up for some reason?) with almost no nuance is proof enough of a lack of common sense.
In terms of medical facilities, though, I think masking is pretty normal. Mandating though seems a bit extreme, but you know ultimately this is some administrator who is stuck in an endless loop of rationalization with zero responsiveness to actual facts in the real world, or perhaps forgot that getting a cold every once and a while is normal and part of living in the real world. And occasionally, colds or flus kill people. Yep. Since time immemorial. But ultimately it probably wasn't the flu that killed them. A feather could land on a broken bridge and cause it to collapse. Is it the feather's fault?
You can see how much this whole thing strikes out against even our most basic notions of causation.
Just when I thought couldn’t trust public health less.
Great article. Thank you!
My dementia patients take cues from visualizing expressions. Many of them are HOH so voice recognition is not a thing. When wearing a mask, a vital form of human communication is lost.
Behaviors in this population were through the roof and decline was rampant during Covid and I also saw an increase in those issues last winter during the seasonal mask mandate in the blue state where I work. Thankfully many of the regular staff chin-mask when with the residents.
Stop masking with no proof of benefit.
Now don’t get me started on the gowning and face shields for care of asymptomatic patients…
Our brains our so profoundly attenuated to the most subtle movements in folks' faces. Cutting that off is socio-neurologically like cutting off a limb. But that's how much people understand how authentic communication works, and value it.
On the complexity of this topic, I recommend reading this text by David Scales (https://undark.org/2024/08/29/more-studies-wont-solve-the-masking-debate/).
I highlight these five points:
1. The debate over mask use is not just about scientific evidence but also involves values and cultural perspectives.
2. Risk management decisions in public health involve balancing scientific data with social and economic priorities.
3. The polarization around masking reflects broader challenges seen in other public health debates, such as mammography guidelines.
4. Effective communication about the trade-offs involved in health policies is crucial to avoid confusion.
5. Public health decisions should integrate scientific analysis with explicit discussions of societal values.
All great points on the medical and psychological aspects of wearing masks to prevent the spread of an aerosolized respiratory outbreak. But these mask mandates are not driven by medical motivations - these are political motivations. Fear and submission worked in 2020 and may contribute to the desired political effect this November. The only ones I see wearing masks are the anti-MAGAs and those who lack the social and political courage to follow their truths and not bend to intimidation. Unfortunately, health care workers often value their social and political tribes more than their science and medical liberty truths