COVID-19 pandemic could be stopped if at least 70% public wore face masks consistently - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15139733
Millions don't have to die; tens of millions don't have to suffer from long-term health issues, we don't need lockdowns, we don't need to destroy the economy, we can go back to normal life after a couple of weeks, we don't have to damage democracy .... IF, IF ONLY people respected the life and wellbeing of their fellow humans for a little while.

But even that is too much for the self-entitled and delusional Karens of this world. Even the Pope has come out in a rare attack on these selfish people who live in that small world of their own making. They are fully prepared to destroy society while expecting society cater to their every whim. What is even the reason for such parasites to exist? Are they to excite the social immune system to trigger a response for expelling the sociopaths?

Societies that don't mobilize a sufficient immune response to the Trumpvirus are doomed.

And why do we have to go through all this misery? It's so easy to stop by just wearing that damned mask for a little while and by stopping to propagate fake news. We wouldn't even need a vaccine.

What on Earth is wrong with these people?

COVID-19 pandemic could be stopped if at least 70% public wore face masks consistently

The COVID-19 pandemic could be stopped if at least 70 percent of the public wore face masks consistently, according to a research that suggests that the type of material used and the duration of face mask use play major roles in their effectiveness.

The research, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, assessed studies on face masks and reviewed epidemiological reports on whether they reduce the number of people an infected person spreads the pathogen to – the reproduction number of the virus.

“The results suggest that the consistent use of efficient face masks, such as surgical masks, could lead to the eradication of the pandemic if at least 70% of the residents use such masks in public consistently,” said Sanjay Kumar from the National University of Singapore.

"Even less efficient cloth masks could also the spread if worn consistently," Kumar added.

According to the scientists, one key aspect of face mask function involves the size of fluid droplets expelled from the nose and mouth when a person talks, sings, sneezes, coughs or even breathes.

Larger droplets, with sizes around 5-10 microns, are the most common. These droplets are still quite small, however. To compare, a human hair is about 70 microns in diameter.

In comparison, the scientists said the human hair is about 70 microns in diameter.

Among the many types of face masks in use, such as cloth masks worn for many hours, such as by health care or other essential workers, impact how effective overall mask wearing can be, thermal comfort is an important issue, especially in hot and humid environments, the researchers added.

Scientists found that face masks made of hybrid polymer materials could filter particles at high efficacy while simultaneously cooling the face since the fibers used in these special masks are transparent to infrared radiation, allowing heat to escape from beneath the mask.

"There could be some relation between breathing resistance and the flow resistance of the face mask which will need to be studied for a face mask wearing interval." said Heow Pueh Lee, another co-author of the study.

"Also. the environmental condition in the compartment space within the face mask will need to be more accurately quantified using miniaturised sensors and the development of human replicas for such studies," Lee said.

Based on the analysis, the researchers underscored the importance of consistent use of efficient face masks, such as surgical masks.
#15139744
In most countries in the Far East including Japan, Korea, China, etc., people are used to wearing masks when they have a flu (they don't always wear a mask, but there is no stigma attached to wearing a mask in public), while most Westerners strongly resisted wearing a mask until recently.

The Covid-19 deaths per one million of inhabitants in 6 countries in the Far East are between 0.3k and 15k, while the deaths per one million of inhabitants in 6 countries in the West are between 722k and 911k. Thus, Covid death rates are 60 to 2,400 times higher in the West than in the East. The resistance to wearing masks has a lot to do with the difference.

Comparison of Covid deaths in Asia and the West

This has been common knowledge all along, yet people had to spin their conspiracies about why masks are useless or even dangerous.
#15139886
If the pandemic can end if 70% of people wear masks in every setting regardless of risk, then this is another mockery for the advocates of lockdowns whose crows have caused numerous social, mental, health and economic damage for the Western powers. We should have just made mask wearing mandatory in all settings from the offset and we would have also had a better result in terms of deaths (or I should say cases since the goalposts have now moved.).
#15139890
B0ycey wrote:If the pandemic can end if 70% of people wear masks in every setting regardless of risk, then this is another mockery for the advocates of lockdowns whose crows have caused numerous social, mental, health and economic damage for the Western powers. We should have just made mask wearing mandatory in all settings from the offset and we would have also had a better result in terms of deaths (or I should say cases since the goalposts have now moved.).


Lockdowns are inevitable with exponential growth. That has been shown again and again. Those who oppose the wearing of masks for political reasons are guilty of crimes against humanity. Why do they do it? Pure stupidity and bloody-mindedness!

From January to March, masks were virtually unavailable in most countries in the West because the Chinese diaspora had bought them up and because Western governments had failed to prepare for the pandemic out of complacency. When the opinion shifted, the few masks that could be made available had to be given to health-care workers.

The pandemic revealed a total failure of democratic regimes during a time of crisis. This will have consequences.
#15139892
@Atlantis

There is a degree of understand for why we went into lockdown the first time. Not from me because I seen the data and could see who was at risk and the low percentage due to asymptomatic figures of 80%, but I can appreciate that governments got drawn in from the fearporn and wanted to act because they were told to expect figures of 100million+ dead nonetheless. And sure we had a lack of PPE in March so perhaps that should be taken into account also. But today there is no excuse. The facts and figures don't match the initial models and if we know mask wearing can stop the spread completely then why are we still doing lockdowns which don't? We have basically destroyed society by at least a decade and the NHS backlog means that even after Covid hospitals can expect full wards simply to catch up on the new pandemic, the result of Covid19 lockdown aftermath.
#15139911
B0ycey wrote:@Atlantis

There is a degree of understand for why we went into lockdown the first time. Not from me because I seen the data and could see who was at risk and the low percentage due to asymptomatic figures of 80%, but I can appreciate that governments got drawn in from the fearporn and wanted to act because they were told to expect figures of 100million+ dead nonetheless.


@B0ycey, I have the patience of a saint, but I really don't know how to explain it so you will understand it. It's not rocket science. It's easy to understand and I have explained it a million times:

- to avoid economic damage, you need to fight the pandemic first

- even if you only care about the economy and not about the millions of deaths, your interest is to fight the pandemic

- to fight the pandemic you need strict measures early, the half measures used because of people like you just aggravate the agony

- despite all the measures and half-measures used, we'll end up with about 5 million deaths plus 10s of millions of "long covid" patients, without any measures we would have at least 10 times as many, ie. between 50 and 100 millions deaths,

- the pandemic tests societies ability to cope with future crises, like for example climate change, societies that fail the test are doomed, if you want to be doomed, just put a gun to your head and let the rest of us get on with it,

- the pandemic provides a great opportunity to change society for the better if we rise to the occasion, the lazy ones not up to the task will just drop by the wayside,

The facts and figures don't match the initial models


If the figures predicted 10 million deaths without lockdown, then the figures with lockdowns will be less. That's the Paradox of Success. If you predict 10 million deaths, your prediction will be proven wrong if it is acted on because the measures taken will reduce the number of deaths. To prove your predictions, you would have keep it secrete and wait for 10 millions to die. What scientist would want 10 millions to die just to prove his prediction?

if we know mask wearing can stop the spread completely then why are we still doing lockdowns which don't?


Because the virus has been allowed to spread out off control due to complacency. If you just have a couple of cases in a community, you can stop it by simple precautions, but if the virus is everywhere, it takes a much greater effort to get it back under control. We know that with 100% certainty from all the examples of full and partial lockdowns.
#15139931
The 70% figure is based on another study (Ngonghala et al. 2020). The use of efficacious face-masks (such as surgical masks or N95, with estimated efficacy 70%) in public could lead to the elimination of the pandemic, if at least 70% of the residents of New York state use such masks in public consistently, which is an impossible scenario. The use of low efficacy masks, such as cloth masks (of estimated efficacy less than 30%), could also lead to significant reduction of COVID-19 burden. There is a moderate level of protection of 20-30 percent for those who wear masks. The role of social-distancing in curtailing the burden of COVID-19 should also be emphasized. Increases in the adherence level of social-distancing protocols result in dramatic reduction of the burden of the pandemic.

Ngonghala et al.87 developed a parametric model for providing deeper insights into the transmission dynamics and control of COVID-19 in a community. They used the COVID-19 data from New York state and the entire US to assess the population-level impact of various intervention strategies. The results suggested that the consistent use of facemasks could significantly reduce the effective reproduction number. The highly efficacious facemask, such as surgical masks with an estimated efficacy of around 70%, could lead to the eradication of the pandemic if at least 70% of the residents use such masks in public consistently. The use of low efficacy masks, such as cloth masks with an estimated efficacy of 30%, could also lead to a significant reduction of COVID-19 burden. Yan et al.88 evaluated the effectiveness of different respiratory protective equipment in controlling infection rates in an influenza outbreak. They used a previously developed risk assessment model89 to show N95 respirators’ efficacy, low-filtration surgical mask (adult), high-filtration surgical mask (adult), high filtration pediatric mask, and low filtration pediatric mask. The study revealed that donning these masks with a 50% compliance rate resulted in a significant reduction in transmission risk and with 80% compliance rate nearly eradicated the influenza outbreak. Prasanna Simha and Mohan Rao90 quantitatively investigated the distance of travel of typical human coughs with and without different masks: disposable three-ply surgical masks and N95 masks. In their study, the schlieren method, a highly sensitive, non-intrusive flow imagining technique, was used to visualize the human cough flow features.

The experimental statistics showed that the propagation of a viscous vortex ring mainly governed cough flow behavior. While wearing regular face masks, the cough droplets traveled approximately half the distance traveled by expelled droplets without a mask. However, N95 was found to be most effective in limiting the spread of cough droplets. Leung et al.91 performed experimental studies to investigate the efficacy of surgical facemasks to prevent respiratory virus shedding. The surgical facemasks’ efficiency was measured against the coronavirus, influenza virus, and rhinovirus of two broad particle sizes, respiratory droplets (≥5 μm) and aerosols (droplet nuclei with aerodynamic diameter ≤5 μm). The results indicated that surgical facemasks could efficaciously prevent the transmission of human coronaviruses and influenza viruses into the environment in respiratory droplets, but no significant reduction in aerosols.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0029767
#15139959
Lockdowns work if they are enforced and people don't fight them, and follow rules set down by medical professionals(i.e. wearing masks and social distancing). Countries that successfully locked down, are mostly open again, with no recurrences of Covid-19.

The countries that resisted lockdowns, or only do partial lockdowns have no success with such half measures.
#15139964
The success of Wuhan was because it was a proper lockdown and I said in March that those who supported lockdown should advocate for a strict lockdown rather than the half measures we had across Europe. And sorry, just looking at growth figures from June means that lockdown is simply not economic viable and the amount of borrowing needs paying back is another thing to look at too. That isn't to say that governments should have ignored the virus but the measures should have been preventative and to minimise the economic and social damage and to increase hospital capacity (and more importantly use that capacity) in order to not disrupt other vital NHS services. Because you don't put out a fire by fanning the air when water is better because you will just make the flame bigger else where by doing that. And these are issues places like Sweden don't have to worry about in the future hence the standoff between the frugals and those who had a robust lockdown last March. And before I see another case rate Swedish post, I would rather compare death figures to Germany thank you very much who were March's success story. And I might add the UK government still doesn't publish its source material for why it posed the latest lockdown. And now? Well shops are open again. Why? Because all the data suggests that the spread of the virus is in unventilated areas indoors like your home and workplace and not in shops you have to wear masks. And if we have data saying that if 70% of the population wear masks all the time the pandemic will end, then why are we pushing lockdowns that people are being more critical of and not pushing mask wearing in all settings including our home which people don't (except the skeptics) because as far as I'm concerned this reads to be more effective anyway.
#15139982
ThirdTerm wrote:The 70% figure is based on another study (Ngonghala et al. 2020). The use of efficacious face-masks (such as surgical masks or N95, with estimated efficacy 70%) in public could lead to the elimination of the pandemic, if at least 70% of the residents of New York state use such masks in public consistently, which is an impossible scenario.


FFP2 or N95 masks can be more than 90% effective even against aerosols IF worn properly and consistently. That's better than most vaccines which are 60 to 90% effective. It's quite feasible to provide the population with FFP2 or N95 masks, but even normal chirurgical masks are more than 80% effective. The problem with masks is not that they are not effective or that they can't be made widely available. The problem is that many people don't wear them properly or pull them off all the time. You can't pull off a vaccine.

B0ycey wrote:The success of Wuhan was because it was a proper lockdown


The lockdowns in most European countries did work. Some had hard lockdowns, some had soft lockdowns, depending on case numbers, but in most countries the number of cases was brought down substantially. That was different in the US, where Trump prevented effective measures. In Europe, the cases went up again during the summer because young people thought the pandemic was over, which it of course wasn't and government didn't have the courage to enforce strict measures such as consistent mask wearing, again, because populism reigns. @B0ycey you are feeding the populists.

And these are issues places like Sweden don't have to worry about in the future


Sweden has to worry about it more than if it had taken stricter measures before. They are worrying about it now, not in the future. The failure of the so-called Swedish model is obvious. They didn't reach herd immunity and cases rise more than in neighboring countries:

Covid-19 cases over time in Sweden, Norway and Finland

Sweden had an exponential growth in the Spring and now again in the Autumn. Swedish deaths and infections are about 10 times higher than in neighboring countries. Swedish GDP dropped about the same as in Germany, which had a soft lockdown. They sacrificed their compatriots for nothing.

The Swedish PM has urgently appealed to the population to adapt stricter measures. Even if voluntary measures were to work in Sweden, which doesn't seem to be the case, it is totally absurd to claim that voluntary measures would work in other countries. The summer is the proof of that. We can't have any doubts about the willingness of people to respect rules voluntarily. They don't give a fuck about their fellow human beings. We are paying the price now.

@B0ycey, you still don't understand. Nobody wants a lockdown, but a lockdown is not a choice when you have exponential growth, it is inevitable. When people are dropping like flies a lockdown is inevitable. Don't blame the governments for the lockdown, blame those (like yourself) who opposed stricter measures to control the virus.
#15141010
That masks are important for fighting the pandemic has always been obvious. Unfortunately, the obvious truth has been buried beneath layers of false arguments due to political opportunism. It's therefore useful to have scientific research that backs the usefulness of masks.

Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany

Mitigating the spread of COVID-19 is the objective of most governments. It is of utmost importance to understand how effective various public health measures are. We study the effectiveness of face masks. We employ public regional data about reported severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infections for Germany. As face masks became mandatory at different points in time across German regions, we can compare the rise in infections in regions with masks and regions without masks. Weighing various estimates, we conclude that 20 days after becoming mandatory face masks have reduced the number of new infections by around 45%. As economic costs are close to zero compared to other public health measures, masks seem to be a cost-effective means to combat COVID-19.


While the Karen's keep on ranting about the mask Nazis that are allegedly taking their freedom away from them, the Indian Supreme Court has ruled that those who refuse to wear masks violate the fundamental rights of others.

Those not wearing masks violating other citizens’ Fundamental Rights: SC
#15146119
B0ycey wrote:If the pandemic can end if 70% of people wear masks in every setting regardless of risk, then this is another mockery for the advocates of lockdowns whose crows have caused numerous social, mental, health and economic damage for the Western powers. We should have just made mask wearing mandatory in all settings from the offset and we would have also had a better result in terms of deaths (or I should say cases since the goalposts have now moved.).


Indeed, throw on your mask, and get on with life. That said, even if we did do that successfully, people/media/governments would still be complaining and calling for more to be done as its in their political interests to always claim failure, even in success.

In other words, there's no winning, even if we did everything right.
#15146127
Rancid wrote:Indeed, thrown on your mask, and get on with life. That said, even if we did do that successfully, people/media/governments would still be complaining and calling for more to be done as its in their political interests to always claim failure, even in success.

In other words, there's no winning, even if we did everything right.


The problem was the WHO at first put a question mark on masks which then set the presidence for what came thereafter. Which is why lockdowns and face masks are synonymous with each other now when from the common sense POV they should be seperate from each other in terms of mitigation and Covid control. Nonetheless clearly the advice on masks were in regards to stategy rather than data when we were competing against each other for shipments of them and in order to reduce demand so they could go to our healthcare providers instead. And once supply kept up with demand, the advice changed and suddenly they were useful after all. We had users on here from the offset say masks prevented transmittion. But by which time we had already been in lockdown so it didn't matter. So now the government narrative is to execute lockdowns when the situation is bad. But given this article, lockdowns aren't needed at all. So the mere fact we still have them pushed down our throats rather than promoting masks in all settings means Western governments will never admit they were wrong and panicked last March. And to get out this hole, they are relying on the vaccine program and even strategically going against the two dose program which is potentially dangerous if the assumption of immunity from a single dose is wrong. And they are fighting the unions who are still going off the response of the first panic when schools were closed because the government ignored the data on the dangers to children back then. So everythung that is happening serves them right. What a mess. And it's of their own making.
#15146138
Rancid wrote:This is news to me, who is going against the two dose program?


The UK is. According to the data it's something like 80% efficiency with a single dose and 90% with two. But the certificate for the Pfizer vaccine was granted for two doses. However there is evidence that a delayed second dose is better for the Oxford vaccine so we now the UK is delaying the second dose by three months in order more people are protected via the first dose. The strategy seems sound on the face of it. But they are playing with data and assuming it will work. This strategy in my opinion is a fucking gamble because if a second dose was needed before three months in order to retain the 80% efficiency ratio that is political suicide if it doesnt work and is an even bigger clusterfuck than just following the instructions of two doses three weeks apart which perhaps only delays opening the economy up by a month or two if you can exceed two million doses a week anyway.
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