Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

If people reduce social distancing because they think a mask filters out virus and then they remove it and touch themselves and others that is risky. If they wear it for short duration and follow other recommendations, remove it carefully and disinfect then it could be good.

Technology of any kind is rarely good or bad. It depends on all kinds of context. It might be the impact on droplet dispersal is the best, it might be reduction in touching. There needs to a robust public health campaign with this, not just “wear masks”.

There are very few public health interventions that don't require accompanying education, including hand-washing to combat the coronavirus & condoms to prevent STDs. We don't typically warn people against those because they might implement them incorrectly.

Agreed 100. I think the government warnings are also dangerous, misleading, and confuse the whole debate. The CDC has been really messy in this.

There are 0 studies that I know of, of public use of cloth, there are filtration experiments, but only one RCT I know of from 2011 in hospitals. There is good anecdotal and historical data, but what “we know” isn’t as clear, I think.

I've looked into it. There's a very strong body of evidence supporting N95s (which many people in CA *already had* due to widespread wildfires) and surgical masks, and homemade masks are variable based in material and construction but appear not to be useless.

But I have never, ever seen empirical evidence suggesting that cloth masks *increase* the risk of contracting a viral illness, and to date it's one of the most egregious claims I've ever seen by someone touting any sort of relevant credentials.

The single RCT Vietnam did just that, though experimental conditions were complicated. The problem I see is a ton of misinformation about cloth filtration powers from a study with 21 subjects. And no one has tested if masks, absent public health ed make people take greater risks.