We know that masks have poor performance, because while masks seem to have eliminated the flu and to have stopped or significantly slowed down the spread of the original variants, especially in Asia, masks failed to have the same effect on the newer variants which caused the fall/winter wave. And since Delta is even more contagious than those variants, masks will be even less effective than they were during the last wave. How you can claim that this is not evidence is beyond me.
I also doubt that it’s useful or even possible to accurately calculate the efficacy of masks for the latest variants without doing lab work. How would you quantify the decrease in efficacy caused by increased infectivity due to better binding of the variants to human cells? How much more virus particles do these variants produce, if any, and how does that relate to mask efficacy? Is mask efficacy a spectrum or are there thresholds that suddenly render masks 0% effective in most or many situations? But since we already know that masks offer poor performance anyway, quantify exactly how poor the performance is (10%, 1%, 0.1%, or whatever) doesn’t seem to be all that important.
Masks have become a dangerous distraction from far more effective interventions.
You still seem to be assuming that “poor performance” = “not on their own sufficient to stop the latest variants growing exponentially”, and that is just unambiguously wrong.
Do you, or do you not, have any information that isn’t broadly consistent with the following crude model? 1. An infected person emits virus particles at some (somewhat random) rate, more when speaking or coughing than when breathing normally. 2. If you breathe in virus particles, there is some probability that you get infected; the probability is higher when the number of virus particles is higher. 3. If the infected person is wearing a mask, then the rate at which they emit virus particles is reduced by a constant factor somewhere in the vicinity of 5x. 4. If the not-yet-infected person is wearing a mask, then the number of virus particles reaching them is reduced by a constant factor somewhere in the vicinity of 2x. 5. Newer variants are more infectious, meaning some combination of (a) infected people emit more virus particles, or (b) the probability of infection for a given intake of virus particles is higher.
If this model is somewhere near the truth, then the only way for masks to be near-useless (“10%, 1%, 0.1%”, as you put it—but I asked you to explain what these numbers are supposed to mean and you didn’t, and I would still like you to) is if the newer variants cause such a colossal increase in the number of virus particles put out by an infected person, or in how effectively infectious they are, that being near them even briefly basically guarantees getting infected. Because otherwise, if you and they both wear masks then that means something like a 10x increase in how much exposure you can have before getting infected, and if the unmasked figure would be (say) 2 minutes’ conversation at a 2m distance, then that would turn into 20 minutes, and I at least have plenty of conversations that are longer than 2 minutes but shorter than 20 minutes.
Do you have good reason to believe that that model is far from the truth?
If not, do you have good reason to believe that the new variants are basically infinitely infectious?
If not, is there some other reason why the argument above fails?
Or have you just determined to keep saying “masks are useless” over and over, without ever making your claims precise enough to be evaluated, and without any actual model of how infection happens by which to justify your claim?
Once again, I appreciate that you are arguing for using something more effective than masks. I agree that things more effective than masks are more effective than masks. But it seems to me that you are either making almost certainly false claims about the effectiveness of masks (if you are saying that they aren’t what-I-call-effective, that they don’t substantially extend the range of what one can do without substantial risk of infection) or else using very misleading language to make the claims you are (if you are only saying that they are not sufficient on their own to stop a wave of Delta-variant COVID-19 -- which I agree is almost certainly the case), and I wish you wouldn’t do either of those things.
Given the fact that we already know that masks have poor performance based on the what I’ve already mentioned, models are pointless for most situations.
If you’re referring to modelling a strategy of maximizing personal (rather than public) protection with a poor performing tool, models could help you do that, but in the case of masks, it will turn out that most strategies are impractical because 1) there will be too many variables to keep track of, 2) some variables will be impossible or hard to obtain, and 3) some variables will be hard to control even with perfect knowledge. With or without a mask, if the distance between people is far enough, infection will be avoided regardless of infectivity due to dilution. If the distance is between two people, you may be able to calculate a minimum safe distance if you know all of the variables. Some of these variables are room size, ventilation, infectivity, mask type, rates of breathing and vocalization, and vaccination status. You’d also need to know if the room was previously occupied and by whom. Some of these these variables will be known but some will not be. You’ll also need to recompute these variables once they change. If you’re dealing with a simple model with two people in which nothing changes, this strategy might work. But real world cases are almost nothing like this. What if you go to another room or another person walks in? Is the ventilation the same? Is the person vaccinated? What kind of mask are they wearing? How many people were in the room before you walked in (aerosols can become suspended for hours even if the people that generated them are no longer around)? Modeling this stuff quickly becomes impractical, and if you can avoid that by wearing a respirator, why bother?
“10%, 1%, 0.1%” was meant to poke fun at the attempt of precisely quantifying the poor performance of masks and is not based on any data.
We know that masks have poor performance, because while masks seem to have eliminated the flu and to have stopped or significantly slowed down the spread of the original variants, especially in Asia, masks failed to have the same effect on the newer variants which caused the fall/winter wave. And since Delta is even more contagious than those variants, masks will be even less effective than they were during the last wave. How you can claim that this is not evidence is beyond me.
I also doubt that it’s useful or even possible to accurately calculate the efficacy of masks for the latest variants without doing lab work. How would you quantify the decrease in efficacy caused by increased infectivity due to better binding of the variants to human cells? How much more virus particles do these variants produce, if any, and how does that relate to mask efficacy? Is mask efficacy a spectrum or are there thresholds that suddenly render masks 0% effective in most or many situations? But since we already know that masks offer poor performance anyway, quantify exactly how poor the performance is (10%, 1%, 0.1%, or whatever) doesn’t seem to be all that important.
Masks have become a dangerous distraction from far more effective interventions.
You still seem to be assuming that “poor performance” = “not on their own sufficient to stop the latest variants growing exponentially”, and that is just unambiguously wrong.
Do you, or do you not, have any information that isn’t broadly consistent with the following crude model? 1. An infected person emits virus particles at some (somewhat random) rate, more when speaking or coughing than when breathing normally. 2. If you breathe in virus particles, there is some probability that you get infected; the probability is higher when the number of virus particles is higher. 3. If the infected person is wearing a mask, then the rate at which they emit virus particles is reduced by a constant factor somewhere in the vicinity of 5x. 4. If the not-yet-infected person is wearing a mask, then the number of virus particles reaching them is reduced by a constant factor somewhere in the vicinity of 2x. 5. Newer variants are more infectious, meaning some combination of (a) infected people emit more virus particles, or (b) the probability of infection for a given intake of virus particles is higher.
If this model is somewhere near the truth, then the only way for masks to be near-useless (“10%, 1%, 0.1%”, as you put it—but I asked you to explain what these numbers are supposed to mean and you didn’t, and I would still like you to) is if the newer variants cause such a colossal increase in the number of virus particles put out by an infected person, or in how effectively infectious they are, that being near them even briefly basically guarantees getting infected. Because otherwise, if you and they both wear masks then that means something like a 10x increase in how much exposure you can have before getting infected, and if the unmasked figure would be (say) 2 minutes’ conversation at a 2m distance, then that would turn into 20 minutes, and I at least have plenty of conversations that are longer than 2 minutes but shorter than 20 minutes.
Do you have good reason to believe that that model is far from the truth?
If not, do you have good reason to believe that the new variants are basically infinitely infectious?
If not, is there some other reason why the argument above fails?
Or have you just determined to keep saying “masks are useless” over and over, without ever making your claims precise enough to be evaluated, and without any actual model of how infection happens by which to justify your claim?
Once again, I appreciate that you are arguing for using something more effective than masks. I agree that things more effective than masks are more effective than masks. But it seems to me that you are either making almost certainly false claims about the effectiveness of masks (if you are saying that they aren’t what-I-call-effective, that they don’t substantially extend the range of what one can do without substantial risk of infection) or else using very misleading language to make the claims you are (if you are only saying that they are not sufficient on their own to stop a wave of Delta-variant COVID-19 -- which I agree is almost certainly the case), and I wish you wouldn’t do either of those things.
Given the fact that we already know that masks have poor performance based on the what I’ve already mentioned, models are pointless for most situations.
If you’re referring to modelling a strategy of maximizing personal (rather than public) protection with a poor performing tool, models could help you do that, but in the case of masks, it will turn out that most strategies are impractical because 1) there will be too many variables to keep track of, 2) some variables will be impossible or hard to obtain, and 3) some variables will be hard to control even with perfect knowledge. With or without a mask, if the distance between people is far enough, infection will be avoided regardless of infectivity due to dilution. If the distance is between two people, you may be able to calculate a minimum safe distance if you know all of the variables. Some of these variables are room size, ventilation, infectivity, mask type, rates of breathing and vocalization, and vaccination status. You’d also need to know if the room was previously occupied and by whom. Some of these these variables will be known but some will not be. You’ll also need to recompute these variables once they change. If you’re dealing with a simple model with two people in which nothing changes, this strategy might work. But real world cases are almost nothing like this. What if you go to another room or another person walks in? Is the ventilation the same? Is the person vaccinated? What kind of mask are they wearing? How many people were in the room before you walked in (aerosols can become suspended for hours even if the people that generated them are no longer around)? Modeling this stuff quickly becomes impractical, and if you can avoid that by wearing a respirator, why bother?
“10%, 1%, 0.1%” was meant to poke fun at the attempt of precisely quantifying the poor performance of masks and is not based on any data.
I don’t think further discussion in this thread is likely to prove fruitful.