Which is not at all for stopping community spread. Ianmsc on Twitter does a sensational job with these charts. Here is Marin County, California, most vaxed place in the country with ridiculously high masking rates as well.. Look how well both the masks and the vax are working to prevent transmission. Vertical takeoff on colds, er, cases. Stupid, stupid, futile, futile policies. Haven’t done one of these for a while. Enjoy, it is the same everywhere.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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Mask efficacy is a simple function of particle size vs barrier. The medical literature is replete with studies of mask efficacy on viruses that are similar in size to Covid19. Said studies were done prior to Coronomania, and thus are exempt from the current political bias. Results? Masks that are more porous than a properly fitted (key point) N95, and this includes all the paper masks, decorative cloth masks, etc., have about the same efficacy stopping Covid as a chain link fence has stopping mosquitoes.
Masks are simply political cover now. If a bureaucrat enacts the holy trifecta of masks, social distancing and vaccine policies, they are immune from media criticism.
It’s a participation trophy. It says they tried.
Heaven forbid you make choices on your own (as you have mentioned in terms of risk, etc). That ship has sailed almost everywhere (outside of the few states in the US who have not applied the same trinity-of-polity and therefore suffer continuous political slings and arrows daily).
And for what it’s worth, the messaging seems to have changed a bit. Yes they are now pushing a “mask upgrade” but each story now seems to have added a careful omission when they include the claim that masks slow the spread of “virus particles” – and do not incorporate a specific mention of COVID or a variant in said claim.
We’re an inch from locking down again here in MA- and the MA teachers association lobbied hard to prevent schools from opening Monday, fortunately they failed. One thing bad about our Covidian governor not running for reelection is he is not constrained in his panic-ness.
@Dalton,
“Masks are simply political cover now.”
They were always political cover. Over many decades, politicians have claimed they can use their wisdom and power to “save the people” — from enemies foreign and domestic, from crime, from financial ruin, and, increasingly, from disease. Despite Mr Roche’s assertions that we can’t control a respiratory pandemic, the politicians try anyway. Why not? If they don’t, other politicians will use it against them. We the people just blow with the wind, whichever way it blows.
Thus, we got lockdowns and “stay at home orders”. Sort of like “duck and cover”. Hunker down in one place for a couple of weeks and the virus will blow over. The catch is, in a modern, integrated society, you can’t lock everyone down. Some jobs have to go on, and some people have to do them. These people are left to the elements, twisting in the wind.
So what do you offer these wretched lambs? Masks and social distancing! Never mind science pre-pandemic mostly shrugged off masks as ineffective against viruses. Just wear them! We’ll revise the science as needed! An awful lot of people, both the unwashed and the not-so-unwashed, bought the narrative, and life has “gone on”.
And the vaccines, the “beautiful vaccines”, the Holy Grails of guidance out of the desert that has been the pandemic, have all come with big leaky cracks in them. No matter! We will always have the masks for salvation, especially if they have “N” (for No way, Jose) and “95” in their names.
Vaults, you are correct. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here:
The size range of human respirable aerosols is typically 2 to 5 microns. We’re not talking about spit from coughing or snot from sneezing, we’re talking about the stuff we exhale with every breath. If you’re coughing or sneezing, you probably ought to just stay home until you’re better. Okay, for those who don’t know, a micron is about 1/25,000th of an inch (1/25,400th, but close enough). The biggest human respirable aerosol is thus 5/25,000ths of an inch, or 1/5,000th of an inch.
A typical single-layer cloth or paper mask has a mesh opening size on the close order of 1/500th of an inch. Any tighter and you wouldn’t be able to breathe through it.
Does no one see a problem with this? The challenge material (human aerosols) are on the order of ONE TENTH the size of the filter openings. The aerosols simply flow right through the masks.
It’s worse than trying to stop mosquitoes from coming into your house by putting chain-link fence across the open windows, this is trying to stop gnats with burglar bars.
The fact that NONE of these paper and cloth masks have air-tight seals across the face, and that the vast, nay, overwhelming majority of the air flow during exhalation simply bypasses the filter media (mask material) is left as an exercise for the student.
The ONLY masks that actually help slow/stop the spread are highly tested, custom-fitted N95 masks. There’s an elaborate procedure for fitting and wearing them, and facial hair (beards and mustaches) cannot be worn. You can tell somebody who is actually working in a high-risk environment because they have a bruise around the perimeter of their face and across the bridge of their nose since it’s the only way to get a good air-tight seal.
So the mandated wearing of these single-layer masks is just another example of theater from the statist, authoritarian collectivists running our governments, and ordered for the SOLE PURPOSE of exercising their power and control.