[jdavis703]

The Bay Area has been under a mask mandate for 17 months now. I’m not sure what the criteria of “working” is, but I would define it as returning to pre-pandemic norms. Yet, we are still far from that.

If however your definition of “working” is “prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed” or some other less ambitious criteria, then sure, it can be claimed that mask mandates work.

[dTal]

>I would define it as returning to pre-pandemic norms.

Magically fixing everything is a completely unreasonable threshold to define whether a health measure "works".

Also the pre-pandemic norm was not to wear a mask, so according to you mask mandates definitionally cannot "work".

[jdavis703]

> Also the pre-pandemic norm was not to wear a mask, so according to you mask mandates definitionally cannot "work".

The idea is we wear a mask for a temporary amount of time, eliminate community spread, and eliminate masks. Countries outside of North America have done this. For example, the UK is just now requiring theater goers to wear a mask again.

[dTal]

Well, again, it's just unreasonable to expect masks - alone - to completely eliminate community spread. You've got to think in terms of the reproduction rate R. If it's above 1 you're losing, if it's below 1 you're winning. Each measure, like mask wearing, knocks a little fraction off R. The goal is to knock as many little fractions off as possible. It's totally possible for masks to "work" in the sense of knocking a worthwhile chunk off R, and yet have the public health strategy as a whole fail to bring it below 1.

The trouble is, managing R is an ongoing challenge. If you manage to get it below 1 and the rate of new infections decays to nearly nothing, great! But unless you completely shut the borders to prevent new seed infections, you have to keep doing whatever you were doing. If you relax, then R goes above 1, and exponential growth does its thing again and you're back where you started. There's a natural ceiling to the exponential growth - nobody quite knows why, though it's presumably something to do with acquired immunity - but it's a grim place to be.

I wouldn't look to the UK as an example of how to manage a pandemic. It has been bouncing along its infection ceiling ever since all measures were relaxed in July. I predict that the new mask mandates will have no detectable effect on infection rates; their modest effect on R will fail to bring it below 1, and rates will continue to "bounce along the top".

[yebyen]

> ... and eliminate masks. Countries outside of North America have done this. For example, the UK is just now requiring theater goers to wear a mask again.

If the act of eliminating masks needs to be followed by imposing another mask mandate, this is not a solid argument that mask mandates can be successfully rolled back when some threshold has been crossed. (I'm reporting from Indiana, where there is no mask mandate, unless you're unvaccinated, and there is no system in place to tell vaccinated from non folks except for what amounts to basically, say so on your honor! :upside_down_smile:)

[NoGravitas]

The reasonable definition of "working" is "reduces rate of transmission relative to comparable areas with no mask mandate, by an amount that is statistically significant", and it certainly meets that definition. When people argue that mask mandates "don't work", what they really should be saying is that the effect size is too small to justify the inconvenience. At least that's an actual argument, though I think the people who make it are whiny babies.