[warcher]

Common sense? Restricting exhalation to reduce transmission of airborne disease? Have you never been taught to cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough?

Like it would be remarkable if it did nothing. THAT would be a blockbuster result.

The thing worth studying is if the effect is worth the trouble or not. It could be worth doing or it could effectively be a waste of time due to whatever other factor.

[neilwilson]

Common sense says if you put your hand over your mouth and breath out you will be able to. That says the pressure is overcoming the blockage.

The other way round is far more difficult.

If you leak then you are wasting your time because in a static air environment you’ll delay the critical level build up by a few minutes at most.

Medicine doesn’t like aerosolisation because it sounds too much like miasmia theory.

So we have too much focus on droplets and fomites.

Fundamentally this should have been sorted with a properly designed trial with the correct protocol of sufficient size to answer the question. Given what was on the line why has it not been done?

[majormajor]

> Fundamentally this should have been sorted with a properly designed trial with the correct protocol of sufficient size to answer the question. Given what was on the line why has it not been done?

That's an interesting question but if you're suggesting it implies something either direction: why?

Obviously there are a LOT of politicians and people strongly interested in a "masks are useless" position.

But it's not just that the "masks are useful" people have failed to satisfy you.

It's also that the "masks are not useful" crowd has not published a conclusive study of their own.

So it's not convincing to me that the truth is anything other than "masks have varying effectiveness, though the supply-chain-crunch plain-cloth-mask world of 2020 wasn't the ideal type of mask."

Do you have reason to believe an N95 isn't effective? What about a P99? (In the world of media I consume, these types of masks vs cloth masks are things that were widely discussed, along with PM2.5 etc. So the "it was presented as black and white" crowd seems just uniformed of their own volition, maybe watching too much partisan media who had an interest in presenting the issue in a one-sided manner.)

[pandaman]

Many people have been taught to say "Bless you!" when somebody sneezed too, would it also surprise you that it doesn't affect any airborne virus?

[amanaplanacanal]

Aye, that brings up another issue. What exactly does “airborne” mean? The assumption early on was that Covid was not airborne, and required droplets of a certain size, though I think that changed over time.

[pandaman]

We might never know this about COVID as further studying it can only uncover more malfeasance at this point, but traditional airborne stuff like smallpox or measles won't be affected by a dirty bandana on one's mouth or, even, over the nose.