“They could be bio-plausible” But we won’t know without an RCT = Science
“We already know they don’t work” = likely guess.
“We know they work without good tests” = hopelessly hopeful.
At the very beginning there were already dozens of RCTs (many of which Cochrane used) done with influenza and other respiratory viruses (including other coronaviruses) that showed masking did not work. Other than some once-in-a-lifetime difference for SARS-COV-2 for which there was surely a 0.00001% chance (or something similar -- particle size is particle size) there was no "likely guess". It was well known and accepted science for respiratory viruses...until it wasn't over one weekend. When deposed, Fauci said "I do not remember why I abandoned 50 years of science regarding masking over that weekend, but I am sure I must have had some good reason". Uh huh.
I continue to be perplexed about one little physical detail in all of the hoo-hawing about masks/no masks: Are folks who keep yammering about the *particle size* of SARS-CoV-2 virus being less than the average pore size (0.3 microns) of N95 masks operating under the impression that INDIVIDUAL virus molecules waft out into the breeze during exhalation? Surely that's not an accurate account of what must be happening. SARS-CoV-2 virus molecules can leave infected patients only as passengers on tiny "globs" (?) of exhaled mucoid secretions. It is the smallness of such "globs" that affords putative escape of the virus through the N95 product. By definition, the "globs" must be larger than the stated max dimension of any given virus molecule (0.125 micron) or for that matter, of any other passenger pathogen.
PPE experts argue that masking actually aerosolizes the virus during a “plosive event” or forced exhale (yelling, coughing, sneezing) that would have otherwise fallen to the ground in a predictable pattern on the “globs”. Megan Mansell has done excellent work on this. Here’s one link but she’s written a book on it https://brownstone.org/articles/why-n95-masks-fail-to-stop-spread/
“We already know they don’t work” was based on a combination of logic (you can fit 3000 virion in the micropore of an n95 mask) and the roughly 70 studies done on mask efficacy between 1918 and 2019.
It’s possible that those 70 studies got it wrong, but the 150 weaker studies suddenly finding amazing efficacy when it became in vogue politically I think weaken the odds we got it wrong for 100 years, not stronger.
If the other studies, were better designed, then you have a probable point—even if COVID-19 was a “novel virus.” This was why even Fauci began with “masking won’t help.”
“They could be bio-plausible” But we won’t know without an RCT = Science
“We already know they don’t work” = likely guess.
“We know they work without good tests” = hopelessly hopeful.
At the very beginning there were already dozens of RCTs (many of which Cochrane used) done with influenza and other respiratory viruses (including other coronaviruses) that showed masking did not work. Other than some once-in-a-lifetime difference for SARS-COV-2 for which there was surely a 0.00001% chance (or something similar -- particle size is particle size) there was no "likely guess". It was well known and accepted science for respiratory viruses...until it wasn't over one weekend. When deposed, Fauci said "I do not remember why I abandoned 50 years of science regarding masking over that weekend, but I am sure I must have had some good reason". Uh huh.
I continue to be perplexed about one little physical detail in all of the hoo-hawing about masks/no masks: Are folks who keep yammering about the *particle size* of SARS-CoV-2 virus being less than the average pore size (0.3 microns) of N95 masks operating under the impression that INDIVIDUAL virus molecules waft out into the breeze during exhalation? Surely that's not an accurate account of what must be happening. SARS-CoV-2 virus molecules can leave infected patients only as passengers on tiny "globs" (?) of exhaled mucoid secretions. It is the smallness of such "globs" that affords putative escape of the virus through the N95 product. By definition, the "globs" must be larger than the stated max dimension of any given virus molecule (0.125 micron) or for that matter, of any other passenger pathogen.
PPE experts argue that masking actually aerosolizes the virus during a “plosive event” or forced exhale (yelling, coughing, sneezing) that would have otherwise fallen to the ground in a predictable pattern on the “globs”. Megan Mansell has done excellent work on this. Here’s one link but she’s written a book on it https://brownstone.org/articles/why-n95-masks-fail-to-stop-spread/
Including a previous meta-study by Cochrane in 2014.
“We already know they don’t work” was based on a combination of logic (you can fit 3000 virion in the micropore of an n95 mask) and the roughly 70 studies done on mask efficacy between 1918 and 2019.
It’s possible that those 70 studies got it wrong, but the 150 weaker studies suddenly finding amazing efficacy when it became in vogue politically I think weaken the odds we got it wrong for 100 years, not stronger.
If the other studies, were better designed, then you have a probable point—even if COVID-19 was a “novel virus.” This was why even Fauci began with “masking won’t help.”
They weren’t better designed. They were lopsided on lowest tier of evidence - surveys, models, interviews, retrospective data drudging