Part of diet and fitness is your overall health. With so much hoopla about COVID and Face-masks, we want to know, supported by reliable data driven experts, if wearing a face-mask works, or does not work, or risks more harm or less harm; and how that can help you plan your safe, lower risk, workouts and going to the gym.
Wearing a Mask
“If properly worn, surgical masks block large-particle droplets, splashes, sprays or splatters that may contain germs like viruses and prevent them from reaching your mouth and nose, according to the FDA.” [1] So, according to the government agency, this mask protects YOU from OTHERS. But is it really protecting you, if you’re continually re-injecting viruses and bacteria from your own body? After all, sneezing and coughing is your body ejecting unwanted things.
“Because surgical masks fit loosely rather than having a tight seal, they don’t provide an absolute barrier or complete protection against tiny particles in the air that may be released by coughs or sneezes.”[1] And these “tiny particles” also known as “aerosol particles” are so small, they even go through all cloth masks. So, again, what’s the point?
Oddly, and “currently, the CDC does not recommend that healthy people wear a face mask to protect themselves from COVID-19 (or other respiratory illnesses). According to W.H.O., masks are only effective when a person also frequently washes their hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.” [1] Now that’s an interesting point. Is it the mask that helps or washing your hands?
If “aerosol particles” go through the mask but washing your hands can wash off and kill viruses in the particles, wouldn’t washing your hands be the thing to do?
*UPDATE*
The CDC reversed, again, their recommendations and are now recommending all people to wear masks. The idea is that it blocks the larger particles from spreading. But if health people are wearing masks, what COVID laced particles are they spreading? None. So then the benefit for healthy people to wear the mask is to prevent breathing in the large particles from sick people who aren’t wearing masks. Makes sense. BUT, have you ever smelt a fart or walked somewhere where you could smell food or weird bathroom smells? The answer is yes. Have you wondered how large those particles are? Well, they are larger than a virus. Now, granted the virus does not travel in the area by its self, alone. When someone infected sneezes, they shoot out all sort of sized aerosol particles, not just those big scary nasty droplets. Studies suggest the virus can be in the air for hours, depending on the size of the particles. Knowing smaller aerosol particles get ejected and can linger in the air, are smaller than fecal and food particles, this still brings us back to the starting point.
The basic scenario of some infected person walking down the isle of Walmart, sneezing while wearing a mask still ejects small aerosol particles in the air, that smaller kind that can linger. Then, you walk down that same isle 10 minutes later. You breath in and out smelling all the food smells… and inhale those very small aerosol particles, through your mask… Then, as the bigger heavier particles fall and rest on something on the isle, that you may touch and buy and take home… all of this while the both of you are wearing masks… What did wearing the mask accomplish?
A simple test is Tobacco Smoke. Can you smell it wearing your masking? The particle size of tobacco smoke is around 0.05 and 0.01 [18]. What about a virus attached to aerosol droplets that size? Well, it’s still a possibility according to this 2010 study, studying the H1N1 virus (same family of virus as COVID) [19]. A good visual is using a chain-link fence to block mosquitoes.
How many strangers, in public, sneeze in your face? How many strangers breath heavily in your face? None. No one really does that. It’s common knowledge that it’s rude and gross. So if heavier droplets fall on objects you touch and small aerosol particles linger in air as your walking around… all while wearing a mask, yet, smaller than the fibers of 99% of masks the public uses, what has been prevented? Still doesn’t change the premise of this article.
There are a couple of states that never went on lockdown [20]. Why don’t they have higher infections rates and deaths? [21] Some countries didn’t impose such harsh restrictions either, why are they not more hard hit? It’s logic, the more testing and data collection, the higher the numbers. Not necessarily because the virus is spreading but because of the amount of testing being conducted. Some states have even been busted inflating the numbers! [22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28… and we can keep going]. Even the bias left-wing VOX admits to this [25]. And what happened to the seasonal flu? What happened to those numbers? There are a whole host of influenza viruses out there, where are those numbers? Why do states to certain political ideologies seem to have worse numbers? Notice how they try to avoid talking about the deadliness (or lack of) of the virus, because, it’s not as deadly as they want you to think. Some even come up with arguments against considering the mortality rate. What is worse than death? See, there is more data manipulation and politics at play here than COVID itself.
*END OF UPDATE*
Why Wear A Mask If You Touch Things?
“As a lay person, using a cloth face mask, or continually wearing a surgical face mask whenever you leave your home, poses practical problems. “If you think about a bandanna or something that’s papery, it’s going to get wet through the day and be uncomfortable, and potentially you’re going to touch it more,” says Dr. Colleen Kraft, associate chief medical officer at Emory University Hospital and an associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. That reduces the mask’s effectiveness and actually could expose you to possible virus on its outer surface.” [1] This seems to place the greater importance in washing your hands than wearing a cloth/paper mask.
Mask or no mask, avoid touching the mucosal surfaces of your face – your mouth, nose and eyes. “Surgical masks will not prevent your acquiring diseases,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University, and the medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. Rather, he explained, surgical masks are typically used by surgeons to protect their patients from their mouth-borne germs — but “those masks don’t work to prevent inhaling diseases,” said Schaffner. As for more preventative measures, Schaffner recommends “abundant hand-washing” [6] Again, “abundant hand-washing” is prescribed.
Face masks can play a role in preventing the infection, but that role is limited. A healthy individual in a normal situation does not need to wear a mask. A face mask is not the ideal solution for protection from the new coronavirus for the following reasons: A surgical mask does not fit tightly over the nose and mouth (which allows particles in and out); It is not possible to prevent airborne virus infection (some particles are so small they just go through the mask anyway); When you touch the mask, you lose the protection and must replace the mask, and dispose of it safely. [10]
Who Should Wear The Mask?
“CDC also advises the use of simple cloth face coverings to slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.”[2] It’s odd the CDC still recommends “simple cloth face coverings” even though viruses to so small they fit right through them. It also seems that the mask “works” best for people who are already infected to prevent and reduce the risk of them spreading it from saliva and or coughing through droplets and expelling larger particles. But that still doesn’t address the smaller particles and the virus itself…
“But those who work around confirmed infected people, a mask may reduce the risk of inhaling the virus from the infected person’s cough (except if they particles are small). W.H.O. says, “If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19“…The WHO recommends masks for those who are symptomatic or known to have COVID-19, and those exposed to people who are sick, but not for the healthy out in public.”[2] Sounds a little contradictory.
“A cloth face mask won’t totally block the coronavirus. But it’s an added layer of protection for you and the people around you when you use it along with regular handwashing and social distancing measures like staying 6 feet away from others.”[7] Soooo it’s hand-washing and distancing that is better, since the virus can travel through the mask?
“The public does not need to wear face masks most of the time, said Dr. Otto Yang, a professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.” [8] It seems that way.
Major health agencies, including the World Health Organization, the CDC, and others, have offered confusing and sometimes contradictory guidelines (as noted above). Most healthcare professionals have concluded that, at the very worst, a mask can’t hurt, even if it may provide a false sense of safety. Three large, randomized controlled trials were conducted in the 1980s to determine once and for all if surgical masks actually did prevent surgical wound infection. Here, where bacteria were the major concern in wound infection, the enemy targets were larger and might not require the fine filtration necessary to keep a respiratory virus away, researchers theorized. But the trials “showed absolutely no efficacy” for that original purpose. “Really, the surgeon might as well wear nothing on their face,” C. Raina MacIntyre, MBBS, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia said. Mask wearing “is so inculcated into the practice of medicine that it’s going to be very hard to change,” said John G. Bartlett, MD, former chief of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins. [11]. It’s as if wearing a mask is to make you feel better and a tradition and not something that actually prevents anything.
Wearing a face mask purportedly helps in two ways. First, you get to keep your own germs to yourself. (But is that something good for you and something you want?) [13] But, why would I want to continually keep re-inhaling a virus? They’re meant to be disposable and worn only once. If they get wet, they become useless and should be thrown away. So if you keep wearing the same mask, you keep re-introducing virus stuck on the mask into your body, over and over. You wash your hands, then touch your mask, washing your hands was pointless…
What Do Studies Say?
“A study involved four subjects with COVID-19 coughing with several mask types, and without any mask, onto petri dishes. The masks themselves were also swabbed after coughing. They found the masks did not prevent spread of the virus through coughing (for every mask type, some virus still made it onto the petri dishes). They also found virus on the outside of the masks but not the inside, which is a bit counterintuitive. They speculate that airflow around the mask may be depositing the virus on the outside.” [3]
So are some masks better than others at reducing the risk, even though there is still a risk with all masks?
A recent study found that surgical masks (which are much less effective than the N95 masks) are somewhat effective at slightly reducing the risk. [4]
In a recent systematic review of 19 trials, they concluded that in “the community, masks appeared to be more effective than hand hygiene alone, and both together are more protective. Randomized controlled trials in health care workers showed that respirators, if worn continually during a shift, were effective but not if worn intermittently. Medical masks were not effective, and cloth masks even less effective.” [5]
A March 17 study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) [9] seemed to justify the fear of airborne spread, showing that the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 could survive in the air for up to 3 hours as an aerosol. The new study showed that the virus was viable as an aerosol in a lab, but not in real life. In the study, the researchers “took extremely concentrated virus, much more concentrated than a person makes, they used an artificial aerosol machine [a nebulizer], which probably generates way more aerosol than a normal person does So their conclusions were in this system. The researchers of that study looked at SARS-CoV-1 (the original SARS from the 2003 outbreak) and SARS-CoV-2 and found that both could be aerosols. “But we already know that the original SARS virus was not transmitted that way,” in the general public, so that makes their model “not very believable (Dr. Otto Yang, a professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.) [8]
The only high-level evidence for efficacy of masks in the community was a trial from Hong Kong — published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine — involving flu patients who were randomized to hand hygiene alone or in combination with surgical masks. when these interventions were initiated within 36 hours of symptom onset, face masks plus hand hygiene reduced risk of transmission by a very significant 67%. Although the entire benefit can’t be attributed to face masks, the results suggest masks may make a difference. [12] Compared with controls, employing hand hygiene alone or with face masks tended to reduce transmission of the flu to those living in the same house, but not significantly so [11].
A “2009 Canadian study of 446 nurses who were working with influenza patients concluded that face masks provided protection almost equivalent to that provided by respirators. Unfortunately, that turns out to be mixed news. Of the nurses wearing surgical face masks, 23.6 percent contracted the flu, versus 22.9 percent of those wearing N95 respirators. Ironically, that same year, an Australian study of 2000 Chinese healthcare workers had quite different results. According to the report from that study, “Consistent use of N95 respirators prevented 75% of respiratory infections (about the same as the Canadian study), while consistent surgical mask use was no better than low use for prevention of clinical respiratory illness (6.7% versus 9.2%, P=0.159) or of influenza-like illness (0.6% versus 1.3%, P=0.336).” In other words, surgical masks were nearly useless in preventing infection, but respirators were highly effective.” [14]
The Real Problem
The real problem with all this is that aerosol particles aren’t really stopped by masks and can remain in the air for hours, even settle on objects that we touch a thousand times a day. They go through and around masks, even stick to masks, on the outside; as the studies indicate. Since aerosol particles can travel and linger in the air, experts recommend that you stay at least six feet away from contagious people. But what difference does that make if they can linger in the air for hours as you walk around and pass by people and touch things they touched?
There are several ways pathogens can reach the respiratory system. First, if a sick person coughs or sneezes they may expel “splashes,” which are large particles (greater than 100 μm in diameter) that drop to the ground fast. Those are the things we touch. Then, we touch our phones, masks, wallets, purses, car searing wheels, door handles and so on. A mask doesn’t protect against this. The masks usually can protect against the coughing and projecting “splashes”.
Droplets are a smaller version of splashes, between 5 μm and 100 μm. Then there are small, lightweight aerosol particles of less than 5 μm that remain suspended in the air, travel over distance, and easily penetrate the respiratory system.
Aerosol particles can come from sneezes, coughs, or just exhalations of the sick person. In fact, the air around an infected person is usually loaded with aerosol particles containing viruses or bacteria. Of which, can go around and through cloth/paper masks…
The US standard is the N95 respirator, which is certified to block 95 percent of particles as small as 0.3 μm (millionths of a meter), which is about the same size as a single virus. This seems to be the only mask that can offer some kind of protection against Aerosol particles.
So, if your not wearing an N95 respirator (mask) but some sort of cloth or paper mask you may as well not be wearing a mask at all.
It seems that washing your hands and wearing a N95 respirator is the only way to really, actually, and scientifically, reduce the risk of virus loaded Aerosol particles.
If someone tells you that you need to be wearing a mask, any mask, they are weak minded ignorant sheep of a system that just wants to make the populous feel better and feel like the government is doing everything it can, and that it’s the people’s fault for the continued spread…
Sorry, your cloth/paper mask is nothing more than your self-soothing, self-righteous, virtual signaling and that your “saving lives.” When, in fact, your cloth/paper mask can’t even stop the virus, in small coughed/expelled particles, that is so small it can go between the fibers of your mask, linger in the air and rest on anything and everything you touch…
Wash your damn hands.
And if you want to live in fear of a flu virus with a 0.26% mortality rate over all, and a 0.05% for people 49 years old and under [15, 16, 17], than at least wear a N95 respirator.
Sources
- https://health.usnews.com/conditions/articles/do-face-masks-work-types-and-effectiveness. Dr. Colleen Kraft, associate chief medical officer at Emory University Hospital and an associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
- https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/do-masks-work/
- https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7191274/
- https://www.foxnews.com/health/do-surgical-masks-protect-against-coronavirus. Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University, and the medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
- https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-face-masks#1
- https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-do-face-masks-work.html. Dr. Otto Yang, a professor in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v2.article-info
- https://www.medicinenet.com/do_face_masks_protect_you_from_the_new_coronavirus/article.htm
- https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/infectioncontrol/16278. C. Raina MacIntyre, MBBS, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia
- flu-related papers published online Aug. 3 by the Annals of Internal Medicine. Benjamin J. Cowling, BSc, PhD, of the University of Hong Kong
- https://www.jonbarron.org/colds-flus-infectious-diseases/do-face-masks-really-help
- https://www.jonbarron.org/colds-flus-infectious-diseases/do-face-masks-really-help
- https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280793
- https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/05/22/coronavirus-cdc-symptoms-asymptomatic-mortality-rate/
- https://fox59.com/news/cdc-estimated-35-of-coronavirus-patients-dont-have-symptoms/
- https://www.coloradoci.com/bin-pdf/5270/ParticleSize.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2994911/
- https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/13/politics/asa-hutchison-arkansas-coronavirus/index.html
- https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html#cases
- https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-02/error-led-to-overcount-of-coronavirus-testing-in-orange-county
- https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/welcome-ad?toURL=/clinical-care/texas-doctor-goes-viral-saying-covid-19-numbers-are-inflated-rgv-doctors-disagree
- https://www.abc4.com/coronavirus/utahs-thursday-coronavirus-numbers-inflated-from-data-backlog/
- https://www.vox.com/2020/5/22/21266382/coronavirus-testing-accuracy-covid-data-manipulation
- https://luetkemeyer.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=400389
- https://abc7.com/orange-county-oc-false-mistake/6292928/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/21/cdcs-coronavirus-report-includes-data-that-could-artificially-inflate-testing.html
THE AMERICAN LIFE JOURNAL 