@spazzpp2

Several ways. First it encourages people to touch their face more as it can be uncomfortable and usally causes people to fidget or itch their nose.

It also means you have to touch an infected mask and face everytime you drink or eat causing your hand and face to spread.

Moreover masks are only supposed to be used for a few hours at a time, so if they arent washed and reused they become particularly infectious

@freemo
Not sars-cov2 in particular, but okay. Might be the case.

@freemo
Do you know studies?

@spazzpp2 I have found no good studies that support the use of masks in public or which show they spread the virus. Sadly there is no good studies of any kind that address these points in either direction.

Even under controlled situations mask studies are extremely limited and questionable sadyl.

@spazzpp2 Huh? No reason to think the points i mentioned are any less relevant from one virus to another

@freemo COVID mostly spreads through air, while the resoning you present is for fomites. Unless I missed some controversy around the first part of the previous statement? @spazzpp2

@timorl

Not entierly true. That reasoning is based on the fact that covid has a relatively short half life on surfaces (6 - 48 hours depending on the surface give or take). So while it wouldnt be particularly effective as some viruses to pass via surface contact it is more than adequate wen talking about masks where spread is over the course of hours via direct contact.

@spazzpp2

@timorl

It is also important to understand that while porous surfaces have a particularly shorter half life (like cardboard) this is likely due to the capillary action and drying of droplets. A mask on your face accumulates significant moisture and as such would almost certainly provide a much more conducive environment to sustain the virus at least for the duration of the mask being worn

@spazzpp2

@freemo I think for mask-wearing to increase infections in the model you are presenting here three things would have to be true.
1. The frequency of touching your face with a mask has to be significantly higher while wearing a mask.
2. The risk of moving a virus from a surface to the mask would have to be significant.
3. The lower spread of the virus from infected people to the environment would have to be insignificant.
I am slightly doubtful about 1, not because people won't touch their face a lot while wearing a mask, but rather people touch their face an incredible amount normally – this was especially clear at the beginning of the pandemic, when the recommendation of avoiding that was first voiced, and people who tried that were incredibly surprized at how hard it was and how often they violated it.
I base 2 on the assiumption that if the virus already landed on the mask it would have likely already entered an orifice if the mask wasn't there. If that's true how long the virus survives on a mask is mostly irrelevant, only how likely one is to move it there from other surfaces.
Point 3 might only be true if we assume that any preventive effects of the mask are either nonexistent (possible but a priori unlikely; I agree that the studies here are disappointingly inconclusive) or made irrelevant by moving the virus from the mask to surfaces, which again hinges on points 1 and 2 being true.

So if my reasoning is correct the only situation in which a mask would likely increase the chances of COVID infection is in a well-ventilated place in which someone infected was recently and touched the exact same surfaces as you (or perhaps the mask they were wearing did nothing to prevent the virus spreading from them onto surfaces), and you are touching your face much more than you would without the mask. In particular wearing a mask in a place that is not well ventilated seems like a pure positive, as far as decreasing the likelihood of COVID infections goes.
@spazzpp2

@freemo @spazzpp2

Do you think this increases risk of spread from the fellow with mask, to the fellow, or both?

@robryk

Probably goes both ways but with the higher risk for the person wearing the mask.

@spazzpp2

@pthenq1

There is no good data addressing it in either direction. In the absense of good data I fall back on common sense.

@spazzpp2

@ringo

Yea, infectious liter at that

@spazzpp2

@freemo @spazzpp2 bio weapon is a bio weapon. these people have no idea what they've done, and God help them, it may get very very messy in the next few years.

@ringo

certainly possible

@spazzpp2

@spazzpp2 No because the post hoc ergo procter hoc fallacy. For example in areas that wear more masks we might see a decline because people are more cautious in other ways (avoid time in public). Which makes sense since the more scared a populace is the more likely they are to engage in a multitude of protective behaviors of which mask wearing is only one.

@freemo
well is that so or are we just guessing here

@spazzpp2 Neither, I am pointing out why current inference off of correlation is invalid as it doesnt protect agains the fallacy I mentioned. So we cant use it as evidence to draw conclusions.

Proper analysis would have to use granger causality at a minimum (and when you do any evidence for masks appears to dissolve)

@freemo This is a thought experiment. I don't know if I can follow if the infectioness of sars-cov2 is as unimaginably high as it is supposed to be - in relation to others.

@spazzpp2 Well not really a thought experiment so much as established practice when it comes to statistical analysis.

Not sure why extremely high infection rates would change the principles here.

@freemo
If I cannot imagine infection rates, I cannot draw conclusions which is crucial in thought experiments.

Without empirical basis I'm doomed to opinion building, i.e. fatalism, relativism or quorum sensing of nearby opinions.

@spazzpp2 yea but since the infection rate doesnt effect the logic here you dont really need to imagine it at all

@freemo Sure it does influence the risk calculus if you consider multiple disease pathways.

@spazzpp2 but it doesnt change how we analyze the contribution of any factor. so the reason current studies are invalidated remains true regardless of the R0 value.

@freemo
I don't get it. If not wearing a mask is an option, then you need to compare this (pure R0) with wearing a mask (R0 * Pmask + Rmask) where Pmask is the probability/factor of stopping infection and Rmask is the rate of getting sick by wearing a mask; or sth like that.

However if R0 >> Rmask, the consideration of Rmask is meaningless.

@freemo Now, your point was, that Rmask > R0?

@spazzpp2 yes but you;d have to do so in a controlled setting where you know the **only** factor that is different is the mask. That would mean intentionally exposing a group to the virus which is unethical and thus impossible.

Any attempt to do the experiment using observational data, and thus other variables are not controlled would lead to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy i mentioned.

So in effect there is no way to actually test the hypothesis and thus the problem.

@freemo What about
R_0*P_mask + R_mask ~= R_0*P_avoidance + R_avoidance
=>
R_0 = (Rm-Ra)/(Pm-Pa) etc.?

@freemo I think R_0 is being reconstructed using actual interviews.

@spazzpp2 exactly, thus the problem. Interviewd people are "observational data" and their choices are not controlled. Thus the studies are victim to the fallacy mentioned

@freemo
I mean investigation

@spazzpp2 In what way is it not observational? The problem here is your drawing inference from things happening in the wild where wearing a mask is a choice

@freemo
If more people get sick because they didn't wear a mask (observed or honestly) than people that did (observed or dishonestly), wearing a mask in the wild is at least as good. If the opposite would be the case, wearing a mask is at least as bad as observed.

@spazzpp2 you are missing the point. If people in a study are wearing a mask because the choose to do so then you cant be sure if the mask is the thing effecting the transmission of the disease or if it is something else that mask wearers are likely to do non-mask wearers dont.

For example say people who take the virus seriously are the people who wear masks, they are also the people who wash their hands frequently. That means people who wear masks are likely to be the people washing their hands. So even if masks have no effect but hand washing does then you would observe people who wear masks get sick less even though the masks arent the reason.