RT @EthicsInBricks
Aristotle: a good person wears a mask.
Bentham: a mask decreases suffering, so wear it.
Kant: it is your duty to wear a mask.
Kondo: spark joy, not infections, so wear a mask.
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@spazzpp2 I am convinced masks increase the spread of disease when worn by the general public, probably significantly so. Which puts a lot of this in question.
@freemo
How do you spread covid using masks?
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
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
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.
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
@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 โ 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
Not sars-cov2 in particular, but okay. Might be the case.