I never truly understood the anti-mask sentiment and I think I never will

submitted by RichardsonDavis from self.AskSaidIt

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An aside, calling people in this thread idiots for having different opinions is unnecessary. If anything, we are all idiots including yourself and myself, because we are humans that are invariably flawed.

True, we're all idiots, some more idiotic than others, like the racists in this site constantly harping on blacks and Jews. Some here could be government agents purposefully spreading idiocy. You seem like you actually read and logically dissect content, which is different from most users.

If COVID19 does not spread by fomites (which we now know it does not)

From what I've read, it's possible for COVID to spread through fomites, just less likely and not the main way it spreads.

The CDC have a lot of links: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-research/surface-transmission.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4

We also have to consider whether the risk of influenza transmission through surface or hand-fomites is large as well. This study seems to indicate that the direct route is more significant for influenza transmission than the hand-fomite route:

https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-018-3425-x

Are there others that you find compelling? I may investigate those as well.

I skimmed through the research pretty quickly. Some studies were based on influenza, some on COVID.

Imo, there are a few main points that need to be determined atm, which is whether mask-wearing lowers the risk of spread through water droplets (which it likely does). Then you need to determine whether this even matters based on transmission rate through aerosols. If aerosol transmission is too high and masks don't help at all in this department, then masks may be useless.

There are a ton of relevant studies on this, but there are too many factors that play in. Different levels of ventilation, social proximity, participant compliance, proper mask wearing, type/material of mask used, fit of the mask, etc.

This simulation is pretty interesting as well, it shows that all masks are somewhat effective, even in preventing transmission of aerosols, but none of the masks were 100% fullproof:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33087517/

full article: https://sci-hub.st/downloads/2020-10-22/c4/10.1128@mSphere.00637-20.pdf