10-20% for the wearer, from incoming, but much more than that for the wearer for reducing relevant droplet emissions which infect others.
The bottom line is that widespread mask wearing indoors has the effect of reducing whatever the current R is by perhaps 1/3, which is a LOT.
Obviously they have no effect in wide open spaces but then intelligence is found on a very broad spectrum 
Masks, what a joke. There are still people wearing them also around here, even though restrictions for wearing masks ended several months ago, everywhere. Restrictions for wearing them was only in place on and off, and perhaps only a few weeks in total. I wonder why these people still wear them. Don’t “believe” in vaccines?
Peter wrote:
10-20% for the wearer, from incoming, but much more than that for the wearer for reducing relevant droplet emissions which infect others. The bottom line is that widespread mask wearing indoors has the effect of reducing whatever the current R is by perhaps 1/3, which is a LOT.
If you are talking about coughing and spluttering people wearing masks then yes.
But then you shouldnt be out and about coughing and spluttering with C19 (or anything else) anyway, right?
Im sorry, and Ive said this before, but anyone who has spent any time wearing a mask at work for any reason other than “C19”, and who has had to do any HSE training for how to wear that mask properly and it properties, can tell you that the type of masks that 90+% of the population wear inside and the manner in which they wear them are 10-20% effective for everyone else and useless for the wearer.
In my industry we are particularly hot on anything HSE and following safety rules. Much of the industry shut down pretty quickly following the low oil price, but I know that those that stayed working had to do the mask thing as routine – and properly too. We still had severe outbreaks and some sadly didnt make it. Most of the industry changed to a pro-vax, pre-work quarantine & test system this year and nobody wears a mask at work anymore – so far no problems where this is implemented. With the price on the rise, most upcoming projects Ive seen stipulate that workers will have to be vaxxed or they arent working, period.
Why? Because outbreaks cost lots of money.
Quarantine costs less money but is still expensive.
A “Everyone Vaxxed” policy is least expensive.
Regards, SD..
There are some very vulnerable people who would still be well advised to wear a mask when out and about. Ideally a proper ffp3 one. I wouldn’t mock anybody for choosing to do that.
Life is hardly “back to normal” in central Europe, but OTOH I don’t plan to go there again until it is. I was there in September, and that was quite enough for a while.
Closer to home, the same goes for NYC, SFO or (I believe) LA, the isolated cities in the US that have emulated Europe in Covid passports, mandatory masks, in some cases quarantines and all the rest. I understand the state of California is now using tax dollars to advertise for people to travel to and within the state, reversing previous campaigns, and highlighting SFO as an attraction in some of the adverts. That is hilarious, obviously nobody with two brain cells is currently going to SFO for recreation.
The UK health minister, Sajid Javid, keeps saying that UK “cases” could rise to 100,000 per day. I’m guessing he must mean those who test positive after pro-actively getting tested.
The ONS regularly tests a sample of the UK population irrespective of whether they have symptoms, to estimate Covid prevalence in the population as a whole. The most recent estimate for England was 977,900 (out of a 56 million population).
I believe most people test positive for 10 days or less, which suggests at least 977,900 / 10 = 97,790 are infected each day.
So the number of “actual cases” already is 100,000 per day.
There are some very vulnerable people who would still be well advised to wear a mask when out and about. Ideally a proper ffp3 one. I wouldn’t mock anybody for choosing to do that.
Thank you @kwlf
Who ever ridicules people who take measures to protect themselfs AND OTHERS points fingers at those who think of othes just than themselfs. Wearing masks protects the persons opposite, not youself primarily, unless we are talking of FFP masks.
To say that masks are useless, be it that they really believe this, be it that they gather that “99% wear them wrong” and what other sorry excuses are used against wearing them should be sent to places where they can learn and see the effects of a indifferent, stupid, misbelieving people who run their country into wave after wave because they choose to believe in fake fairy tales rather than science and vaccinations.
Clearly, in an environemnt where everyone is vaccined, predominantly checked with certificates, masks are less necessary than elsewhere, but I´d have words with anyone who claims they are useless. You can still carry the Covid virus and spread it without knowing. And I know several people who got Covid still while vaccined. Yes, it was not a heavy illness but it was no walk in the park either and nobody knows with any certainty what long term effects also they can take.
We could learn from the Japanese and other Asians who naturally wear masks when they got even a slight head cold. But as most others have proven to be egoistic and primitive societies I guess this is a mute vision.
Life is hardly “back to normal” in central Europe, but OTOH I don’t plan to go there again until it is
You know what, Silvaire, chances are that will be never in that case. But with your attitude towards Europe I guess that it will not a big loss for you to forego further trips into what you have repeatedly called a continent in tyranny.
skydriller wrote:
Most of the industry changed to a pro-vax, pre-work quarantine & test system this year and nobody wears a mask at work anymore – so far no problems where this is implemented.
Well that’s hardly surprising that there are no problems despite the lack of mask wearing.
If you insist everyone is vaccinated, then you solve 80% of the problems.
If you also put them into pre-work quarantine and then test them before letting them mix with the rest of the workforce, who stay together on an isolated oil rig and don’t mix with anyone else after starting work together, then of course you won’t have infections and masks aren’t needed.
But most of the population don’t operated in vaccinated, pre-quarantinned and then tested bubbles. So masks are an easy and useful protection to reduce the spread. 10-20% spread reduction on a population level (on top of other measures) is a very useful reduction.
@Mooney_Driver, you’ve pretty much captured my thoughts on travel to Europe. We’d normally go there for the holidays but this year we’re going to Mexico City instead. In 2022, we’ll likely have a lot of European visitors here but time will tell for us going to Europe. I’m not willingly going anywhere that has legal dictates like Covid passports, highly elaborate national health entry procedures, quarantine for my wife in her home country and so on, no more than I would have been likely to vacation in communist European countries in the 80s or before. There are choices in destination and it’s best to make them to your advantage, not just do the same old thing habitually when the situation changes.
