Face Masks

[The Atheist]

Popularised during the pandemic, face masks have largely disappeared from the world since the reduction of covid to "just another virus".

I've been particularly impressed by clinicians' reluctance to wear masks, even in very obvious airborne disease ridden areas, like emergency rooms.

I would have thought a very obvious cost benefit was available to health authorities and companies - if staff catch fewer viruses, sick leave will reduce and you won't be passing on viruses to vulnerable patients, or each other.

The WHO has issued a guideline that medical personnel should wear not just masks, but respirators.

What it boils to is that doctors and nurses would rather catch the occasional virus than wear a respirator. With 4 kids and two recently-deceased older relatives, I've had a lot to do with medical establishments over the past few years and it's really rare to see a clinician masked up.

WHO is pushing it uphill thinking the recommendation will be treated seriously.

Face masks ‘inadequate’ and should be swapped for respirators, WHO is advised

Experts are urging guideline changes on what health professionals should wear to protect against flu-like illnesses including Covid

www.theguardian.com

 

[jimbob]

Popularised during the pandemic, face masks have largely disappeared from the world since the reduction of covid to "just another virus".

I've been particularly impressed by clinicians' reluctance to wear masks, even in very obvious airborne disease ridden areas, like emergency rooms.

I would have thought a very obvious cost benefit was available to health authorities and companies - if staff catch fewer viruses, sick leave will reduce and you won't be passing on viruses to vulnerable patients, or each other.

The WHO has issued a guideline that medical personnel should wear not just masks, but respirators.

What it boils to is that doctors and nurses would rather catch the occasional virus than wear a respirator. With 4 kids and two recently-deceased older relatives, I've had a lot to do with medical establishments over the past few years and it's really rare to see a clinician masked up.

WHO is pushing it uphill thinking the recommendation will be treated seriously.

Face masks ‘inadequate’ and should be swapped for respirators, WHO is advised

Experts are urging guideline changes on what health professionals should wear to protect against flu-like illnesses including Covid

www.theguardian.com

Yup, remember the way that flu hospitalisations and deaths reduced when people were masking up.

 

[Steve]

I have spent two nights on a bed in emerg in the last couple of months (nothing too serious either time) and agree that masks are quite rare among the medical staff working there.

 

[Olmstead]

I wonder how this stacks up in Japan, or other countries where face masks had been a common sight even before Covid.

 

[The Atheist]

I have spent two nights on a bed in emerg in the last couple of months (nothing too serious either time) and agree that masks are quite rare among the medical staff working there.

One particularly memorable trip was talking my youngest to our GP clinic last year for a scheduled appointment. The clinic also has a walk-in section, which has its own waiting area.

My son and I were both masked and very pleased to be so as the walk-in waiting room sounded like a TB ward. It was peak 'flu/RSV season and not one of the staff was masked.

Ho hum

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Received several hundred masks during peak covid from the grand brats. Currently sealed away. Read for Trumpocalypse Next.

 

[angrysoba]

I wonder how this stacks up in Japan, or other countries where face masks had been a common sight even before Covid.

I’m on a train in Japan now. About half of the people in the carriage are wearing masks (9 out of 20 or so). On another train I changed from it was 13 out of about 40 or 50.

During the peak of flu season, probably a supermajority of people wore masks.

That’s more or less how things were before Covid, maybe slightly higher now. Some people wear masks almost constantly.

Then again there is also the phenomenon of younger women who wear masks when they didn’t have time to put on make up in the morning.

 

[angrysoba]

I think health workers here in Japan wear masks at a much higher rate when in hospitals or clinics.

 

[icerat]

It's more common than you might think. We're on track for the usual 17 years between "discovery" and acceptance in health. Masks work.

The Comeback of Masking Policies in Healthcare - WHN

Published on January 22, 2024 Masking is making a comeback in healthcare facilities across the globe to protect patients and healthcare workers and contain the spread of infectious airborne diseases, including COVID-19, flu, and RSV. This includes individual hospitals and health systems [1], as...

whn.global

 

[Planigale]

Popularised during the pandemic, face masks have largely disappeared from the world since the reduction of covid to "just another virus".

I've been particularly impressed by clinicians' reluctance to wear masks, even in very obvious airborne disease ridden areas, like emergency rooms.

I would have thought a very obvious cost benefit was available to health authorities and companies - if staff catch fewer viruses, sick leave will reduce and you won't be passing on viruses to vulnerable patients, or each other.

The WHO has issued a guideline that medical personnel should wear not just masks, but respirators.

What it boils to is that doctors and nurses would rather catch the occasional virus than wear a respirator. With 4 kids and two recently-deceased older relatives, I've had a lot to do with medical establishments over the past few years and it's really rare to see a clinician masked up.

WHO is pushing it uphill thinking the recommendation will be treated seriously.

Face masks ‘inadequate’ and should be swapped for respirators, WHO is advised

Experts are urging guideline changes on what health professionals should wear to protect against flu-like illnesses including Covid

www.theguardian.com

Not WHO.

This is just a letter from a disparate group of people (e.g. including lawyers) pushing their particular viewpoint, they have sent a letter to WHO. They may or may not be correct, the evidence is not clear. The FFP2 masks they promote are significantly more expensive than the 'surgical' masks currently used. Given that WHO has to consider the competing costs and impact on health care resources in LME countries, guidance isn't so simple. Especially with recent aid cuts (thanks Trump), a lot of programs are being cut. Are higher cost FFP2 masks the best use of limited resources?

 

[alfaniner]

I've seen a few people wearing masks "in the wild", so to speak, but only over their mouths. I find this puzzling (and stupid). If they are doing it by choice, why not do it the way it's actually going to protect you (mouth and nose)?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

One particularly memorable trip was talking my youngest to our GP clinic last year for a scheduled appointment. The clinic also has a walk-in section, which has its own waiting area.

My son and I were both masked and very pleased to be so as the walk-in waiting room sounded like a TB ward. It was peak 'flu/RSV season and not one of the staff was masked.

Ho hum

I got 'told off' and effectively called a coward by the nurse at my local GPs surgery when I went in for a routine blood test about 18 months ago wearing a mask. It really annoyed me, I was perfectly heathy and as I'm self employed I didn't want to spoil that by picking something up in a waiting room containing, pretty much by definition, sick people.

I've had a couple of bouts of illness before and after Xmas (one way or another something always goes wrong for me at Xmas) and one of my customers is having chemo at the moment so the slightest hint of illness and I mask up if I can't avoid going into his house.

 

[theprestige]

The way I see it, medical professionals have known better than anyone the risks of breathing hospital air, especially for extended periods, day after day. If their consensus is that masks aren't worth the trouble, even for them, then just maaaybe masks aren't the slam dunk The Atheist thinks they are.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to judge someone who's wearing a mask. I don't know their situation. I don't know what comfort they draw from having one on, even improperly. All I ask is that people keep their hangups about masks to themselves.

 

[icerat]

The way I see it, medical professionals have known better than anyone the risks of breathing hospital air, especially for extended periods, day after day. If their consensus is that masks aren't worth the trouble, even for them, then just maaaybe masks aren't the slam dunk The Atheist thinks they are.

Having spent a decade working at a major hospital (I was involved in research), and much of the past 5 years working on pandemic related issues, I can assure you that your faith in medical professionals having an up-to-date knowledge base is wildly off the mark.

 

[icerat]

I've seen a few people wearing masks "in the wild", so to speak, but only over their mouths. I find this puzzling (and stupid). If they are doing it by choice, why not do it the way it's actually going to protect you (mouth and nose)?

well, thing is that's what surgical masks are primarily for - stopping a surgeon sputtering saliva into a patient and stopping bodily fluids splashing into the surgeon's mouth.

Even "ballistic droplet theory" (thoroughly discredited scientifically, but still widely believed) would have it that the droplets land in your mouth, or get transferred there via your hands. Nose is kind of an afterthought

 

[theprestige]

Having spent a decade working at a major hospital (I was involved in research), and much of the past 5 years working on pandemic related issues, I can assure you that your faith in medical professionals having an up-to-date knowledge base is wildly off the mark.

It's not even a question of an up to date knowledge base. Modern hospital hygiene has been around for over a century. The medical profession has been evaluating the risk-reward on masks for decades. If they haven't figured it out yet, maybe it's because there's nothing to figure out, and some people are just making a fetish of masks because the pandemic gave them PTSD.

 

[icerat]

Not WHO.

The World Health Network, if which I am a part. I may have even signed this letter, I know I was asked ... think I might have missed it with all the other goings on in my ife

This is just a letter from a disparate group of people (e.g. including lawyers) pushing their particular viewpoint, they have sent a letter to WHO. They may or may not be correct, the evidence is not clear.

Nonsense, the evidence of the efficacy of N95/FFP2 masks is overwhelming. It's physics. They are certfied to work. All the so-called evidence they don't work or there is no evidence are pretty much all "discovering" one thing - They don't work when you're not wearing them!

I recall one study in Canadian healthcare that found "no evidence". I calculated, using their own data, that even if every single potental transmission had been blocked while using a mask - the study would have found "no evidence". The methodology was incapable of finding any evidence.

The FFP2 masks they promote are significantly more expensive than the 'surgical' masks currently used. Given that WHO has to consider the competing costs and impact on health care resources in LME countries, guidance isn't so simple. Especially with recent aid cuts (thanks Trump), a lot of programs are being cut. Are higher cost FFP2 masks the best use of limited resources?

They're still incredibly cost effective in healthcare. Nosocomial infections cost the US alone some $40 billion a year in direct medical costs and another $100 billion in other costs (lost work time, death etc). One study found -

The usage of FFP2 masks reduced the incidence of viral respiratory infections from 22,1% to 2,1% (p < 0.005).​

That said, I'm convinced that if we focused on HEPA and Far-UVC in Schools, healthcare, and workplaces we would quite quickly eliminate a whole range of airborne pathogens. Could you imagine never even getting a cold again?

 

[icerat]

It's not even a question of an up to date knowledge base. Modern hospital hygiene has been around for over a century. The medical profession has been evaluating the risk-reward on masks for decades. If they haven't figured it out yet, maybe it's because there's nothing to figure out, and some people are just making a fetish of masks because the pandemic gave them PTSD.

Sorry but that's utter nonsense. No they haven't. The ignoramuses didn't even get basic physics right and based much of their infection control on one 100 yr old paper that didn't even really say what they thought. Aerosol scientists started listening to the WHO and other medicial professionals at the start of the pandemic and where aghast at the stuff that they were saying that was just plain wrong. Stuff that is *physics*, not medicine. Experts in the behaviour of small particles in the air (like viruses!) tried correcting them in various forums and in one WHO meeting literally got shouted down by medical doctors with zero training in actually relevant field. The arrogance of the medicial profession is legendary. Society treats them like Gods and it shows.

5 years in as a field they are STILL not accepting what the experts have told them. Wrong 100 years ago, still wrong.

 

[angrysoba]

It's not even a question of an up to date knowledge base. Modern hospital hygiene has been around for over a century. The medical profession has been evaluating the risk-reward on masks for decades. If they haven't figured it out yet, maybe it's because there's nothing to figure out, and some people are just making a fetish of masks because the pandemic gave them PTSD.

If medical professionals were not washing their hands as frequently as they are supposed to would you also assume that this reflects an optimal risk-reward calculation?

Because my understanding is that there have been numerous criticisms about medical professionals failing to do so. In this case the risks are likely to be to the patients as well as to the medical professionals, and of course the same goes for masks. I don’t think it is good to simply assume that the best standards are always being consistently applied by people in that industry.

 

[Orphia Nay]

I got 'told off' and effectively called a coward by the nurse at my local GPs surgery when I went in for a routine blood test about 18 months ago wearing a mask.

And I've been recommended dodgy supplement drinks and acupuncture by other nurses. I wouldn't take medical advice from a nurse on face value.