Obviously, wearing a mask doesn't help you from getting Covid, right?

[Anonymous]

Because if Covid is just floating around, it's going to get in your eyes, clothes and hair. Even if you are talking to someone who isn't wearing a mask and has covid, its going to get on you and in you, albeit not really your mouth and nose (although there are some holes in masks, otherwise we wouldn't be able to breathe). It will get in other orifices.

Yes, that is correct.

No! Wearing a mask reduces your chance of getting Covid.

[Subglacial]

There isn't yet (from what I have read) a scientific consensus on whether or not you can get COVID-19 (the respiratory disease) from a SARS-CoV-2 infection in your eye. You can get conjunctivitis, and tears of a person with an infected eye have a small viral load which can theoretically then get into their respiratory tract or infect somebody else, but it isn't clear how great a risk this poses.

In any case, you're right. Masks don't cover everything. So what can we do? Quarantine. But people only tolerate that for so long, and we tanked our economy attempting it.

Another problem is that half-measures don't really work. Everyone needs to be on board. It only takes one careless person to infect a room full of people. You can't stop that, but you can avoid being that person.

The next best thing you can do is wash your fucking hands. Seriously. People touch their face all day without realizing it. In fact, I'm doing it right now. And have you seen the people who use public restrooms and leave without washing? The fuck? Don't be that person either.

[ArtemisSilver]

By that logic you don't mind if your surgeon doesn't use a mask then?

It's not a perfect solution but rather a probability reduction tool.

It's also good for avoiding all kinds of other bugs like the common cold. So wear one if you feel like it.

[Asker]

The surgeon also wears glasses and something that covers his hair because he recognizes just wearing a mask won't protect him/her. If you are outside wearing a mask, glasses and something over your head, I agree that would help prevent you from gettin Covid. But just wearing a mask in order to protect you from getting Covid is pointless because if its just floating around, it's going to get in your eyes and hair.

[ArtemisSilver]

You don't suck particles into your eyes and hair constantly though do you?

[DaisyM23]

i personally noticed that in 2020, in the first big lockdown from march over the summer and then again once things started going back to normal before the next lockdown in the winter, not many people were getting sick. It was a combination of less people going out and about, but also people wearing masks and sanitizing their hands etc, just an overall reduction in risk of catching germs
i don't know if it has such a massive impact now but it does prevent you from catching airborne disease and if it makes you feel safe than whatever

[artsy_dragon]

It reduces the risk of infection. I used to be a student nurse and we were told this. I still wear my mask everything I go out. No for covid now but for anxiety. P. us there is a new variant about again.

[artsy_dragon]

Plus *

[NamerOfStars]

Right. It does provide very minimal protection against SPREADING it, but we've seen many times by now just how bad an idea that turned out to be.

[AngryCarl]

NOT spreading Covid was a bad idea?

[NamerOfStars]

@AngryCarl Yes- at least, taking the extreme measures done to the extent that people did, for as LONG as they did. A disease with very high contagiousness and very low lethality is something that EVERYONE is going to catch sooner or later; the idea behind "two weeks to slow the spread" was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed with admissions. It turns out that the admission rate was FAR lower than expected, as Covid wasn't as bad as governments feared. Some places accepted this and opened up- most didn't, choosing instead to sacrifice their economies in the name of "containing" a virus that, by definition, couldn't be contained.

But since the human immune system needs practice, preventing expose to pretty much ALL diseases left people weakened and unready when they DID catch it- and more vulnerable than ever to all the other diseases that did not cease to exist during the same timeframe. Focused protection and deliberate infection to build herd immunity would've been MUCH smarter.

[AngryCarl]

To achieve herd immunity you would have to let the majority of people get sick, which would have a worse effect on society than making people wear masks. Also the virus mutated so people would be getting sick multiple times. Also, Long Covid.

[NamerOfStars]

@AngryCarl None of that nonsense, now- if you mean "Munchausen's", say so. And YES, achieving herd immunity requires that the majority of people get sick. But everyone is GOING to get sick; there is no way to avoid catching Covid forever unless you don't interact with *anyone*, or die of something else before you get a chance.

Covid isn't dangerous; the only people who die of it are those who are already dying of something else. THOSE people should be shielded- focused protection, like I said- everyone else should seek out exposure, contract the minor cold that Covid actually IS, and develop immunity, like with chicken pox. That immunity will not provide total protection against different strains, and the speed at which coronaviruses mutate means that you won't be perfectly safe against reinfection (nothing out of the ordinary for ANY coronavirus there), but you WILL be resistant.

Trying to "contain" a virus indefinitely was even stupider than doing nothing at all, and letting it run amok through the population. Containment never had an endgame, and it weakens people's immune systems against pathogens that are actually dangerous.

[Asker]

@AngryCarl Does herd immunity apply to Covid? I know in the early stages that was discussed, but I think they theory has been debunked when it comes to Covid. There are too many different variants and the antibodies don't last for more than six months to a year.

[NamerOfStars]

Um, NO antibodies last for more than a year or two, at MOST. But memory B and T cells last decades.

[AngryCarl]

@Asker I think only if the herd has been vaccinated.

[Lynnfriend]

Well I don't know if that's necessarily true but if you study sience biology then you would know that a mask would not keep micro organism away. They would penetrate the masks they have on the market.

[AviatorTom]

The main goal of wearing a mask is to protect others, not yourself, because you never know when/if you have the virus. The mask reduces the number of potentially-infected droplets you put in the air.

[douride2]

It doesn't eliminate the risk it does reduce it though.

[joeldalton]

The masks were just part of the psychological experiment