A Mayo Clinic study of the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of the Covid-19 virus was announced on July 29, 2021.
Do face masks work at preventing COVID-19 transmission?
"Masks don't work unless we wear them," says Dr. Elie Berbari, a Mayo Clinic infectious diseases physician.
That's what Mayo Clinic researchers say they proved in a recent study.
"We found objectively that masks are critically important. They're very effective at protecting the people around you. If you're wearing a mask, you're protecting others. If they're wearing masks, they're protecting you," says Dr. Matthew Callstrom, a Mayo Clinic radiologist and one of the study's authors.
The experiments used masked and unmasked mannequins that simulated the spread of respiratory droplets and measured it at various distances.
Evidently this study assumes that inanimate mannequins can effectively simulate human behavior, probably through pumping out some identifiable aerosols from one mannequin to another masked or unmasked dummy and determining if the intake of the aerosols can penetrate a mask. This experiment probably isn't as exciting as the famous crash test dummies that proved wearing seat belts in the car helps prevent injuries in accidents, as if that wasn't obvious.
The study showed that disposable paper medical masks and two-layer cloth masks reduced droplet transmission.
OK, we're also assuming that in the real world the masks are being worn properly, as they no doubt are in the study. Furthermore, what does the word reduced signify? Is transmissibility greatly reduced or reduced just a little? What distances are involved? And, as always, there's no mention of used mask disposal in the prevention of the spread of a highly contagious disease.
1 comment:
COVID 19 is spread by aerosols, not droplets.
Lots of studies have established that. Since aerosols will get through any masks, masks are useless as a health measure for this particular illness. They are very useful in rallying support for the regime, however.
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