I don’t think we want to get into the efficacy of masks,,,,,
if we did, I think many of us would be severely disappointed or even disturbed over it. I’ve been studying this since the third week in March,,,, a year ago. Just search this out on the web and see what you come up with, it’s not what you’re going to think. Random clinical trials are the ones that you want to take a look at because they are non bias.
here’s just a cut and paste from the results in the conclusion on cloth masks back in 2015.
Results The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with the rate of ILI statistically significantly higher in the cloth mask arm (relative risk (RR)=13.00, 95% CI 1.69 to 100.07) compared with the medical mask arm. Cloth masks also had significantly higher rates of ILI compared with the control arm. An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.
Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
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Since this article was written, there has been an update in reference to cover 19 and here’s what they say;
- Published on: 30 March 2020
COVID-19, shortages of masks and the use of cloth masks as a last resort
- Chandini R MacIntyre[/URL], Academic physician The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales
- Other Contributors:
- Chi Dung Tham, Academic physician
- Holly Seale, Academic
- Abrar Chughtai, Academic physician
Critical shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) have resulted in the US Centers for Disease Control downgrading their recommendations for health workers treating COVID-19 patients from respirators to surgical masks and finally to home-made cloth masks. As authors of the only published randomised controlled clinical trial of cloth masks, we have been getting daily emails about this from health workers concerned about using cloth masks. The study found that cloth mask wearers had higher rates of infection than even the standard practice control group of health workers, and the filtration provided by cloth masks was poor compared to surgical masks. At the time of the study, there had been very little work done in this space, and so little thought into how to improve the protective value of the cloth masks. Until now, most guidelines on PPE did not even mention cloth masks, despite many health workers in Asia using them.
Health workers are asking us if they should wear no mask at all if cloth masks are the only option. Our research does not condone health workers working unprotected. We recommend that health workers should not work during the COVID-19 pandemic without respiratory protection as a matter of work health and safety. In addition, if health workers get infected, high rates of staff absenteeism from illness may also affect health system capacity to respond. Some health workers may still choose to work in inadequate PPE. In this case, the physic...
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Now we have the majority of the United States population wearing cloth masks which are highly infected with contamination. Originally Dr. Fauci said that there are unintended consequences from wearing masks and this is precisely what he accidentally told the truth about, and then later tried to cover up for his fault.
