Concerning the Efficacy of Masks

I read a claim posted in my social circle that I felt the need to address. The argument is as follows:

“Masks don’t work. If they did nursing, etc. personnel would not be in hazmat suits.”

There are two high level claims, and they both are inaccurate based on current research and real world application.

Claim 1: “Masks don’t work.”
This is false. Masks have been shown in many ways to be strong mitigating factors in the spread of illness. In many modes of research:
Nature, for example, published a great first step in the matter with a small sample of individuals and a variety of scenarios:

“Both surgical masks and unvented KN95 respirators, even without fit-testing, reduce the outward particle emission rates by 90% and 74% on average during speaking and coughing, respectively, compared to wearing no mask”

The CDC also looked into the matter and came to similar conclusions, both using live studies and retrospective surveys of hundreds of households:

“In a study of 124 Beijing households with > 1 laboratory-confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 infection, mask use by the index patient and family contacts before the index patient developed symptoms reduced secondary transmission within the households by 79%.”
“A study of an outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an environment notable for congregate living quarters and close working environments, found that use of face coverings on-board was associated with a 70% reduced risk.”

Another important item of note is to look at cultures who had popularized wearing masks long before this pandemic. The reason masks were worn was because they as a community saw results. Just like how we in the US wear seatbelts whenever we get in a car because we see the difference. Just looking at any graph, even ignoring population density, we can see how cultures like Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong had overall more manageable case numbers.

“Many regions that have successfully controlled the incidence rate of COVID infections have entrenched cultures of wearing masks, perhaps with the exception of Germany — which had implemented early and meticulous testing protocols to quickly break chains of infection.”

Other sources agree with this cultural perspective:

“Masks work,” Shan Soe-Lin and Robert Hecht of Yale University wrote in a commentary piece for The Boston Globe in March. “There is widespread evidence from the field of occupational health, the SARS epidemic, and other outbreaks that wearing masks protects us from germs and interrupts the transmission of disease from sick to healthy people.”

I understand that some claim some doctors don’t agree with the assessment, and that is evidence to show the “fake news” concerning masks. While I disagree that the number of dissenting doctors would be anywhere above 5–10%, I’d also argue that 99% of doctors with any real, long-term experience fighting pandemics would dispute the use of masks.

Claim 2: “If they did, nursing etc. personnel would not be in hazmat suits.”
There are two problems with this statement.
First an assumption of similar risk. While nurses and medical professionals have more protection, it’s because they are often in contact with “pods” of 6 critical ICU patients all with COVID. Masks assist us as normal folk because we’re not in such extreme situations. Because I prefer nurses like my wife and her parents to be among the living, it’s normal in the medical industry to provide additional protections to healthcare workers. They aren’t social distancing, they are in close proximity to many infected individuals, and they have to stay healthy because there’s a global nursing shortage.
The second assumption is that Nursing personnel are in hazmat suits. This just isn’t true. Across the US, shortages of supplies and just the way our healthcare system works has denied nurses basic protection. They’re often given a single mask and told to stretch using it as long as they before they request a new one. That exact reason is why my in-laws felt forced to retire early, because they weren’t being given the equipment necessary to stay alive during a pandemic.

“Today, the American Nurses Association (ANA) released new findings from a survey of more than 32,000 nurses nationwide on the front lines of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While the data are still being analyzed, the results echo concerns about the egregious shortage of protective equipment for nurses, staffing concerns, and access to training.”

Yet another survey conducted found the same results.

“According to the new findings, 42% of nurses say they are still experiencing widespread or intermittent PPE shortages.”

This goes beyond canvased surveys. It extends to legal actions being taken against hospitals, carrying claims of poor PPE practices.

“Fourteen health care institutions in New Jersey, including hospitals, nursing homes and an ambulance company, have been cited by the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration for failing to provide enough equipment and other protections to health care workers who fell sick and died during the pandemic.”

This lack of PPE and general failings of our healthcare system is coming to a head: nurse Unions in California are pulling the breaks and trying to address the situation with their employers.

While I wish it was untrue, and that our healthcare professionals did have access to the protective equipment they need to mitigate their increased risk of exposure, that statement is false.

Additional thoughts on why average civilians are not given recommendations that match nurse precautions:

• Education
  Civilians don’t have the medical training necessary to properly use even gloves. There are specific practices to make PPE effective. It’s relatively easy to communicate proper mask usage, but with each additional article of protection there are different standards of use.
• Ability / Practicality
  Elders can wear masks. Youth can wear masks to a limited extent of their tolerance. Requiring / mandating usage of products above a mask are unrealistic since these groups would have difficulty wearing hazmat suits or other more extensive PPE. They also have diminishing returns of protection beyond the mask due to the required education and discipline required to use those products properly.
• Access
  Masks were already not immediately mandated because our government failed to supply hospitals with adequate federal stockpiles due to a myriad of incompetencies. This created a nation-wide shortage which endangered healthcare workers. Once the CDC finally did give sustainable recommendations (home made and cloth masks), there were still mass shortages caused by consumer demand that we’ve yet to recover from. Had the nation recommended additional protections, I’m sure we would have seen similar issues with the supply and delivery of all other PPE articles beyond the disaster we’re already experiencing, as evidenced by my post above outlining complaints by the American Nursing association. Hell, even without those additional recommendations I had to wait to do some painting jobs in my house because people bought up all the painting clothes at Lowe’s/Home Depot in an attempt to make homemade hazmats.