A new study has appeared claiming that cloth masks work to reduce the spread of COVID-19 – provided they’re made of three layers of cotton. The Mail reports on its findings.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science used synthetic cough droplets to model how well different mask types stand up to coronavirus particles.
They found that surgical and N95 masks are still the most effective at stopping coronavirus spread.
Cloth masks may be a suitable alternative if these masks only if they have at least three layers and are made of cotton, the team found.
These findings may be particularly useful for lower-income countries like India, where surgical masks are not easily accessible to the general population.
In fact, though, the study has not shown anything about the effectiveness of cloth masks to prevent infection. It is not a study of real-world transmission at all but a laboratory test of how masks stop synthetic droplets. These droplets are around 500 micrometres in diameter, so not aerosols, which are typically considered to be much smaller (certainly less than 100 micrometres and possibly less than five). It therefore hasn’t even considered how well the masks impede aerosol transmission, which is one of the main modes of transmission.
A recent study, the Bangladesh mask study, did look at the real-world effectiveness of cloth masks. It found a slight reduction from 0.76% antibody prevalence in control villages (no masks) to 0.74% prevalence in cloth mask villages, though this was not statistically significant. There were numerous problems with this study, not least than it was confounded by additional interventions (an awareness campaign) and did not properly measure initial antibody and prior infection levels. However, even with these limitations it still indicates very little discernible difference.
The Danish mask study, Danmask-19, found no statistically significant effect on infection from wearing surgical masks either. This is in line with pre-Covid evidence on the lack of effectiveness of masks in protecting from respiratory infection and transmission.
When will the mask zealots admit that their pet intervention is a dud?
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Masks do nothing.
Only masks the stupid.
Which, really, might not be a bad thing..?
Admit the muzzle is a dud?
Only when it stops working to keep stupid subhumans in a state of perpetual terror.
Perpetual stylishness more like, haven’t you seen the leopard print ones?
Isn’t leopard print a symbol of the CIA’s MK Ultra/Monarch Project Beta Slaves? But that’s just another “conspiracy” theory. …
Yes! We need to tell Oliver Bonas..
Given that muzzles were brought in by Matt Hancock, it could be that the owner of Oliver Bonas might not be too keen on them…
The face nappies are now far too useful to governments for them to give up – they instil a sense of paranoia, and allow them to easily recognise those who aren’t “following the rules”. Whether or not the person not wearing one actually has a reason which complies with the arbitrary rules is fairly irrelevant – they will be hassled and bullied just the same anyway. Most politicians aren’t stupid – they must be well aware that these disgusting objects do bugger-all to reduce the spread of any viruses.
The mask could be made of hard plastic and would still stop absolutely nothing. Simply because the breathing takes place around the mask, not through the mask.
Ahh, but if it was leopard print design, would it work then?
Ah. I wondered what I was doing wrong! I need to stop breathing.
If two children pee while in a swimming pool and one is wearing a bathing costume and one isn’t… does it make any difference?
What’s the answer? What’s the answer?
well, at least they’re not doing it into the wind, and their boots will remain dry
For as long as people want to sell face masks, they’ll pay so-called scientists to set up studies they can use to help their sales efforts.
This is also completely besides the point: People who think other people’s very existences poses a serious danger to them need to take whatever precautions they consider appropriate to protect themselves. As living being, I must breathe. That’s not optional. Further, my body may be invaded by all kinds of pathogens and they may also leave it again. Both is entirely beyond my control and hence, beyond my responsibility.
Aside: Sars-CoV2 can also replicate in the gut. So, how many layers of clothing ought to be mandated in summer to protect mysophobes from other people’s farts? It’s a bit strange that this point has never come up so far.
It’s OK because underpants will stop the virus. It’s what a politician would call arse covering.
This would be a good question for Sir Desmond Swayne to posit during parliamentary questions time
He who said the rhyme did the crime. (Coronavirus Act, 2020)
Shit I’ve just implicated myself.
It’s quite an achievement by our criminal overlords to make something so comically ineffectual an article of faith in a supposed age of followthescience. I’ve spent the last 18 months stifling giggles when confronted by them and of course have never once put one on. Even if we return to mask ‘mandates’ in the Autumn, which I’m kind of resigned to, the last month or so has been fun because mask wearers have become a minority and I go out of my way to look at them quizzically with a look that says “Oh! What’s that thing on your face?” like I’ve never seen one before. Was fun while it lasted. Come October I’ll be back to being a minority of one in Tescos. Ah well.
I’ve seen my own GP wearing one in Tescos when he wasn’t required to. I think that says an awful lot about doctors.
I like it when the mask protrudes a bit too much and they look a bit like a sort of virtue signalling bird-beast. My young daughter and I make ‘ka-kaaah’ sounds going past them down the aisle.
Or when bearded gentlemen have ones that are a bit too small so it looks a bit like a kinky mouth thong. They haven’t followed the CDC advice to trim beards to a goatee in order to make a better seal, they value their individuality too much for that. So they’re in Tesco’s with a kinky mouth thong buying things and feeling quite ambivalent about their own semi-subjugation.
Or, and this one’s genuinely sad, very elderly people wearing them on their chin because they’re hot and can’t breathe with a stupid thing on their face but they’ve got one on anyway. This is one of many, many terrible sights gifted to us all by the plandemic.
Got stared out once when masks were ‘required’ by an angry (I think he was angry; his eyes looked quite angry) red-faced man wearing a mask imprinted with the open mouth of a great white shark! What a sight to behold in Tescos! Burst out laughing and had to pretend the checkout lady had made an hilarious joke. Ahh… it’s great living in an absolute nightmare.
I also saw an older lady wearing one that looked for all the world like a pair of sexy knickers! All satin and lace. My latte came out of my nose it was awful. We never could have predicted we would find ourselves in a position where those using lingerie to combat biohazards would be deemed the responsible members of society.
Or the ones that are still basic surgical masks, but pink. They’re good. They’re for people who remember and are still familiar with the concepts of individuality and freedom. But only just.
I like guys in N95s, preferably with a side vent. No nonsense. Military style. Crisps section. Tescos Tour of ’21.
It’s funny, I tend to try and giggle when I see people wearing them. Hard work giggling that muchj…
How about scenarios where there’s a parent, unmasked, and very young child or toddler, masked? Anyone seen that? I have. What form of unholy cognitive/social disorder(s) has lead to this sight?
When you see an unmarked adult witha masked child, know that the adult is virtue signaling vaccination.
Oh yeah. I didn’t think of that.
“Don’t worry, darling, you’ll be vaccinated soon and then you won’t need to wear a face covering in Tescos like mummy.”
Aaaaaargh!
Riot police look great in them. Armour
. Helmet 
. Baton 
. Shield 
. Light blue chin fabric 
. District nurses of the New World Order.
Misjudged Dredd.
I also got grassed up to the fuzz by a double-masker in Tesco’s once when they were ‘required’. That was extremely funny. He huffed off upon sight of me in breakfast cereals to tell the manager, who I imagine told him that there are exemptions and there was nothing she could do. Unsatisfied, he left the store -this is true- found a Bobby on the beat, and and then hid in the trolley park waiting for justice to be served. I’d got to freezer section by then. The police officer was visibly embarrassed, I was very nice to him, and when I left the store, angry double mask was still in the trolley park seething. Gave him a little smile that was a mixture of cheek and sympathy. Maybe I should write a book about my Tesco’s pandemic.
Every Belittle Helps
We’re all in this Together Apart from Him
My Tescos Pandemic
Do you remember last summer when Boris Johnson did his going into a shop to pretend to buy something with a blue neoprene badly fitting saggy facial nappy photo opportunity routine. He looked decidedly awkward and embarrassed; even a man of his limited intellect must have been thinking we’ll never convince the plebs they need to do this. Well he needn’t have worried. Sigh.
It was also quite amusing (and annoying) when the mask-lovers were bleating after masks stopped being compulsory that everyone “should be kind”, which seemed to mean that everyone should continue to wear masks to soothe their paranoia. It seems not to have occurred to them that they (and the government) were far from “kind” to those unable to wear muzzles and deliberately made them out to be enemies of society and deserving of being hounded.
The non-muzzlers have retained the high-ground, as it’s very rare for any of them to do the same back to the muzzlers, i.e. glare at them and question them as to why they are wearing a muzzle.
I’ll never trust the higher up health professionals again. Cowards the lot of them.
Why are they so intent on pretending that masks work?
We have known for a century that face masks are ineffective. Research was carried out during the Spanish flu and has been revisited many times since. The WHO recommended they should not be used. Then in 2020 politicians in some country stupidly mandated their use and the Internation Groupthink kicked in. The WHO was leaned on to comply.
Since then they have, in utter desperation, commissioned “research” to try to support their error rather than to establish truth. It’s a bit like the way history was revised in Nineteen Eighty Four.
I’m assuming that it was dreamt up by the same PR company that the rest of the pandemic was. You can imagine it being pitched by an intern – “This is the new face of the 21st century global citizen. Responsible. Communitarian. Uniform. Safe”
You missed out “profitable”
Why are there are more men (looking like huge man-babies) in their Oh So Brave bitch-muzzles, than women?
Because… ahem….. men are generally more cowardly. From my own observations, more women seem to have had enough.
Yep, and the men are ALWAYS trailing behind their (un-napped!) old woman! Sorry, this isn’t an attack on men at all, just at the cucks that think they can STILL give me a laser-eyed stare above their little face panties, OUTSIDE! Happened to me yesterday.
… and, round my way, often with a stupid-looking tiny dog on the end of a leash. I spend so much time laughing. Years ago, before the covids, I mentioned the incongruity of it to one ginormous bloke with two yappy dogs. For a couple of seconds there, I thought I might get walloped.
You caused Great Dane envy!
There’s a fella – early 30’s, 6ft 4, built like a brick lavatory… always leaves his nasty looking Alsatian in his jeep, and comes stomping into my local Tesco wearing his army boots and… his cute little blue face tampon like some sissy superhero. Hilarity ensues.
I saw a woman with a mask and the blue gloves last week. She’d done her weekly shopping and was heading home on the tram. Her mask kept slipping down, so she constantly fiddled with it, and I thought ‘I’m not sure your precautions are effective but if it makes you happy and gives me a laugh then that’s ok’.
The blue gloves! Wonderful. I see them outside Tesco’s carefully wiping down their trolley handle. Whatever floats your boat.
Upping this by one: Woman entering Sainsburys sanitizes her hands, goes to shopping baskets, picks one up, takes it back to the sanitizing station and ‘sanitizes’ the handle she had used to carry it there.
Please use brain sanitizer. Brain not included.
If I was anything more than amused by all this madness, I would write in Sharpie on every ‘sanitising station’
MAGIC CULT ELIXIR
or something. But I won’t.
I’ll see your woman in Sainsbury’s and raise you this bloke entering John Lewis carrying a lapdog. Puts dog down, sanitises hands, then picks up dog with his hand covering the dog’s genitals as he carried it inside.
Man at cash dispenser at Sainsburys, wearing blue gloves to prevent him catching something from all the nasty germs on the dispenser. When machine spits out his card he puts it in his mouth while he folds his cash.
I may have misunderstood the real situation, but hasn’t the mask mandate been much more tightly applied in Scotland? In that case, if they worked, it would be reasonable to expect the number of cases to be much lower there.
Whoops.
Norman, please stop attempting to apply epidemiological data to this. Masks just work, that’s all you need to know.
I’d say there is something a mask is very good for. Hiding one’s face, and anonymity. Helps the poor brainwashed folk feel less guilty about all those supposed infections they never knew they caused.
We’re all bank robbers now! Well I’m not.
Thrice layers of cotton, thrice jabs, and thrice cleansing of the hands. Th’covid miasma doth not like the number three. It is clear for all to see!
Three weeks,..
Ha! Three weeks to flatten the miasma.
Holy Trinity.
The Danish study only measured to what extent masks prevented you getting infected. It didn’t look at to what extent masks stop you infecting others. The fact is it is incredibly hard to do a rigorous study in real world conditions of whether masks stop you infecting others. The alternative is look at the detailed mechanics of how masks affect exhalation – although this example doesn’t look very convincing.
cotton is not a 1-way filter.
Well how do you explain how our legs stay inside our jeans then? Follow Thescience!
True. So what?
If it’s capable of stopping small particles exiting mouth or nose at a relatively large velocitiy, it must also be capable to stop them from entering either of both at a smaller velocity. This is not something like Herbert’s personal shields (Dune) which work only against fast movements but can be penetrated by slow ones.
If it’s capable of stopping small particles exiting mouth or nose at a relatively large velocitiy, it must also be capable to stop them from entering either of both at a smaller velocity.
Do you have evidence for that? The velocity could work either way – driving rain may be less penetrating then a gentle drizzle.
Anyway there are all sorts of other considerations which make the two transfers hard to compare. For example, breathing virus out potentially risks vastly many more people than breathing in.
It’s impossible to do this until the exact way in which infections happen is known and it’s thus possible to produce or prevent them reliably and to track them to their sources. In order to do so, one must first come up with a way to predict movement of molecules in gases. Conventional wisdom is that this is a so-called chaotic system which is inherently unpredictable.
The people peddling face mask aren’t stupid. They just count on their customers being stupid.
I think you are being overdemanding here. We are now fairly certain that the virus mainly spreads through droplets and aerosols. We can measure what happens to both when you breath out. It is not conclusive but it is relevant.
Nope, evidence is its primarily spread by aerosols, especially aerosols generated by oro-foecal contamination.
The size of aerosol droplets influences how quickly they fall to the ground, i.e larger droplets and high humidity, both work to cause quicker coalescing and gravity takes over.
The smaller the aerosol the longer it stays afloat especially indoors and in still air.
Nope, evidence is its primarily spread by aerosols, especially aerosols generated by oro-foecal contamination.
Everything I have read suggests that the virus is spread by the complete range from very small aerosol particles through to large droplets produced by sneezing or coughing e.g. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/92564 . Do you have a reference? As always willing to be correctded.
When? The 12th of Never.
Their purpose is to virtue-signal and spread fear of the virus.
This winter, I shall mostly be wearing my double mask and booster mask, on top.
The added protection means I can use one mask to cover my eyes, one to cover my nose, and one to cover my mouth.
As I can catch the virus from sitting down, would it be a good idea to have a bottom mask to protect my ars*hole from aerosols?
At least one of them needs to be leopard print under Plan B.
Distressed denim is probably more on-trend for the youngsters.
Talking to an apparently adoring Eddie Mair on LBC yesterday, Professor Susan Michie
(Room 347 Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place London, WC1E 7HB Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 5930 Fax: +44 (0)20 916 8511 s.michie@ucl.ac.uk )
advised white cloth masks which come right up to eyes and way down under the chin to save people if she comes near them. In perpetuity.
No mention of underpanting-layers; beyond the scope of a wealthy psychologist.
Eddie Mair and Professor Susan Michie – I can scarcely imagine a more erudite and scholarly meeting of intellects, really sorry to have missed this.
My mum used to think Mair had quite a pleasant voice.
He does – extremely mellifluous. Extremely mellifluous purveyor of propaganda not clever enough to even know that’s what he is.
He was clever enough to cut short a couple of calls expressing the mildest hints of dissent though.
Dunno if LBC is listen again-able, but you’ve got the picture.
Yep. A terrible picture.
People appear to love their muzzles and wear them like badges of honour and virtue. When I see the bits of their sickly, pale waxy complexions smugly under their germ ridden bits of rag…I despair.
We need oxygen not recycled carbon dioxide, coupled with the oxygen depleting jab…these people are on a hiding to nothing but more sickness.
But this is deep state hypnosis and it appears nothing can break the spell.
Just read the paper. Will is criticising the study for failing to do something which it never set out to do. It was not intended to be an assessment of the overall efficacy of masks or even cloth masks. It was aimed at the effect of cloth masks on larger droplet sizes (which are the result of coughing) because other studies have looked at smaller sizes.
Mask filtration efficiencies to such smaller sized (<100 mm) droplets have been extensively studied in the existing literature.20,42–47
However, in this work, we essentially demonstrate an additional route in which a large-sized droplet impingement with a single- or multi-layer mask can atomize into smaller droplets/aerosols.
100mm droplets, they are something…
Well, I must say that the BTL commenters do an excellent line in mockery – it’s as if the facemask doesn’t have an iota of credibility to it (other than for its role in promoting obedience to Covid authority). Yet, it persists, especially here in South Australia where we have been ordered to use the things – ‘just in case’ – and the Mask Mandate has been firmly jammed in the ON position.
In case anyone still needs convincing about the uselessness of masks, and their political utility, I have a popcorn-muncher two-parter on Medium if you’re at a loose end.
https://philshannon.medium.com/the-hidden-curriculum-of-the-facemask-pt-1-79d4c09123d6
https://philshannon.medium.com/the-hidden-curriculum-of-the-facemask-pt-11-836d6ec40e0e
I think I speak for everyone here in saying I have literally no idea what has become of Australia (or anywhere else I suppose), and I used to live there. I think it’s true to say we’ve all learned quite a lot about human psychology over the past 18 months. Thanks for the links, looks like an interesting read.
Mockery is all we have left. None of these ideas are remotely amenable to reason, I gave up on that about 12 months ago.
You missed the bit about pressure. Exhaling puts the mask under pressure – which means it leaks clear around the sides rather than going via the filter. Inhaling puts the mask under suction which draws air through the filters.
So if you’re worried where a proper inbound filter, which is the only type that is even likely to work, and leave everybody else alone.
Masks have now morphed into superstition : once an action becomes part of a belief it ceases to be subject to rational debate. Covid19 has become a religion and masks part of showing you are a believer and are going to be saved.
Bingo.
All praise the mask!
“Who does not want to wear the ribbon?!” – Obscure Seinfeld reference that now seems wonderfully prescient.
Je suis Kramer!
My Steampunk mask meets all the requirements for a “face covering” in the government regulations and I can still breathe when wearing it.
you saw a GP! did you mark it in your I-SPY book? How many points is that worth?
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