Red
Well-Known Member
I just brought up the fact that the flu season was very mild, at the time so many Americans were wearing masks and practicing social distancing, as suggesting those practices might have helped tamp down the flu, and, IF that were the case, would it really be unreasonable to think masking and social distancing helped where Covid spread was concerned as well?I am not saying you personally are doing all of the things, and I am not crediting you personally with making the flu season mild. I feel we are missing each other because the scope keeps switching. If we are talking about what you do yourself to lower your own risk of COVID exposure, then okay. If we are talking about aggregate societal observations or actions, then that is okay too. It is the mixing of the two that I am having trouble keeping straight.
I’m sure most Americans were not using either N95, or the somewhat less effective K95 masks. In fact, I imagine very few Americans were using N95 masks. if very few Americans were using N95 masks, yet the flu declined while many were using the far more common surgical masks, maybe those surgical masks are not so poor as to be considered useless in helping limit spread of Covid.
Granted, maybe masking with non-N95 masks, and social distancing, had NOTHING whatsoever to do with a very mild flu season. I’m no expert in that, but it’s been suggested, by medical professionals, that those practices did help tamp down the flu, or probably did so. So I’m not pulling that out of thin air, it’s been suggested by professionals. (I’m also aware that the flu is not Covid and Covid is not the flu, and I do not know how that factors in, where masking and social distancing is concerned, and where limiting spread of those 2 different diseases via masks and distancing is concerned).
I know I could be clearer, and I’m struggling a bit. Are the non-N95 masks really as useless as you seem to suggest they are? That’s all I’ve been trying to puzzle out. That’s all. I suspect they have helped, even given your example of masked students, sitting closest to an unmasked teacher with Covid, still contracting Covid. That incident may only point to the fact that no mask does a perfect job, and not to such masks being useless altogether. When I wear a common blue surgical mask, I know the seal is not perfect. It leaks if not fitted exactly. Out the top, and along the sides, the seal is usually not perfect. Maybe those students were not wearing perfectly sealed masks, while sitting closest to their teacher.
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