Yes, this is the same advice that the CDC and WHO give. If you're unwell yourself, wear a mask to protect others. If you're not unwell, it's not necessary to wear a mask to prevent others from infecting you, as they haven't been shown to be effective when used in this way.

Correct.

Experts were telling people that wearing non-n95 masks is unlikely to protect you from other sick people.

They are still correct on that point. You primarily wear cloth masks to protect other people, not to protect yourself.

I don't know what the consensus is about this, but my take on it is that this was never not false...

I remember people saying that, but I had always understood the primary benefit of cloth and other masks was to limit the wearer's ability to spread virus-containing droplets if they were infected by asymptomatic (or symptomatic and very reckless, I suppose). I thought it was widely acknowledged that they provided very limited protection for the wearer. "My mask protects you, your mask protects me." This is why, for example, there were recommendations to not wear vented N95 masks.

Of course, the fact that the mask doesn't form a tight seal around the mouth surely undermines its ability to provide both forms of protection, to some degree. But I seem to recall a fair amount of discussion of the fact that masks could still be fairly effective at reducing the number of virus-containing droplets expelled into the surrounding environment even in the absence of a tight fit. (And, for what its worth, that has always made fairly intuitive sense to me. Though I acknowledge that's not a very good reason to believe it.)

Maybe others' experiences differed, but I thought this was very clearly explained by the 'authorities.' Though that didn't stop people from misunderstanding or, in some cases, spreading misinformation to score political points by making mask proponents look stupid.

Actually, the accurate statement would be "Masks may help protect you a little bit, but they're much better preventing you from spreading the virus to others."

The best production you can have is if those around you are conscientious, and you are likewise.

Again, the primary purpose of wearing a mask is not to protect you but everybody else. By making it harder for you to spread your viruses. So, it only protects you if everybody else around you wears them.

Nevertheless, masks have a small effect on protecting with regards to viruses entering your mouth and nose, but none on your eyes, obviously.

How do I know I'm not infected? There are a lot of asymptomatic carriers, that's the main problem.

A lot of people still think that no symptomps = not infected = no mask needed but that's totally wrong

One could argue that, but one would look like a moron without any proof, and with a lot of evidence showing the exact opposite.

Given the huge amount of evidence of transmission by cough droplets and the lack of evidence of even a single transmission out of millions by touching masks/surfaces, keeping droplets out of your mouth and nose is the only thing that helps and it definitely does more good than harm.

It's not 100% vs 0%. It's probably something like 70% vs 5% (Disclaimer: I'm pulling numbers out of my ass).

When someone who is sick wears a mask, they dramatically cut down on how much virus is PROPELLED OUT OF THEIR MOUTH. That's the big win. It still likely comes out their nose or is on their hands. But at least it isn't propelled with a cough or sneeze so if you wipe surfaces and avoid contact, you're probably okay. That mask protects dozens of people.

When a healthy person wears a mask, he protects only himself and the only thing he is "protecting" against is airborne droplets into his mouth. Most masks don't cover the nose and eyes which are the primary transmission routes for droplets. Most people don't breathe with their mouth open. You're probably safer simply wearing glasses, especially safety glasses. A lot of famous singers wear glasses/sunglasses all the time for exactly this reason.

A mask shortage will exacerbate these scenarios. One healthy person taking a mask away from one sick person is a TERRIBLE tradeoff.

I'm very skeptical that my wearing a common mask protects me from anyone else. I do suspect that it reduces the possibility of me infecting someone else (hypothetically, assuming I'm asymptomatic).

Read your link. Proper usage isn't hard to understand. If you touch your mask with your dirty hands it might increase the chance that you breathe in the germs that were on your hands.

Don't put a dirty mask on your face. Don't touch your mask with dirty hands.

Notice that these messages are different than "masks are a mind-control conspiracy" and "masks are ineffective."

That depends entirely on if there is a viral build up on the outside of the mask.

Discouraging people from using N95 masks was specifically to avoid the private hoarding of masks.

But discouraging use of other masks (and N95) by the public is because they do not protect you if they are used wrong. When any air passed around a mask, then you are at risk. Using them right requires proper equipment, sizing, testing, etc... And getting people properly fit, etc was not something that was remotely practical for the general public. That's not to mention the materials used... properly protecting masks have to be made of high-quality and consistent fibers.

The current recommendations for wearing masks is not to protect the wearer of the mask. It is to protect other people. If you take it as a given that there is widespread asymptomatic cases of the virus, then you don't know if you have it or not. So wearing a mask is to protect other people from you. If you are wearing a mask, any virus that you happen to shed will be trapped as you exhale, or at least not be able to travel very far.

Unfortunately, any help that wearing a mask would offer to the wearer is often countered by the false sense of security that they bring. There are many people in masks that think they are protected so they can ignore keeping their distance from others. This is 100% wrong.

The best way to avoid germs from other people is to distance yourself from other people.

How does the mask know in which direction it is providing protection?

I don't. I haven't been provided clear evidence, I have been given speculation. I can speculate as well.

As a general rule, is a mask going to protect you from infection? No. There is overwhelming evidence to support that. Even an N95 mask will not protect you. Your eyes are still exposed, you'll still be breathing in a sufficient amount of particles to get infected.

On the average, might it reduce your personal risk of infection at least a little bit, because of some droplets missing your mouth? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know that. It might increase your risk, for the reasons I have mentioned. This is not just me speculating, I have seen it in medical papers as well.

The idea that "you cannot protect yourself" simply isn't as popular, so people cling to the idea that cloth masks that everyone can make themselves will protect them. Fair enough, but then we should be recommending diving goggles as well. We should be recommending people to cover their clothes in plastic bags to dispose of later, because that too is "better than nothing".

> What is your explanation for the graph on this page, which clearly shows that wearing a mask has massive effect on the spread of the disease?

It doesn't show that, that's spurious reasoning. If that was valid reasoning, I might as well re-label those circles with "eating mostly rice" and "eating mostly wheat" and claim that "rice saves lives". Correlation does not imply causation, there's lots of other factors at play here.

Nevertheless, widespread wearing masks may well significantly reduce the spread of the disease to others, I said that myself. It just won't protect you.

I remember this, at the time we knew people who were infected (and infectious) could take more than 10 days to show symptoms, and if they didn't wear a mask they could infect hundreds. We also knew that anything less than an N95 wasn't designed to protect the wearer anyway (though as it turns out it does), but rather everyone else from the wearer. So it was really disingenuous of them to suggest your mask doesn't protect you, as they knew its everyone else's mask than protects you..

By the time it hit Italy we knew it was airborne, even if not by official measure, out government and the WHO kept this BS up for months after that.

Maybe we watch different media, as i have seen nothing about this issue. A few articles online, hidden away, nothing proportional to the seriousness of the issue.

This is demonstrably false, as we now know for a fact that wearing a mask does reduce the risk of both catching the virus yourself and transmitting it to other people. Even if you don't care about your own well-being, common courtesy dictates you should care about the well-being of others. Failing to do so may indeed get them killed.

I never said it would be surprising, I did however say that taking that seemingly plausible argument and immediately concluding that masks would meaningfully reduce infections in a whole population is premature. As you just said, viruses enter the body through multiple mucous membranes, so if everyone who wears masks doesn't wear them properly, or still touches their eyes and doesn't sanitize their hands properly before eating, the effect of masks could still be minimal.

> Furthermore, if I recall correctly there’s studies showing efficacy of having even a basic cloth covering helps because the thickness of the material means that even if the virus is small enough to get through, the probability of crossing all the layers through the cloth is harder

It's important to keep in mind that 50% of studies in medicine fail to replicate. Don't put too much stock in "I saw a study".

> Picking up illness from contact with a surface -> touching your face is a much more difficult infection vector than the direct access port available through the communication ports on your head.

Is it? Do you have empirical data to support this claim? I'm sure it seems plausible to you, just like it seemed plausible to those old doctors you mentioned that a gentleman's hands were always clean, but I think the real lesson is that we should rely on empirical data and not only on seemingly plausible arguments from seemingly plausible assumptions.

Which isn't to say that advising people to wear masks is necessarily a bad idea either, but there's a world of difference between "this seems like a good idea if you're cautious or want to reduce your changes of getting sick" and "you're a terrible person if you don't do this because this is proven to work".

That was never the argument. Wearing masks isn't about protecting yourself (only properly-fitted high-grade masks do that well, and regular people wearing those would have taken supply away from medical staff). Wearing masks is about protecting other people from you spreading the virus (which they do a decent job of when combined with distancing).

The reason it can't just be a personal choice is because not wearing a mask isn't endangering you, it's endangering other people. It's the same reason we don't let people smoke indoors. And having a blanket rule to always wear a mask in public was mainly about keeping the messaging simple. Constant debating over which situations were safe or not for going maskless would have harmed our overall responnse to the virus. The reason the CDC changed their guidance is that there's now enough evidence to confidently say that vaccinated people can't spread the virus to others, but honestly it may potentially cause those same issues.