As I constantly find myself having to repeatedly go through the many ways in which people have masks completely wrong, I created a thread just for that. I have of course had many over the last two years for this purpose, but this is the newest. At the end, below, you can find this content as a tweet you can retweet to your maskwashed friends.
(1) Precautionary Principle: Burden of proof is on those suggesting/mandating devices that have NEVER been used for slowing respiratory viruses. Show they work. Show there are no harms to placing them for long periods over a human mouth, nose and face.
(2) Physiological harms: See below, with sublink to a thread of related evidence.
(3) Physical: Masks impede vision, and augment risks from falls.
(4) Face wounds, skin tears.
(5) A series of videos where I have covered wide varieties of psychosocial issues with face masks.
(6) The average person mistakenly believes surgeons wear masks to slow viral transmission, and that drives much of their intuition that masks are useful.
(7) Also, the average person believes infection is spread by spittle-like means. Face masks DO stop that sort of thing. But respiratory viruses don’t fit our psychological bias.
(8) The RCTs have shown that they do not work. Only one of dozens found any effect, and that was only 9% for surgical masks at p=0.045 (and the paper is wrought with troubles).
(9) Industrial hygienists have known masks don’t work for 70 years: Stephen E. Petty, PE, Certified Industrial Hygienist (@pettypodcast1) testifies to the NH Senate committee on mask ineffectiveness at slowing respiratory viral aerosols.
March 30, 2022
And… you can tweet my Twitter thread of these here…