In an interview for 60 Minutes, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook posed that question to Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech University professor specializing in aerosol science.
“They are very helpful in reducing the chances that the person will get COVID because it’s reducing the amount of virus that you would inhale from the air around you,” Marr said about masks.
No mask is 100% effective. An N95, for example, is named as such because it is at least 95 percent efficient at blocking airborne particles when used properly. But even if a mask has an 80% efficiency, Marr said, it still offers meaningful protection.
“That greatly reduces the chance that I’m going to become infected,” Marr said.
Marr said research shows that high-quality masks can block particles that are the same size as those carrying the coronavirus. Masks work, Marr explained, as a filter, not as a sieve. Virus particles must weave around the layers of fibers, and as they do so, they may crash into those fibers and become trapped.
Marr likened it to running through a forest of trees. Walk slowly, and the surrounding is easy to navigate. But being forced through a forest at a high speed increases the likelihood of running into a tree.
“Masks, even cloth masks, do something,” she said.
Not that I expect most people to believe it at this point…
They initially stated masks weren’t effective for general population use. This was a lie. There were reasons at the time for the lie, but it doesn’t make it not a lie.
Initially the CDC didn’t know how much asymptomatic spread was going to be a factor: that definitely changes the math on advising everyone to mask up. By July of 2020 they were unequivocal: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0714-americans-to-wear-masks.html
I remember that now. Yeah, no idea why they said such at the beginning. It’s not like masks were a new invention with covid. Asian countries regularly use mask with flu.
They did it because the US didn’t have enough masks if they said anything positive about masks. So they lied initially to prevent people trying to buy masks, so they could go to hospitals first.
Also, they never actually lied, you can see the post here in some of the other comments, people were just idiots at the time and didn’t actually read the full post, just saw “not recommended for general public use at this time” and somehow took that to mean masks didn’t help. Instead of that they do help, but save them for the people in need, not general use. The post actually has a video in it that also specifies masks should be worn by medical professionals and other close contacts with the infected. Which is very much specifically saying masks do actually help.
But of course, at the time, the detractors wouldn’t link the actual source, they would just pick one sentence and “…quote…” it, completely removing all the context and making it look like it said the opposite.
Also it’s not like the idea of masks helping was ever in doubt among educated people. It’s literally been a go-to for more than a hundred years already. It was only the uneducated that needed to be told.