Thread by @jhaskinscabrera

THREAD

"Masks" carries a lot of water in the debate about face masks.

When medical personnel talk about masks, they mean surgical or N-95 or other specific masks. These masks are manufactured to standards, and they have been studied. (1/8)

But "essential" workers are being forced to wear "masks" all day at work, and the vast majority of them are wearing whatever cloth mask they can get their hands on.

They are all different, and we don't know anything about their safety. (2/8)

The only study I can find about the efficacy of cloth masks is the Vietnam study that says "The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm" and "Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97%" (3/8)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

The study concludes, "This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety... (4/8)

"Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection."

INCREASED RISK OF INFECTION (5/8)

Every article people point to when they say masks don't cause oxygen deprivation looks at surgical masks. Not only are there no studies about the safety of wearing cloth masks all day, day after day, any study would be invalid because almost every mask is different. (6/8)

The only "study" that shows masks MIGHT be effective discusses a model that starts with the ASSUMPTION that masks are 50% effective at stopping exhaled virus: alachuachronicle.com/research-does-… (7/8)

I continue to maintain that we are doing a massive experiment on the health of "essential" workers, and given that cloth masks have not been shown to be effective (in fact, the opposite has been shown), it should stop immediately. (8/8)