Don't ask me why but I've been thinking a lot about how effective masking has been during COVID. I'm not going to write a lot about this topic because I think the Internet has way too much medical advice from people who have not graduated from medical school. There's no hard data on this but I suspect a leading cause of death stems from getting serious medical advice from people who have not graduated from medical school. I don't think real doctors are always accurate but I think they have a much better batting average than non-real doctors.
I keep seeing these discussions about "Do masks work?" and it seems to me that's like asking, "Do medicines work?" Some do and some don't and it depends greatly on, first of all, which ones you're talking about and, secondly, how you use them. Does anyone really think all masks are equally effective and that they're always worn properly?
When I have gone places where I felt I should be masked, I have worn this kind, an N95 which my physician recommended. And when I have worn them to the offices of other doctors — my dentist, my orthopedist, my podiatrist, etc. — I have usually been complimented for my selection. My urologist was even wearing the same model.
But when in public the last couple of years, I see a lot of masks that look like thin cloth…or look like they've been selected for looks, not prevention of disease…or that someone just grabbed something cheap because they had to wear a mask to gain entrance somewhere. An awful lot of them don't know it's supposed to fit tight and not be worn under your nose.
My conclusion is that masks may be useful but the studies that try to determine if they are aren't. Some of them include pre-COVID or non-COVID data. None of them seem to differentiate between high-quality masks and those made of the cheapest-possible cloth. And none of them really track how and when the people who wear them wear them.
Everything above this paragraph was written a few days ago and then I stopped, planning to finish this piece later. Then Rob Rose, a devout reader of this site, sent me this link to a very good article about this. And of course, I say it's a very good article because it aligns with what I was already thinking.
It was written by an emergency medicine physician at Yale and posted by an epidemiologist. On a question like this, you should be listening to people like that and not, say, people who write comic books and cartoons. Which is what I'll be spending the rest of the day doing.