Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
Seatbelts don’t work if you don’t wear them properly, and don’t prevent death in a car accident, yet they’re a fraction of as politically divisive.
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So if people were allowed to use a piece of sellotape or cotton in place of a the seatbelt which was fitted into the car, that wouldn't stop you being flung around like a crash dummy. So that's the equivalent with people using cloth or paper masks as opposed to the medical ones which do work much more effectively.
The whole seatbelts rabbit hole is fundamentally flawed anyway.
It should be nigh on obvious to anyone, and you can watch a video to show this quite easily, how a seatbelt in a car prevents you from being thrown around as much in the event of an impact (though in itself isn't always sufficient to prevent death or serious injury). It doesn't take much more digging to see that in an actual example of this, the one person in the crash which killed Diana who survived was wearing a seat belt and the others who didn't died.
The link there is obvious, can be seen, and can be justified categorically.
The link with masks is less obvious, less universally agreed on, less proven to make a difference. In the early days of the pandemic we had both the CMO and two of his then deputies all saying that wearing cloth face masks did little. This point hasn't really changed over time, indeed the only benefit is a possible reduction in transmission exiting from people who should be at home anyway. If you don't have covid, then wearing a mask does nothing for you, it does nothing for anyone else, it is just a visual sign we're in a pandemic and that you are complying with whatever the state tells you to do. If they said we needed to stand on the doorstep at 6pm and clap the health service every day then people would no doubt do it without questioning, which is very Orwellian.
If anyone really thinks the gaps in a cloth face mask are enough to stop a virus getting through it, they need to think about how big these are, even multiple layers, which stand a greater chance, don't always stop it getting through. If they did. then how come all this covid transmission is happening when everyone has had to wear masks in shops and PT since the end of November and in any enclosed public space since the middle of December, which is one month ago. If it worked, the transmission would be cut to within households within a matter of days, as households, pubs, restaurants etc is really the only indoor spaces you don't need to wear a mask in, unless you're exempt, which is a minority of people. Better masks would probably help more, but even then, you're still hitting tennis balls at scaffolding and expecting them to bounce back...