It's accurate. A single layer mask made of quilters cotton has been shown to have a filter efficiency of ~9 without gaps[0]. Gaps in all unfitted masks (the type of masks worn by 99% of the citizenry) are thought to reduce efficiency by over 60%, so you're looking at ~9 *.6 = ~5% filter efficiency. That's worthless.
A surgical mask is a little better but not much. There's a reason the FDA, which regulates masks, still maintains that surgical masks are not meant to prevent the spread of aerosols[1], which the CDC has confirmed to be a primary mode of transmission. That's also why, if anyone remembers, you'd see "DOES NOT PREVENT THE SPREAD OF COVID-19" in big bold letters whenever you tried to buy masks on Amazon.
Honestly, anecdotal evidence should be enough. Why do people think that states without strict mask mandates have nearly identical infection rates as those with strict mandates?
Mask mandates don't work. They just don't, and people need to stop playing identity politics with that fact.
900k people did not die from COVID-19. This "model" is predicting deaths related to the response to COVID-19 (deaths to to increase drug usage, missed cancer screenings, etc.).
The second paragraph of the linked article clearly states this.
This headline is wildly click-baity and does not reflect the linked "study", however flawed, at all. The headline should be changed.
The "study" (really it's just a model) primarily investigated excess mortalities related to our response to COVID-19, NOT COVID-19 itself. The second paragraph states six drivers of all-cause mortality that were taken into consideration:
a) the total COVID-19 death rate, that is, all deaths directly related to COVID-19 infection
b) the increase in mortality due to needed health care being delayed or deferred during the pandemic
c) the increase in mortality due to increases in mental health disorders including depression, increased alcohol use, and increased opioid use
d) the reduction in mortality due to decreases in injuries because of general reductions in mobility associated with social distancing mandates
e) the reductions in mortality due to reduced transmission of other viruses, most notably influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and measles
f) the reductions in mortality due to some chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory disease, that occur when frail individuals who would have died from these conditions died earlier from COVID-19 instead.
Only 2 of these 6 factors are related to the virus itself; the rest are related to our response.
If anything, this model highlights how destructive our response was.
A surgical mask is a little better but not much. There's a reason the FDA, which regulates masks, still maintains that surgical masks are not meant to prevent the spread of aerosols[1], which the CDC has confirmed to be a primary mode of transmission. That's also why, if anyone remembers, you'd see "DOES NOT PREVENT THE SPREAD OF COVID-19" in big bold letters whenever you tried to buy masks on Amazon.
Honestly, anecdotal evidence should be enough. Why do people think that states without strict mask mandates have nearly identical infection rates as those with strict mandates?
Mask mandates don't work. They just don't, and people need to stop playing identity politics with that fact.
[0]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.0c03252 [1]: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/personal-protective-equi...