Wow! I got a lot of replies to my post! It's going to take a few days to reply to all (which is exactly the reason why I stopped posting in this thread a couple of years ago ...)
Originally Posted by
fransknorge
Still citing the Cochrane study even when its author has themselves said it does not mean masks do not work, but that they are not studied well.
Or the masks contains cancer inducing toxins that is limited to a subset of masks from Korea and explains those substance disappear a few minutes after opening.
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I'm not surprised that the authors say so. During the past three years, most "experts" in the field have claimed that face masks are the best safeguard against transmission, and people claiming otherwise have been censored on social media. The result of their study is really humiliating for all those experts. I saw a TV interview with Fauci where he was confronted with it, and he just stumbled out an answer that "there are other studies," without giving any details.
By using common sense, it's quite obvious that the emperor is naked. SARS-Cov-2 is around 1 micron, and it's mainly transmitted via aerosols, that are between 10-60 microns. Most face masks have holes that are between 80-500 microns, meaning that most aerosols and viruses easily can pass through.
While saying that, I do agree that there is a possibility that a portion of the viruses may get stuck in the mask. (After all, everybody that has worn a mask has noticed that they do get wet.) But that's not necessarily a good thing. If we assume that a human being breathes out eight times a minute, and if we assume that a face mask can stop 10% of the viruses, it means that after one hour, a face mask is filled with 50 times the amount of viruses as exists in a single breath. The face mask is actually a virus bomb. It needs to be handled in the correct way, and that means washing hand before and after touching it. But many airlines required passengers to put the mask on between each sip of drink or bite of food, and that is certainly not the way to go.
So, while I do believe that there could be a small theoretical reduction of virus transmission by using face masks, that theoretical benefit turns negative when masks are handled incorrectly.
When it comes to the issue of toxins, I read a study about it, but it's a couple of years ago, I don't remember where I saw it, and I don't have time to look for it now, but it appeared to be a good scientific study.