A Walk Around Gay Bangkok - July 4, 2020

[anddy]

6 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

Did I miss something here? Of course masks protect the wearer. Wearing a mask results in much less chance of the wearer getting the virus from an infected person to their nose and mouth, the degree of protection depending to a large extent on the type of mask. Masks protect both parties. I thought this is self evident.

you are of course right, especially pointing out the type of mask. I was implicitly only referring to the surgical masks that have been popular in Asia for years. Those offer very little protection to the wearer, which makes sense because that's not what they were designed for. Talking about an N95 respirator is a different matter, yes agreed. But hardly anyone wears those, and is is very uncomfortable to wear for long. The majority I suppose (just my guess) worn or to be worn by the general public are fabric masks, which also offer rather limited protection for the wearer, as (a) they are not tightly sealed on the face, especially around the nose, and (b) the virus can still enter through the eyes. They do however prevent aerosols containing the virus from being ejected into the surrounding air, as the image series posted by floridarob illustrates very well. That's where their epidemilogical value comes from. That's my understanding from everything I read over the months about masks. This is discussed in great detail and with supporting evidence including videos showing that aerosol-stopping effect here:

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-basic-dance-steps-everybody-can-follow-b3d216daa343

 

[anddy]

Back to the thread topic of gay nightlife:

I was at Soi 2 / DJ Station last night. Not wall-to-wall packed as it would be on a pre-Covid Saturday, but still very busy. Only the second floor was pretty empty, but ground floor very busy. Inside DJ Station from time to time they made an announcement over the PA asking people to put on their masks and to observe social distancing. The latter wasn't happening at all (impossible anyway), masks were up and down frequently, but on most people down most of the time (everyone had their drinks to take care of). Might as well leave the masks off entirely. 

 

[spoon]

This isnt as full as precovid? Definitely not my scene then lol but, do they have performance etc?

[ggobkk]

Photos indicate some improvement needed BUT already way ahead of the Texas and California and Florida beach cities

 

[vinapu]

2 hours ago, anddy said:

 

I was at Soi 2 / DJ Station last night. Not wall-to-wall packed as it would be on a pre-Covid Saturday, but still very busy. Only the second floor was pretty empty, but ground floor very busy. Inside DJ Station from time to time they made an announcement over the PA asking people to put on their masks and to observe social distancing. The latter wasn't happening at all (impossible anyway), masks were up and down frequently, but on most people down most of the time (everyone had their drinks to take care of). Might as well leave the masks off entirely. 

 

 

certainly social distancing at it's best  judging by the pictures

 

[PeterRS]

12 hours ago, anddy said:

you are of course right, especially pointing out the type of mask. I was implicitly only referring to the surgical masks that have been popular in Asia for years. Those offer very little protection to the wearer, which makes sense because that's not what they were designed for. Talking about an N95 respirator is a different matter, yes agreed. But hardly anyone wears those, and is is very uncomfortable to wear for long.

I think I must be missing something else here. That article makes no mention about NOT wearing surgical masks. It is about masks which people can make at home and the type of materials they should use. You state that the surgical masks many people wear offer very little protection. But it adds they are made for use in hospitals and in operating theatres where all sorts of infection are possible. I fail to understand how they do not give more than a reasonable protection to the wearer! Also we should all note that the article was written on April 23 - nearly 3 months ago when this type of face mask was in extremely short supply in many western countries. A great deal has changed since then!

I wear N95 masks but only because a friend brought some from New York in January last year when the pollution was so bad. He thought I might need them. I didnt. But they sure have come in handy this year. I totally agree. They are certainly very uncomfortable to wear due to the extra humidity and heat on your cheeks. But what do you want? To wear uncomfortable face masks when out in public? Or the far greater possibility of being infected with a virus which could kill us older folks? My choice is simple! 

Quote

 

As we saw in the first article, masks are widely used in East Asia: China, South Korea and Taiwan, but also Hong Kong and now Singapore. But these are not the only countries that trust masks. As of April 22nd, 2020, 51 countries mandate them in some public activities, including countries such as Germany or Taiwan. That’s over 25% of all countries ... 

Since usually nobody coughs in your face, authorities argued that the value of wearing a mask was low for average people. But for healthcare professionals, it was huge, because they get these droplets on the face all the time from patients that are sick and cough in front of them, when they intubate them, or in similar situations.

Since there were very few masks available, several authorities around the world decided to prioritize them for healthcare workers, and recommend against their use to the rest of the population. 

It was the right thing to prioritize healthcare workers, but instead of saying: “They’re much more useful to healthcare workers, so the right thing is to keep masks for them” they claimed that they were useless—or even dangerous—for the general public. That undermined the credibility of authorities ...

But there are no masks! There’s a global shortage of them. The few we have should be for healthcare workers. What do we do?

 

 

[anddy]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

You state that the surgical masks many people wear offer very little protection. But it adds they are made for use in hospitals and in operating theatres where all sorts of infection are possible. I fail to understand how they do not give more than a reasonable protection to the wearer! Also we should all note that the article was written on April 23 - nearly 3 months ago when this type of face mask was in extremely short supply in many western countries. A great deal has changed since then!

Yes, I said surgical masks offer little protection, because that's what I read over and over again from all kinds of sources, including the WHO. As for their use in operating theatres, their use their is to protect the operating wound from the surgeon's and nurses' respiratory aerosols and droplets to prevent infection of the wound, not the other way around; hence the name surgical mask.

However, as you also point out, a great deal has changed, especially when it comes to mask research. So I have to revise my stance entirely, and can back it up with research I found just today:

https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/news/your-mask-cuts-own-risk-65-percent/

I guess we are in full agreement now  

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, anddy said:

Yes, I said surgical masks offer little protection, because that's what I read over and over again from all kinds of sources, including the WHO. As for their use in operating theatres, their use their is to protect the operating wound from the surgeon's and nurses' respiratory aerosols and droplets to prevent infection of the wound, not the other way around; hence the name surgical mask.

Im sorry Anddy but your comments are still not entirely accurate. There is certainly a body of opinion suggesting that face masks do protect surgeons and theatre nurses. But I fully agree it is no longer universal. I believe this ending to a long article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine sums up the thinking re use of masks in operating theatres. It is dated 2015.

Quote

It is important not to construe an absence of evidence for effectiveness with evidence for the absence of effectiveness. While there is a lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of facemasks, there is similarly a lack of evidence supporting their ineffectiveness. With the information currently available, it would be imprudent to recommend the removal of facemasks from surgery. Instead, in the medical field where common practice can so easily become dogma, it is necessary to recognise the constant need to maintain a healthy scepticism towards established beliefs and to periodically re-evaluate and critically assess their scientific merit.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/

Another more recent article from the International Journal of Infection Control comes to the same conclusion - 10788-Article Text-43346-1-10-20130323.pdf

So there is no absolute agreement that masks in an operating theatre do not offer protection to the wearers. And without universal agreement, my mask stays on!!

[Guest]

There were papers published several months back, on airborne Covid virus attached to droplets.   Having read those, I decided to wear a mask irrespective of what the WHO said.

I've also noticed countries with a culture of wearing masks tend to get better results with covid.   

 

As for mask comfort, I took an FFP3 mask with me to Thailand.    I believe it's roughly equivalent to N99.   I wore this when air pollution was very bad and on the MRT when Covid started.   It can be worn for long periods of time, with a slight inconvenience.

After wearing this more than anticipated, it was not so fresh.     In Thailand, I struggled to buy replacements corresponding to a suitable standard, but eventually found some FFP2 masks at Mr DIY.     These were not comfortable.

Back in the UK, I managed to get some FFP2 masks, as all the FFP3 ones were sold out.   The FFP2 mask is a very similar shape to the FFP3 mask, but is more comfortable to wear, as it seems to restrict airflow less.    I believe FFP2 is roughly equivalent to N95.      I could wear this for a long time.

 

So with very little inconvenience from wearing a mask and some evidence they work,  I wear masks indoors in public buildings.

 

Governments seem slower to change their opinion based on evidence and risk v reward.  

 

 

 

 

[anddy]

4 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Im sorry Anddy but your comments are still not entirely accurate. There is certainly a body of opinion suggesting that face masks do protect surgeons and theatre nurses. But I fully agree it is no longer universal.

Is this related to protection from Covid or in general? In pre-Covid times I'm not sure exactly what the mask is supposed to protect the surgeons & nurses from. Again I guess I wasn't entirely clear in my wording about the purpose of the surgical mask - it was ORIGINALLY invented to protect the wound, not the surgeon/nurses. Is that correct or not? I'm very sure I did read exactly that somewhere a while ago. Now, in Covid times they might very well have acquired the second purpose of protecting the operating staff. 

4 hours ago, PeterRS said:

It is important not to construe an absence of evidence for effectiveness with evidence for the absence of effectiveness.

Thanks for this quote, that's exactly what I thought when they kept saying (in Jan/Feb.March) that masks are useless because "there is no evidence". There may well be no evidence simply because no one studied this particular question because there was no need. Not there is a need, and evidence is produced. Meanwhile, while there was "no evidence" I's also fully agree with:

4 hours ago, PeterRS said:

And without universal agreement, my mask stays on!!

Exactly, there is ZERO downside, but potential upside (evidence or not), so the choice seems clear. 

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, anddy said:

Is this related to protection from Covid or in general? In pre-Covid times I'm not sure exactly what the mask is supposed to protect the surgeons & nurses from. Again I guess I wasn't entirely clear in my wording about the purpose of the surgical mask - it was ORIGINALLY invented to protect the wound, not the surgeon/nurses. Is that correct or not? I'm very sure I did read exactly that somewhere a while ago. Now, in Covid times they might very well have acquired the second purpose of protecting the operating staff. 

No I was referring to general pre-covid use. Surgical masks have been used by operating theatre staff for about a century. Initially it was believed they protected th patients.  A photo from the 1930s presently in the Seattle Museum of History and Industry shows all theatre staff wearing masks, as does one from the 1960s. Now there is certainly a degree of debate about the  need also to protect theatre staff. But having 4 doctors in my family, I can tell you that my surgeon cousin would never enter an operating theatre without a mask for the protection of him and his patient. The one person who often does not wear a mask nowadays is the anaesthesiologist.

I guess the only point I have been trying to make is that in todays covid 19 world, wearing a mask is equally as important for the wearers as those in whose company they find themselves. With two weeks before an infection becomes the illness and the ease with which the virus can be passed during those two weeks, anyone not wearing a mask risks putting a large number of people in hospital. And we now know that this horrible virus can have much longer term consequences for the brain, lungs and other organs. 

[Jasper]

Just when you thought all the mask discussions were gone for good.

[ggobkk]

Let it go, guys...

[anddy]

14 hours ago, Jasper said:

Just when you thought all the mask discussions were gone for good.

 

10 hours ago, ggobkk said:

Let it go, guys...

Sorry for this lengthy back and forth. Please don't take it as yet another mask discussion, but to me it was rather educational about some things that I am grateful to @PeterRS for correcting. 

I am aware this was too long and detailed (hair splitting? lol) for a forum thread and would be better discussed in person or maybe PM. Sorry for the boredom and rolling eyes  

 

P.S.

For some real and grotesque mask disputes don't look in this thread but here LOL:

https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-maskers-are-posting-selfies-wearing-bogus-netted-masks-2020-7