Chris Martensen looks at the evidence for wearing masks to reduce the viral inoculum, including the work of Monica Gandhi, discussed on this site here, and again here
The data that Chris talks about includes cruise ship outbreaks with and without masks, factory outbreaks with masks, and animal (and human) studies that show the greater the initial viral inoculum, the worse the resulting disease, across a range of diseases.
He also takes a quick look at the situation in Japan. Tokyo, aparently, had no lockdowns, a population of 23 million people, and have had a total of 414 deaths.
Even with 414 deaths, however, recent seroprevalence tests in Tokyo show almost 50% of the residents have antibodies (and therefore, hopefully some kind of immunity).
Think about that. 50% of the city has antibodies, and the entire city of 23 million had only 400 odd deaths. Universal mask wearing is one of the factors that are suspected for this result. I could also mention Taiwan (again) as a what a success story against Covid looks like. I wonder what the seroprevalence in Taipei is?
The evidence is certainly growing that universal mask wearing does indeed protect the population from severe illness, and might actually be the easiest way to herd immunity. Herd immunity, that is, with almost all infections being asymptomatic. Herd immunity, essentially for free.
As I’ve said before, I have a lot of time for Chris’ ability to gather and analyse data. I’ve seen him change his mind when the data changes, and I, personally, have got a lot out of his analyses over the years.
