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    Re: One more word on masks (in a surgical context) Archived Message

    Posted by Raskolnikov on August 12, 2020, 10:03 am, in reply to "One more word on masks (in a surgical context)"

    Wound infection is not virus transmission.

    Secondly, if this was such groundbreaking research you would think the medical world would have taken it up and discarded their masks, saving a lot of money in the process.

    The effectiveness of a mask in reducing contamination varies with the mask's shape, the
    materials of which it is made, and the way it is
    worn (io-ii). While it has been shown that
    facial movements behind a mask can increase
    wound contamination (I2), it has not been shown
    that wearing a mask makes very much difference
    to the contamination of the theatre environment
    (13) or that the number of airborne
    bacteria can in any way be correlated with
    wound infection     (I4,I5). It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all but operating in
    silence.

    This is a quote from the paper. Note the two bolded sections. In the first he talks of correlation between airborne bacteria and wound infection but this has nothing to do with the transmission or airborne bacteria when wearing/not wearing masks.

    The second notes that minimum contamination could be be best achieved by operating in silence, i.e. not opening your mouth (I'm going to walk past the wide open comedy door here ) which implies that there IS a correlation between having an open/exposed mouth and transmission of airborne bacteria.

    So, I'm not "challenging" the evidence as such, but regardless of whether this experiment was correct or not (and the fact that it hasn't changed surgical practice suggests it didn't have much of an impact) it has no bearing on wearing a mask to reduce transmission of Covid19 in the normal environment.

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