LogFAQs > #941800782

I think Nate Silver looked at the data and said that mask mandating states have around 15%~ reduction in transmission rates (or about as much as 20~ish F increase in heat) compared to note mask mandating states

soruce: https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1276240972062613505

Note that since it's correlational, it's more like "this passes the laugh test" levels of evidence rather than "this is confirmed science".

I *think* I remember some study of doctors, where they train super hard and definitely try to have a close to 100% adherence rate (replace masks every couple of hours as it gets harder to breathe, N95 masks fitted properly), you get around 30% transmission reduction.

So masks do help, using them properly does help a lot, but I think given what we know about super spreader events (i.e. in places where people sing, shout or talk in confined places) I do think that Gyms are substantially more risky than, say, running in a park, going to the beach or of course staying home.

Of course, and this is speculation on my part, viral load for many diseases reduces the severity (because it takes about a week for the immune system to ramp up to max after infection), even if you do catch COVID, the mask would probably at least halve, maybe 1/8th or 1/16th your viral load, which would make the symptoms much more likely to be mild (although note that even healthy people with little to no symptoms have damage in lungs, and some people who were like marathon athletes report being winded after climbing stairs months after the infection). So there probably are other positive effects from mask wearing that don't show up in raw case count statistics (we probably have to wait two or more weeks to see these even show up)

I would say that wiping down surfaces is probably security (pandemic? cleaniness?) theater, since if the virus persisted on surfaces we would probably see transmission rates much much much higher than we actually do. So seeing gyms do it doesn't mean that much. Although IIRC the virus lives on metal for a pretty long time, so ironically for weight lifting this is one of the few cases it might help.

If you do have harder trouble breathing, you might need to change your masks more often, as your breath causes the mask to "fill up" with your breath juice. Sweatbands might also help.