General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNew England Journal of Medicine: Face masks may be helping to provide immunity
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/face-masks-could-giving-people-covid-19-immunity-researchersFace masks may be inadvertently giving people Covid-19 immunity and making them get less sick from the virus, academics have suggested in one of the most respected medical journals in the world.
The commentary, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, advances the unproven but promising theory that universal face mask wearing might be helping to reduce the severity of the virus and ensuring that a greater proportion of new infections are asymptomatic.
If this hypothesis is borne out, the academics argue, then universal mask-wearing could become a form of variolation (inoculation) that would generate immunity and thereby slow the spread of the virus in the United States and elsewhere as the world awaits a vaccine.
It comes as increasing evidence suggests that the amount of virus someone is exposed to at the start of infection - the infectious dose - may determine the severity of their illness. Indeed, a large study published in the Lancet last month found that viral load at diagnosis was an independent predictor of mortality in hospital patients.
Wearing masks could therefore reduce the infectious dose that the wearer is exposed to and, subsequently, the impact of the disease, as masks filter out some virus-containing droplets.
FarPoint
(12,335 posts)Focus on the standard COVID-19 precautions and protocols....
rzemanfl
(29,556 posts)LisaL
(44,973 posts)We don't have a vaccine or a cure.
So what you got is a mask.
FarPoint
(12,335 posts)I just don't want people say.. reusing a mask without changing, washing etc for example...plus if it help fine but such discussion and beliefs can take one off the Protocols and risk clinical consequences....Just keep it simple essentially.
gulliver
(13,180 posts)Let's say you have a fifteen-minute conversation with a COVID patient without a mask. You inhale, say, fifteen million viral particles spread evenly throughout your lungs and sinuses. How long would it have taken to reach fifteen million particles if you had only inhaled, say, a few thousand, because you wore a mask and they did too? That time is extra time for your immune system to respond.
FarPoint
(12,335 posts)Maybe public discussion at this time is a risk as we already have tRumpsters non compliance to deal with and too much variable speculation could become more confusing....
FarPoint
(12,335 posts)It's entertaining discuss but compliance with COVID-19 precautions remains my simple focus...that's all I'm saying. .
ProfessorGAC
(64,995 posts)News like this isn't going to dissuade people already cooperating.
It's giving them another reason TO wear a mask, not to quit wearing one.
Because now, there's more evidence that the mask protects the wearer, not just others.
That adds to the reasons to cooperate.
gulliver
(13,180 posts)This new information, if borne out, simply makes it clearer and clearer that those precautions were correct.
Bettie
(16,089 posts)this simply points out a possible additional benefit of masks.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)is the immediate rejection and denial of a peer reviewed hypothesis.
"Focus on the standard COVID-19 precautions and protocols...."
The allowance of one does not imply the denial of another. That is also irrational.
Seems you're creating a pattern here.
Mme. Defarge
(8,027 posts)The L.A. Times had a story on it a few months ago but it didnt get much attention overall. It makes a considerable difference for me if I have a sound reason to believe that my health and safety is not completely dependent on the behavior of others.
empedocles
(15,751 posts)She attributed her good health to being exposed to all sorts of viruses and germs present in the classroom
Well said.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,583 posts)This simple act needs to be emphasized for the greater benefit of all.
Of course, we need to keep searching for possible ways to stop or even slow the spread. But there is no reason at all to disregard this important tool.
We can chew gum and walk at the same time.
gristy
(10,667 posts)We should keep searching for OTHER possible ways to stop or even slow the spread. But I'd be shocked if, except for a vaccine, anything is found to beat a facemask.
Hugin
(33,120 posts)A combination of those practices seems to be effective.
FarPoint
(12,335 posts)Igel
(35,296 posts)Not convinced, but open to the possibility.
I honestly think that a fair number of posters didn't even bother to read past the subject line.
jpak
(41,757 posts)Unrec
FarPoint
(12,335 posts)So, let's continue our reiteration of essential compliance of COVID-19 precautions and Protective Protocols.
Buckeyeblue
(5,499 posts)It makes sense to me that a larger the infectious dose, the higher than chance that you would have a severe infection. I'm going from memory here, but wasn't the same (or a similar) conclusion made with HIV? Maybe the difference was the viral load of the person passing on the virus. But I still see it as a similar conclusion.
w0nderer
(1,937 posts)Yavin4
(35,433 posts)Wearing masks, social distancing, testing, and contact tracing all combined would drive down the infection rate to almost 0. See NY as an example. The virus cannot live unless it's in a host. Take away that host, and the virus dies.
If we had been taking basic social measures from the start, again see NY as an example, we would have this thing under control and life would be returning to normal.
phylny
(8,378 posts)scipan
(2,341 posts)If you had a real good test, isolate program for all those coming in from other countries, maybe? But I don't see even just the US getting rid of it. We have so many idiots here.