I don't think so because the forum is designed for Bitcoin discussions.
You can't discuss Bitcoin if you are sick or dead.
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
I get the impression that the anti-authority streak of many contributors here results in the forum having more than its share of participants who are covid19 deniers.
Just like it's important for the health of a geographic community to be well informed, it's important for the health of an online community to be well informed. Due to conference and events its even possible for BCT members to transmit the virus to each other! ---- though, I agree that is much less of a concern.
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
by now there is no evidence that it helps to prevent or reduce virus infection,
That is a phenomenal piece of misinformation. Because it's unethical to conduct a randomized-controlled test for live infections, all the studying in actual humans is extremely underpowered-- it's stuck with very few participants, poor compliance, testing too late when they're probably not very contagious, etc. When you have an underpowed test the most common outcome is that the finding is not statistically significant.
It's like saying that "there is no evidence that parachutes improve survival when jumping out of planes" -- because virtually no one is jumping out of planes without them and some of the few that do survive.
So, instead we get
stuff like natural experiments where an aircraft flies from NY to China with a person with swine flu on it, and zero people on board with masks get sick while 47% of the unmasked "control group" people got sick. Was it due to the masks, or was it simply that people with masks were more careful in general? We can't be completely sure. The purpose of having a randomized control trial is to eliminate issues like that, but we can't go around intentionally infecting people with swine flu.
The particular study you're linking too was frustrated by detecting extremely low levels of viruses in *all* samples. For example for coronavirus (OC43) they only detected the virus in droplets in the breath of 3 of 10 parties with the virus and no mask, while they detected it in 0 of 11 with the virus and a mask. Yet we *know* these viruses spread via dropplets. Their problem was that they either weren't testing people while they were contagious-- e.g. because the most contagious period was before symptoms showed, as is believed to be the case for sars-cov-2-- or their measurement approach was just busted. But regardless, in every case the mask reduced the levels they detected.
The problem was that their test was so underpowered that even an
infinity fold reduction in rate was not statistically significant.
If the same approach study had also tested a six foot thick lead lined concrete wall, it would have also concluded that there was
no evidence that it prevented the spread of OC43! No virus particles would have been detected on the other side of the wall,
just like the mask. It would have been nice if they did include that, because then we could go around saying that there is no evidence that a mask works less well than a six foot thick lead lined concrete wall, and we'd be just as technically correct. And while it would also be a stupid and misleading claim, it would probably be less misleading than the claim that masks are completely ineffective which you've extracted from that paper.
Here is the image you couldn't link:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpeople.xiph.org%2F%7Egreg%2Ftemp%2Fmasks.png&t=665&c=y2gEpIGC_RSm0Q)
If every in the world wore a mask of so so quality it would have lowered infection rates.
Simple test is stand 3ft in front of a glass window and sneeze with zero effort to block or deflect the sneeze.
You will see droplets on that glass window.
The stand in front of the glass window with this mask
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y79K1PodX58a simple mask made from mens clean underwear. obviously not n95.
sneeze at the window form 3 feet away and I guarantee you the moisture droplets will be reduced greatly.
I made a mask based on the youtube video above in under 30 seconds and while I know it won't help germs entering my eyes nose or mouth it will protect people from my germs of a sneeze or cough or even when I am speaking.
If people are willing they could make youtube videos of the underwear mask they made and we could post them somewhere some place