New England Journal of Medicine: Face masks may be helping to provide immunity

[alterfurz]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/face-masks-could-giving-people-covid-19-immunity-researchers

Face 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]

1. This is not the time for such irrational concepts.

Focus on the standard COVID-19 precautions and protocols....

[rzemanfl]

2. How does this not? n/t

[LisaL]

5. Masks are the standard precautions.

We don't have a vaccine or a cure.
So what you got is a mask.

[FarPoint]

13. Yes... Yes mask is protocol...

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]

8. It's far from irrational.

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]

15. I understand the concept...sure...

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]

18. Another time ...I say.

It's entertaining discuss but compliance with COVID-19 precautions remains my simple focus...that's all I'm saying. .

[ProfessorGAC]

20. But, This Is The Opposite

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]

21. Can't go wrong complying with precautions.

This new information, if borne out, simply makes it clearer and clearer that those precautions were correct.

[Bettie]

17. Masks are among the standard precautions and protocols

this simply points out a possible additional benefit of masks.

[LanternWaste]

22. I would hazard the irrational concept...

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]

3. Glad to see this view getting some traction.

The L.A. Times had a story on it a few months ago but it didn’t 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]

6. My wife taught school for decades, and never caught colds, the flu, etc.

She attributed her good health to being exposed to all sorts of viruses and germs present in the classroom

[Hugin]

7. +1

Well said.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Face masks are an important part of the way we approach covid19.

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]

9. face masks stop or even slow the spread

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]

11. The only triad we have right now is distancing, staying home, and masks over the pie hole.

A combination of those practices seems to be effective.

[FarPoint]

16. Exactly....

[Igel]

10. Read this a few days ago.

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]

12. Commentary - not peer reviewed science

Unrec

[FarPoint]

19. Very, very good point.

So, let's continue our reiteration of essential compliance of COVID-19 precautions and Protective Protocols.

[Buckeyeblue]

14. Proven or unproven, it's a good argument to wear your damn mask

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]

23. to keep track of it n/t

[Yavin4]

24. We can get rid of this virus without a vaccine

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]

25. Fantastic point!

[scipan]

26. Too much traveling between countries.

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.