are mask mandates needed to reduce RSV and flu? would they make any difference?

[pstokely]

can you be an asymptomatic of RSV?

[Dorian Gray]

1. are they "needed?"

I mean, wearing masks may help prevent both illnesses. Please wear a mask if you'd like to. I have great ones from BOTN that I find super comfortable.

I don't think a mnadate will be welcome by the majority.

[Ace Rothstein]

2. Mask mandates aren't coming back unless there is a disease with a very high death rate.

[Bettie]

3. Well, I didn't have a cold for two years there

so, if people did mask, it would probably stop the spread of a lot of seasonal crud.

[Maine-i-ac]

4. They already did. Look at Flu infections and especially pediatric flu deaths during the pandemic.

CDC tracks through each season, the rates for Flu dwindled while widespread masking and isolation was in place.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2022-2023/NCHS41.html

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

5. Masking helped with flu

If I remember right, flu infections catered during the first flu season with covid mandates still in place.

That said, the mask mandates are never coming back unless we have a disease that's literally leaving bodies in the streets. Politically it's a nonstarter, practically there would be very little compliance and enforcement unless the death rate was approaching mass graves levels.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. I am still wearing my mask

[Ms. Toad]

7. No.

While RSV and influenza are both non-trivial illnesses (at least in certain populations), they do not have the long-term public health consequences COVID does. Mask mandates are warranted for COVID, but not for influenza or RSV.

That doesn't mean there is a problem with mask wearing for those who want some extra protection - just that it shouldn't be mandatory for RSV and influenza. Neither is mutating several times a year or creating long flu/rsv in 20% people who have had flu/rsv, and both are well known enough to be relatively certain there aren't long-term issues which will pop up years or decades from now.

[Meowmee]

8. For covid

Last edited Wed Oct 26, 2022, 01:54 AM - Edit history (1)

they are still needed. All medical facilities at the least for those you mentioned should require them imo. That is one of the places infectious diseases are spread, the other being schools and then public places indoors including mass transit. But we saw what happened with that for covid.

By the way, it has already been proven in studies done long ago that masks do prevent influenza spreading from one family member to another, it was published in journals. I assume it would work for colds as well and we know it works for covid. We also saw during the long phase of covid when people were masking that influenza rates dropped dramatically.

[Tomconroy]

9. Any mask study I looked at isn't very credible.

To really know if they work you would have to do something like divide a school in half. Half would wear masks all the time including at home, half wouldn't, during a big outbreak. But that will never happen.
On the other hand, they don't harm anyone and they might help.
But there aren't going to be any mask mandates. That's obvious.

[PortTack]

10. Japan had the lowest rates of covid, and death rates....and they never went into lockdown

Everyone there even b4 covid wore masks…hello

[TreasonousBastard]

11. We knew about masks in 1916, but every time we tried to...

get people to use them, it was like last year.

People are our worst enemy.

[tritsofme]

12. Mask mandates are not ever coming back.