I am so accustomed to wearing a mask that the anti-mask rhetoric is something that I just can’t relate to. From the beginning, the correlational data about mask use and covid spread was strong enough that I was shocked that people even had a problem with wearing one in order to help others stay healthy. With the Delta variant having an R0 of about 5.0 I will continue to wear a mask for the foreseeable future even though I am fully vaccinated.
From an article authored by two Australian epidemiologists:
[
theconversation.com]
Put another way, 80% vaccination of adults pulls the effective reproductive rate down from 5.0 to 2.2, which is not enough to stop exponential spread. But a mix of mask-wearing, contact tracing and physical distancing will be enough to pull the effective reproductive rate to less than 1.0 — low enough to halt the spread of COVID-19.
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"It's nice to be nice to the nice." Frank Burns