I hope this is the right place to post this and that it's not getting into forbidden territory. This site ran an article in its news section yesterday reporting that The World Health Organization updated its position to recommend masks for the general public. It contained a link to the actual WHO document, which covers mask-wearing by the general public on pages 6 to 8. The document lists several "potential benefits/advantages" and "potential harms/disadvantages."
The first benefit, as expected, was "reduced potential exposure risk from infected persons before they develop symptoms." No problem with that, but the remaining benefits listed were (and I'm not making this up):
- reduced potential stigmatization of individuals wearing masks to prevent infecting others;
- "making people feel they can play a role in contributing to stopping spread of the virus";
- reminding people to be compliant with other measures, such as hand hygiene and not touching their face;
- potential social and economic benefits such as a form of income for those making masks and "a form of cultural expression" encouraging public acceptance of protection measures in general.
The potential harms/disadvantages listed were:
- "potential increased risk of self-contamination due to the manipulation of a face mask and subsequently touching eyes with contaminated hands";
- potential self-contamination from masks that are not changed if they are wet or soiled
- potential headaches or difficulty breathing
- potential skin lesions
- difficulty communicating
- potential discomfort
- "a false sense of security, leading to potentially lower adherence to other critical preventive measures such as physical distancing and hand hygiene"'
- "poor compliance with mask wearing, in particular by young children"
There are three more listed that deal with disposing of used masks and covering people with specific challenges that would make mask-wearing difficult.
My personal position on masks is that - in practice rather than in theory - they are not doing much to stop the spread of the virus. That said, I believe people should comply with whatever rules are set in place by government officials or businesses.
However, it's disconcerting that the WHO considers such factors as making people "feel like" they're doing something or not making other people feel bad for wearing masks as benefits. On the whole, in my opinion, this document is one heck of a half-hearted and poorly supported recommendation for mask-wearing by the general public. The "harms/disadvantages" section pretty much describes how people are actually wearing masks. I was at a hair salon yesterday (finally!) where all employees and customers were wearing masks. In one corner of the room, three women were sitting at a proper social distance from one another. All three had pulled down their masks and were speaking loudly to each other to be heard over the background noise. So it's not just children who don't wear the masks properly.
I hope this isn't an inappropriate rant, but the news article says nothing more than that the WHO changed its stance. I don't think that provides a very complete picture of what the organization actually said.
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