This is exactly what the article talks about. From a public health perspective what you care about is the marginal benefit per percentage of masked population. The argument here is that it is spectacularly low, which we’ve known from RCTs even before COVID.
Marginal benefit per percentage of masked population sounds like a very flawed metric for me.
As an individual, it's not for me to worry about. What I'd want to know if a room full of masked people is safer for me than a room where some people aren't wearing masks.
The marginal benefit, I'd assume, would be low if most people can't choose whether to be in such an environment. But I can. Masks working well wouldn't contradict them having little marginal benefit, as, say, 10% of unmasked people might be the 10% that have covid (and, let's be honest here, there is a correlation, since anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and anti-whatever tend to be the same people).
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This is exactly what the article talks about. From a public health perspective what you care about is the marginal benefit per percentage of masked population. The argument here is that it is spectacularly low, which we’ve known from RCTs even before COVID.
Marginal benefit per percentage of masked population sounds like a very flawed metric for me.
As an individual, it's not for me to worry about. What I'd want to know if a room full of masked people is safer for me than a room where some people aren't wearing masks.
The marginal benefit, I'd assume, would be low if most people can't choose whether to be in such an environment. But I can. Masks working well wouldn't contradict them having little marginal benefit, as, say, 10% of unmasked people might be the 10% that have covid (and, let's be honest here, there is a correlation, since anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and anti-whatever tend to be the same people).