This is somewhat misleading. Here’s a section from near the beginning of a scientific review I linked in my reply to @ChuckEffingNorris@lemmy.ml:

To reduce spread of respiratory diseases, we need to understand the mechanisms of spread. There is strong and consistent evidence that respiratory pathogens including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, tuberculosis, and other coronaviruses such as MERS and SARS-1, are transmitted predominantly via aerosols. Infected individuals, whether symptomatic or not, continuously shed particles containing pathogens, which remain viable for several hours and can travel long distances. [Emphasis mine.] SARS-CoV-2 is shed mainly from deep in the lungs, not the upper respiratory tract, and the viral load is higher in small aerosols (generated in the lower airways) than in larger droplets (generated in upper airways). Whereas large respiratory droplets emitted when people cough or sneeze fall quickly by force of gravity without much evaporation, those below 100 µm in diameter become (bio)aerosols. Even particles tens of microns in diameter at release will shrink almost immediately by evaporation to the point that under typical conditions they can remain airborne for many minutes. In contrast with droplet transmission, which is generally assumed to occur via a single ballistic hit, the risk of airborne transmission increases incrementally with the amount of time the lung lining is exposed to pathogen-laden air, in other words, with time spent indoors inhaling contaminated air.

Respiratory infections may theoretically also be transmitted by droplets, by direct contact, and possibly by fomites (objects that have been contaminated by droplets), but the dominant route is via respiratory aerosols. The multiple streams of evidence to support this claim for SARS-CoV-2 include the patterning of spread (mostly indoors and especially during mass indoor activities involving singing, shouting, or heavy breathing), direct isolation of viable virus from the air and in air ducts in ventilation systems, transmission between cages of animals connected by air ducts, the high rate of asymptomatic transmission (i.e., passing on the virus when not coughing or sneezing), and transmission in quarantine hotels when individuals in different rooms shared corridor air but did not meet or touch any common surface.

Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review

I recommend giving this a read when you have the time, it should hopefully answer any questions you have and better than I can.

An assumed droplet and contact mode of transmission leads to prevention policies that center on handwashing and surface cleansing, maintaining 2-m physical distancing, wearing medical masks (whose waterproof backing is designed to stop droplets) within that 2-m distance (especially when attending an infected patient), using physical barriers (e.g., plastic screens) and providing health-care workers with higher-grade respiratory protection only when undertaking AGMPs. However, if the virus is transmitted significantly by the airborne route, different prevention policies are needed, oriented to controlling air quality in indoor spaces (e.g., ventilation and filtration), reducing indoor crowding and time spent indoors, wearing masks whenever indoors, careful attention to mask quality (to maximize filtration) and fit (to avoid air passing through gaps), taking particular care during indoor activities that generate aerosols (e.g., speaking, singing, coughing, and exercising), and providing respirator-grade facial protection to all staff who work directly with patients (not just those doing AGMPs)

This is why I specified N95 respirators in my first comment. If you are unfamiliar, N95 is a NIOSH air filtration rating, which is used to describe the ability of a respirator to protect the wearer from airborne solid and liquid particulates. The review I linked goes into more details on this as well. I recommended N95 or better specifically because Covid is the illness I’m most concerned with avoiding, and the evidence suggests that they provide meaningful protection over lower grade respirators or surgical masks. Another quote from the link above that stood out to me:

The certification of surgical masks for particle/bacterial filtering efficiency (P/BFE) does not reflect equivalence to respirators as the filtration is typically compromised by poor face seal. The ASTM F2100-21 P/BFE certification, for example, requires at least 95% filtration against 0.1-µm particles and at least 98% against aerosolized Staphylococcus aureus, but this is on a sample of the mask clamped in a fixture, not on a representative face. In terms of filtering aerosols, N95 respirators outperform surgical masks between 8- and 12-fold. The effectiveness of certified surgical mask material against transmission when used as a filter was demonstrated in a hamster SARS-CoV-2 model. Infected hamsters were separated from non-infected ones by a partition made of surgical mask material; when the partition was in place, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was reduced by 75%.

In addition to protecting the wearer, respirators provide very effective source control by dramatically limiting the amount of respiratory aerosols emitted by infectious individuals. In one study, risk of infection was reduced approximately 74-fold when infected, and susceptible individuals both wore well-fitting FFP respirators compared to when both wore surgical masks.

As for one-way masking, well, it is unfortunately significantly less effective (from what I understand), and is a big part of why I’m so concerned by others not masking. I simply cannot avoid being around others all the time, and their lack of effort is directly endangering me and my wife. If it really all came down to personal choice, I wouldn’t care if people wanted to risk their health. Still, while I don’t have any studies or anything to link you at the moment specifically on the effectiveness of one-way masking, all I know is that I mask and don’t get sick, and they don’t mask and do get sick. It’s anecdotal, sure, and I’m certain the mask is not the only thing affecting this, but as far as I can see it’s the largest difference in our behavior. I’ve heard as well that wearing a respirator will reduce viral load should you be infected despite the filter, and so your sickness will be less severe, but I don’t have any evidence on hand for this.

I do not have kids, and I don’t know about all of my coworkers, but I know the overwhelming majority of them do not have kids either.

Nah, not yet at least, I’m just borrowing a Hexbear emoji. If you view the source on a comment using a non-unicode emoji, you can see that it’s actually just an embedded image, which you can then copy and paste to use in comments from any instance. It’s a little unwieldy, but if you know the name of the emoji you want to use it’s usually pretty easy to find what you are looking for.

That's right folks, remember not to engage with any opposing ideology in an honest or intellectually rigorous manner! If someone is critical of your beliefs, it is important to simply ignore them and never seriously consider either of your positions.

Within the confines of the law, your best chance at pressuring Harris to change her position is to very vocally demand the Democrats cease support of Israel immediately, and that if they don't then you will not support or vote for them. What other leverage do you have over them?

Regardless, women’s sports were definitely created to exclude men, if not explicitly, then by necessity, since prior to that there was only one category that men or women were allowed to compete in, but women couldn’t truly compete in those sports against the men.

I'm pretty sure we are talking about the same thing here, but you are attributing it to women being physically unable to compete versus men, which while it can be a relevant concern depending on the sport, was historically not really the reason they were excluded. Women were heavily discouraged by men to participate even though they were technically allowed to. There's actually some really interesting connections between women's sports and feminist movements that help make this connection more apparent, particularly biking and the suffragette movement. I don't have anything to link on hand but I definitely recommend reading about it. It's still easy to see this in the modern day if you look at competitive activities where there is no possible argument of a biological advantage, like e-sports or chess, where women could easily be just as successful as men, if the cultures of those games weren't so dominated by men who view those spaces as theirs, and who view women who come to participate as invaders.

nice, good work mods

Good read, thanks for sharing this! It's very frustrating to me how often discussions of the Biden administration completely ignore COVID, so the criticism is refreshing.

lmao speak for yourself, i sure as fuck won't be voting for butcher biden

He sure is effective at killing brown people at least! Good at disabling as many people as possible with COVID too. He's quite effective at opposing the rights of trans people as well. Oh, and he's the best at deportation, can't forget that!