Excellent article. I don't wear a mask nor do I see a need to, however, as far as mask wearers I could couldn't care less, since I thought "it can't hurt". Till I read your linked article. Now I see that it can hurt the wearer.
The medical source whose opinions you promote is a Dr. Russell
Blaylock [
*]. I'm quite willing to consider opinions that are at odds with the medical establishment, such as his. But I was really disappointed to see that he wrote about mere
possibilities, not certainties, and not even
approximate probabilities. So despite their overly broad range from mere inconvenience to death, his failure to quantify them disqualifies the article from being "
excellent" guidance to laymen. His interview comes across as
alarmist contrarian
click-bait. And as far as I can figure, Blaylock only addresses part of the issue: Transmission from
nonmasked people to masked people, but not from masked people to
nonmasked people. As I've already written:
When I wear a face-mask, I'm not protecting myself; there is truth in conclusions about that the protection provided by face-masks is imperfect to various degrees. Anyone without a well-fitted face-mask would be foolish to wade repeatedly into a CoVID-19-infested environment, and expect [their mask to make them] invulnerable to catching CoVID-19. But for medical care-givers [whose job requires] working 12-hour shifts, it's the best option they have. And the presumed protection can be even more imperfect for people or institutions that fail to make even simple efforts at maintaining [or replacing] those masks.
To support his public-health opinions, Blaylock argues [
*] by a shaky analogy to
tuberculosis [††]:
When a person has TB we have them wear a mask, not the entire community of non-infected.
I suppose that Blaylock is relying upon readers of his interview not knowing that, unlike people infected with CoVID-19, "People
[infected] with
latent TB do
not spread the disease". Where "latent TB", in the context of that internationally widespread disease, is a synonym for "
asymptomatic TB" [††]. I wish I knew whether that crucial difference is a consequence of CoVID-19 being viral, and TB being myco
bacterial.
Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accuмulation, to hypoxia, [....]
As experienced
breath-hold divers know, when they need to breathe
real soon now, their bodies don't sense an increasing shortage of O2, but instead, they sense the
accuмulation of
CO2 (yes, a nontoxic level that's on the low end of a range of CO2 concentrations that seems to culminate in the intimidatingly termed
hypercapnia), and
that is what triggers the human urge to
breathe in
more air. I consider the corresponding health threat alleged by Blaylock to be caused by wearing a mask to be quite
unconvincing: It's a matter of exchanging
gas molecules that are composed of only
2-atoms or
3-atoms thro' a mask whose pores or weave are unavoidably much wider,
Really, now: Wouldn't taking periodic breaks from the credible drawbacks of wearing a mask, in some safe place, be a satisfactory interim remedy for people experiencing such problems?
Let's keep our perspective: "
Headaches"? I've previously cited a 1st-person account of the ravages of CoVID-19 that afflict victims (i.e., people well on their ways to becoming dead) in some real-life worst cases [†]. Maybe some readers ought to refresh their memory.
[...] all the way to serious life-threatening complications.
Uh,
huh. So, how
likely are they? If we're going to live our lives so that we avoid any & all
possibilities that are "
life-threatening" but
not quantified, then many of us could cite many more threats that possibly end in death, and many confront people living ordinary lives, but are typically neglected. Notably, simply driving ourselves to a grocery hereabouts provides a statistically greater opportunity to be killed, e.g., by a collision with some confused tourist who makes a sudden left-hand turn across a few lanes of traffic. Not even the "deplorables" in "Fly-over Country" are immune from that risk.
Meanwhile, there are
other sources readily available, and they present opinions on the matter [‡] that are contrary to Blaylock's. But indepently of Blaylock's apparent "outsider" status with the medical establishment, I consider those others
much more credible.
-------
Generally: Straightforward clarifications by me to quoted content in this reply, e.g., to clarify
antecedents, are signified by bracketed text in blue.
Note
*: <
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/05/14/neurosurgeon-says-face-masks-pose-serious-risk-to-healthy-people-n392431>.
Note ††: "Tuberculosis". <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis>.
Note †: <
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-medical-worker-describes--terrifying-lung-failure-from-covid19-even-in-his-young-patients>.
Note ‡: <
https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/does-wearing-face-mask-increase-co2-levels>. Summary: No.