10 Lone Tree Voice
December 9, 2021
M
MASKS FROM PAGE 1
and daily deaths among those with COVID-19 recently hitting numbers higher than they did during the first wave in spring 2020 — coronavirus hospitalizations in Colorado had for months been creeping up toward last December’s peak. And while numbers so far this month suggest hospitalizations may finally be coming back down, Colorado’s number of COVID-19 patients still sits high above what it was during most other parts of the pandemic. Colorado had 1,368 people hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 as of Dec. 3 this year, according to state data. Colorado had the 10th-highest COVID-19 hospital demand in the United States as of early November, according to a Nov. 3 report by the Colorado School of Public Health. But with the public hearing so many concerns about masks and mask effectiveness — and about vaccines — why wear a mask? Why get vaccinated when so many people already have been? Colorado Community Media spoke to Douglas and reviewed other sources of information below to address those questions. Like ‘sand through a chain-link fence’ At a contentious public comment session in front of Arapahoe County’s elected leaders after Tri-County Health issued its school mask order in August, a man offered an evocative picture of how he thought masks interact with the coronavirus. “If you took a fist of sand and threw it through a chain-link fence, imagine how much of it would go through,” the man said during the meeting, noting how small the virus is. A post on a popular social media page last year, focusing specifically on N95 masks, said: “COVID 19 virus particle size is 125 nanometers (0.125 microns); the range is 0.06 microns to .14 microns,” the post said, according to a USA Today fact-check report. “The N95 mask filters down to 0.3 microns. So, N95 masks block few, if any, virions (virus particles).” A micron is one one-thousandth of a millimeter — it’s also referred to as a micrometer. But there’s more to it than that. A COVID-19 virus particle exists on a tiny scale — around 0.1 microns in size — but it is always bonded to something larger, an expert told USA Today for the report. In other words, masks don’t have to stop bare virus particles alone. “There is never a naked virus floating in the air or released by people,” Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who specializes in airborne transmission of viruses, told USA Today. The virus attaches to water droplets or aerosols — really small droplets — that are generated by breathing, talking, coughing and so on. These consist of water, mucus protein and other biological material and are all larger than 1 micron, USA Today reported. Those points were echoed in a research article published in the journal City and Environment Interactions and available online in May 2020, a piece that also suggested the
Children hold signs protesting Jeffco Schools’ mask mandate for students ages 3-11.
use of masks indoors and improving ventilation to combat COVID-19. See that article at tinyurl.com/MaskArticleCity. Douglas, the local health chief, has said masks have been shown to be “50-70% effective.” The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website says: “Multi-layer cloth masks can both block up to 5070% of … fine droplets and particles and limit the forward spread of those that are not captured.” Another speaker at that Arapahoe County commissioners’ meeting in August, from Centennial, said: “If you want to wear a mask, wear it. If you don’t, then don’t. If your guys’ mask works so well, why do I have to wear one? Why does my kid have to wear one?” The issue arose again at a Nov. 22 Arapahoe commissioners’ meeting, where Commissioner Nancy Sharpe said: “I do think there’s a level of personal responsibility ... They should wear them if they want to wear them and if they need to wear them.” Masks are primarily intended to reduce the emission of droplets toward others, an effect known as “source control,” as opposed to “wearer protection,” the CDC’s website says. But studies also demonstrate that cloth mask materials can also reduce wearers’ exposure to infectious droplets through filtration, including filtration of fine droplets and particles less than 10 microns. “The relationship between source control and wearer protection is likely complementary and possibly synergistic, so that individual benefit increases with increasing community mask use,” the website adds. See the long list of studies the CDC cites about mask effectiveness and related topics on the bottom of that page at tinyurl.com/MaskStudiesData. “By the way, we often forget that this is (spreading) because a very large chunk — maybe 60% of COVID
PHOTO BY BOB WOOLEY
Parents protesting the Tri-County Health Department mask order for kids ages 2 to 11 pray outside the Adams County Government Center on Aug. 24 before a county PHOTO BY LIAM ADAMS board of commissioners public hearing.
cases — (come from) people who are asymptomatic or presymptomatic,” Douglas said, using terms for people who have COVID-19 without symptoms or whose symptoms have yet to arise. For a look at other mask data, see our previous story at tinyurl.com/ MoreMaskData. Because masks aren’t a cure-all, physical distancing; meeting outdoors rather than indoors; avoiding large groups; and improving ventilation by opening windows or running heat, air conditioning, or an air purifier are all still important steps to take, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reiterated on Nov. 24 ahead of holiday celebrations. Masks in schools State health officials have pre-
sented data showing that requiring kids to wear masks while in school is associated with lower rates of COVID-19, The Colorado Sun reported in September, citing comments from Rachel Herlihy, the Colorado state epidemiologist. The state public-health department looked at age-adjusted case rates for kids in 48 school districts, split into two groups by whether the districts are requiring masks in schools, the Sun reported. See that story at tinyurl.com/SunSchoolData. A recent CDC study looked at the impact of masking in schools on COVID-19 case rates among K-12 students across the United States. Counties without school mask requirements experienced larger SEE MASKS, P11
