Masks
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Transmissibility

Influenza viruses are a lot less transmissible than Covid-19. Public health measures targeting Covid-19, including widespread mask wearing, were effective enough to cancel "flu season" and possibly even eradicate Influenza B Yamagata. One study showed that N95/KN95 masks reduced the risk of infection with Covid-19 by 83% in real-life settings. Masks work and help you to stop worrying about your personal health.


Always using a face mask or respirator in indoor public settings was associated with lower adjusted odds of a positive test result compared with never wearing a face mask or respirator in these settings (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.44; 95% CI = 0.24-0.82). Among 534 participants who specified the type of face covering they typically used, wearing N95/KN95 respirators (aOR = 0.17; 95% CI = 0.05-0.64) or surgical masks (aOR = 0.34; 95% CI = 0.13-0.90) was associated with significantly lower adjusted odds of a positive test result compared with not wearing any face mask or respirator.

The Basic Reproduction Number R0

The basic reproduction number R0 indicates how many infections result from one existing infection, under regular conditions without interventions like masks or vaccines. While definitions and calculations vary a bit, the differences between Covid-19 and influenza viruses are obvious. Covid-19 started with an R0 value of around 3 and has evolved towards an extremely high R0 value of about 8, making it the fourth most transmissible disease in existence after measles, chickenpox, and mumps. The R0 value of influenza, even the 2009 pandemic variant, is somewhere between 1 and 2. While human-to-human transmission has already occurred, for example in Egypt and Hong Kong, the transmission was not sustainable with an R0 value of 0.2 or below. Just as with the CFR debate, those values can differ due to different assumptions, definitions and methods.
Everything we know indicates that wearing masks would drastically reduce the risk of infection during an H5N1 pandemic. Of course this requires high quality masks and correctly using those masks.

Our review found the effective reproduction number and basic reproduction number of the Omicron variant elicited 3.8 and 2.5 times higher transmissibility than the Delta variant, respectively. The Omicron variant has an average basic and effective reproduction number of 8.2 and 3.6.
Total of 42 studies included in this review whereas 29 of them were included in the meta-analysis. The estimated summary reproductive number was 2.87 (95% CI, 2.39–3.44).
Three different epidemiological analyses gave basic reproduction number (R0) estimates in the range of 1.4 to 1.6, whereas a genetic analysis gave a central estimate of 1.2.
The reproduction number across influenza seasons and countries lied in the range 0·9–2·0 with an overall mean of 1·3, and 95% confidence interval (CI) 1·2–1·4.
Taking into account the phylogeny, genetic distance, sampling time difference among viruses, R0 was estimated to be 0.05 (95% CI: 0.01, 0.13) assuming that human-to-human transmissions occurred within a city, 0.23(95% CI: 0.14, 0.35) assuming human-to-human transmissions among cities. Our results indicate that human-to-human transmission of H5N1 viruses in Egypt is limited, and the large increase in human cases is likely attributed to other factor than increase in human-to-human transmission potential.