A big question regarding utility of mask wearing for non-covid diseases will be answered with this year’s flu season. The primary detected strain this year is a particularly virulent one, and vaccines are only moderately effective against getting a symptomatic infection. If hospitalizations from that are lower than expected in February-March, it will suggest a benefit to masks, etc since there are not other effective ways to prevent transmission. This will be notable because influenza is mostly spread by droplets/touching your nose and mouth, etc. Data so far suggests a milder than expected wave (preliminary data suggests it is already waning).
An elderly, immunocompromised friend told us recently (by phone, of course) that, since Covid started, the only time he ever goes outside of his apartment is Monday mornings at 4:45 a.m. Apparently, he sits in his car outside the local supermarket, wearing a mask and gloves, waiting for it to open. At exactly 5 a.m., he rushes into the store, loads up his cart, checks out, and is usually back home before 5:30 a.m. That's it. Besides this weekly excursion to the grocery store, our friend sits alone in his tiny, one-bedroom apartment, watching TV and reading all. week. long.
Another, much younger, immunocompromised friend told us recently that she has not left her home, at all, since last September. Not even once. For anything. She lives in an area where it's easy to have, basically, everything delivered, and she works from home.
If flu hospitalizations do end up being lower than expected this winter, just curious, what would lead you to believe that that was
caused by mask wearing, specifically, and not the continuing propensity of people at risk to voluntarily socially distance themselves from other humans? I mean, if you never, or barely ever, leave your house, of course you're not going to catch the flu, whether you wear a mask or not. Without a control group who socially distance but don't wear masks, it seems like it'll hard to establish any sort of causal link between mask wearing and lower flu hospitalization rates. Or, am I missing something, Dr. Abe?