 All right. Thanks, Nick. Tom. Thanks, Jaron. So I understand that you wear a mask and have advocated mask wearing on this show. So my question is, do masks work? And if your response to that is yes, how do we know that enough to subscribe to choosing to wear them by an informed choice, not simply by a mandate or an act of faith that they're working? Well, I mean, I think, I think we don't know fully the extent to which they work. We understand some of the mechanisms, but we don't fully understand them and we don't have yet a good sense of the probabilities of how much they work. But there's significant evidence coming out in the scientific literature that they do work. There's an understanding about how they block viruses. So people say things like the virus is smaller than the holes in the mask that goes through. But there's a number of flaws in that argument. One is the virus is never alone. It's usually a part of a water particle and the water particle within which the virus is bigger than the holes in the mask and it doesn't get through. There's also, and I forget the physics term for it, there's also forces, magnetic forces and other forces in the material in the mask, that draw the virus prevented from going through. So it's not just size, it's not just a physical size. It's also the interaction between the material of the mask and the material of the thing. We know, for example, that an M95 or whatever it's called a mask is used in hospitals, clearly proven and is used every day to prevent viruses from going in and out, you infecting patients and patients infecting you. We know that surgical masks at least work for some things because surgeons wear them and there's a huge body of evidence that that is good for surgery. So I would say that logic, understanding of the physics of it and then the use of masks by doctors in hospitals and noses in all evidence that in certain contexts masks work. I'd also add that in a sense anecdotally, the fact that in Asia, they use so many masks and maybe correlation is not causation here and you could make that argument. But the fact is that Asia has done like a gazillion times better than we have. Logic thing, because they test, trace, isolate but also because they wear masks and it's just a given that they wear masks. It's not required, but they just do. And if you've been to Asia, you know that they wear masks during flu season even when there's no COVID. So I think when you add up all of that, I would say there's a very, very good chance that in closed environments, in environments where the air does not circulate much, where there is reasonable social distancing. I think if you, if you scrunch up against one another, I'm not sure the mask works anymore. But if there's a reasonable amount of masks work, if you just think of the physics of it, even if the virus gets through the mask, the mask slows it down by slowing it down causes it to drop to the ground faster. It spends less time in the air. There's so many just common sense plus science plus evidence plus what people are doing that suggests that I wouldn't, that if you go into an elevator with a bunch of other people, you're probably safer if you wear a mask than you're not wearing a mask. It's just, to me, it's, I can't prove it. So I say it's common sense, but I think it's more than common sense. I think there's real scientific evidence here as well. Now outdoors at the beach where there's a breeze, where there's, you're 12 feet away from everybody else. Yeah, that's a, it's stupid to wear a mask, right? There's no reason to wear a mask, but indoors when you're, you know, less than six feet apart from each other and where there's not great circulation of air and we know air conditioning filters these things through, wearing a mask creates one more barrier between you and the virus. It's an o-brainer in my mind. It's just an o-brainer. Now the question is, do you care if you get the virus, right? How much do you care, right? Is the convenience worth it? So if you're young, maybe you don't care and that can be rational. If you're 85 and there's a, the people around you might be infected, you should wear a mask. And, you know, if you care, right? Some 85, you'll say the hassle of wearing it, I'm going to die anyway in the next two years. What the hell? I don't, and that's rational too. But you have to make that estimate for your own life. But to me, if you're concerned about the virus, a mask reduces, I think, significantly the probability that you will get it from somebody else in your close environment in an indoor space. So as far as limitations though, what you're describing would then be applicable to any other type of communicable ailment. So what's the limitation? Yeah, I mean, I think we're wearing masks all the time going forward to as a mitigation factor against any type of communicable disease. No, I mean, it depends on the, on how bad the disease is. It depends on how communicable it is, right? How, how, how easy it is to get it from other people. You know, so some people who might have a high probability of dying if they get the flu might make sense for them to wear a mask when they interact with other people. Most people, the flu is no big deal. Or it's, it's not a big deal enough to wear a mask. Asians don't like the flu, right? They don't mind wearing masks, stay with them. I wouldn't wear a mask. I probably wouldn't wear a mask in most situations, even with COVID, unless I was concerned about the other person getting it. So I've said this before, you know, I have a friend 87 years old, when I go to see him, I get a test before that, because I don't want to wear a mask, right? I'd like to be able to see him and him to see me. So I get tested before it because I know that if he gets it, he'll die. And I don't want to be the one giving it to him, right? I don't want him to get it. So I get a test. If I couldn't get a test, I'd wear a mask. When I interact with him, now if there was another disease I had or thought I might have that would kill him, and a mask would help, I'd wear a mask. So it's completely contextual. It's completely situational. It's completely within the scope of your decision-making about the type of disease. But look, let's say MERS, the Middle Eastern Respiratory, MERS, S, what's the S stands for? Syndrome, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. Basically, if you get it, 50% of the people who get it die. I think that's a number. Maybe it's 40%, right? 40 to 50% of the people get it die. Right now, it's very hard to get it. I basically have to lick you, you know, and basically people get it from camels and they basically get it because they... Yeah, I've heard human-to-human transmission is extremely rare. Yeah, but imagine it wasn't. Imagine MERS was in the air and it was not easy to get, but it was likely to get, right? If you were in an elevator stuck with somebody who had it, you would get it. Would you wear a mask? Yeah. If you thought it would slow it down. You have to make the decision on a virus-by-virus basis, on a situation-by-situation basis, who you're with, what's the context, how deadly is the disease, and how communicable is it? All of us need to make those assessments within the context of our values. That's why the government cannot make that decision for us. We have to make it. And, you know, the 87-year-old has to make the decision is my life is another few years of life worth it to the inconvenience or not. Only he can make that decision within the context of his values. That's why it cannot be forced. It cannot be a decision made from the top. But yeah, we should make it. I mean, I've been tested for, because I travel a lot for hepatitis. Hepatitis, I think, is a communicable disease. I'm not sure exactly how you get it from person to person. But if I tested positive, it's a problem. I would have to change some of the way I live. If you test positive HIV, you would have to change some of how you live in terms of how you interact with other people, sexually at least. So each disease is going to cause you to each communicable disease. It's going to cause you to think about how you interact. Now, cold is not, but we all, you know, when I ran the institute, I would tell people, if you've got a cold, don't come to work because I don't want you cold. You know, I don't want to get it from you. So stay home if you've got a cold. Even if you want to work, you don't work from home, whatever. Don't come to work because I don't want to get your cold. And I certainly don't want to get your flu. So we know this about communicable diseases. What about, what about airing on the side of caution then in the, in the way you're describing that you don't know because you're asymptomatic that you have any type of a communicable ailment. And why then wouldn't you then advocate for us to wear masks all the time as a safety precautionary measure? Because I don't believe in the precautionary principle. There has to be a reason for you to think you might have it. With COVID, because we know that asymptomatic people do give it because we know that what is it? Six million people have had it in the United States, probably 20 to 30 million Americans have had it, maybe more. It's in the air, it's out there, it's everywhere. Then you're careful because it's a problem. So you're not, when there's no problem, why be careful, right? When the problem rears its ugly head, then you have to start thinking about, should I wear a mask or shouldn't I wear a mask? But COVID is a reality. It's not a myth. It really is here. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not arguing that it's a myth. I think that's a strong man argument. But what I'm saying is that what you're describing, if we replace the word coronavirus with the flu, everything else is the same, right? The flu exists, it has existed for a long time. Many people, many thousands, tens of thousands of people every year die from it. Malaria is a similar type of ailment. Yeah. Why are we not then advocating for similar type precautionary measures along the same lines? Why do people in, you know, tropical climates not wear full body plastic suits so that they don't contract malaria from mosquito bites? Well, because they can't, they can't live that way. And it is a problem, right? So they do, they do live with nets laced with DDT, which could be harmful for other things if, you know, in certain quantities. I would suggest using more DDT if malaria was a big problem. I would suggest bioengineering mosquitoes, you know, to eradicate the species of mosquitoes that carries malaria. You know, the fact that malaria exists would cause me to act, not to passively say, well, malaria is here, so I'm not going to do anything about it. It's just, you have to look for the right kind of response. Once we get a vaccine, there's no point in wearing a mask if you're vaccinated, right? So that's odd. So you want to look for solutions. Now, with the flu, most of us have come to the conclusion that the risk is worth it with COVID because certainly early on death rates from COVID were multiples of death rates from the flu, multiples of five and six, which is significant. So instead of point one, it was point six. That's a big difference. We decided, some of us decided that in this case, it's worth it to wear a mask. If there was a really, really bad flu season one year, a lot of people getting it in with particular severe, I might wear a mask. I mean, I don't think, I don't think that, you know, in Asian cultures, for example, they came to the conclusion, many people, not everybody, some people in Tokyo came to the conclusion that the flu was so inconvenient that they would rather wear a mask. So my point is you have to make a decision based on the information you know at the time, based on your values, based on what you think is right to do, given the information you have. And you don't assume the worse, right? There's no COVID, there's no flu and you're going to put on a mask. That would be silly. But in flu season, let's say you've got the flu season and I don't know, your kids are getting married in a few weeks and you really, really, really don't want to get the flu. And you're going to be stuck in an airplane and you're going to go up elevators with lots of people. And you know from past years that you're susceptible and you didn't get vaccinated or the vaccine this year is not right for the flu strain. Would you wear a mask? I think it would be a rational thing to do is to wear a mask to say, I don't want to risk getting the flu this year because I don't want to miss the wedding, right? Or something like that, right? I'm making stuff up. I'm trying to illustrate that you have to take all the evidence into account and make the best rational decision you can on the basis of the facts. Yeah, to the extent in your flu example, but only to the extent to which a mask can be effective, right? So it becomes a rational decision if you decide to do it based on the understanding that it would have some efficacy. You think masks don't have any efficacy? Obviously you don't use them. But I would look into it because I don't think that's true. I think masks are efficacious. They're not 100%, they're far from 100%. But I think they are efficacious at stopping viruses, at stopping the flu, at least to some extent, and stopping COVID. And masks are not going to stop HIV, obviously. But you're not aware of any double-blind studies or anything along those lines that have shown this to be the case with not just coronavirus but viruses in general? Next time I have Amesh Adulji on the show, I'll ask him. I don't know. I've seen, but I haven't dug into it because I've kind of, I did my COVID thing and I'm trying to get away from it. So I haven't been keeping up with the literature. I have seen, because I get regular emails from John Hopkins University with all the most recent studies. I have seen some reports of studies that show the masks are effective, but I'm very reluctant to use those without digging deep into them and getting to know the methodology and double-blind and whether the sample sizes were big enough. I'm skeptical of statistics and how people use them, but I wouldn't be surprised if we have some studies. Look, CDC, Amesh Adulji, a lot of doctors were very skeptical of masks before COVID. Obviously Asians were not. It looks like doctors in the U.S. and researchers in the U.S. have changed their minds, not people that have changed their mind for political reasons because they don't have anything political. Amesh certainly doesn't. And I know other doctors who don't, they've changed their mind about masks. We'd have to dig deeper into why they changed their minds and what research they're basing that and how confident they are in it. But again, I think to me it just makes common sense. It just seems like any barrier you put between me and another person is going to reduce the probability that they get infected from me and I get infected from them. So would you then revise your statement that you had made to Keir or Peacock back in August saying that masks are political? I think that people's responses to masks are political. There's no question in my mind. But how do you make that determination if you're saying that there's no objective? I can see they behave. You've got the mask Gestapo. We're leftists, not even leftists, just people who are panicking and are nuts. Want you to wear a mask outdoors while you're running, where there's a breeze and where the science is zero that a mask's matter or that you can even give COVID or get COVID in those circumstances. And you've got people on the right who as a principal, not having researched it and thoughtfully about it, are claiming that is that God given right is not to wear a mask and no scientific evidence would ever change their minds. I think it's very political. I think the beta's political is one of the problems of discussing it. It's because it's infused now with politics. So if you say I think masks reduce the probability of getting COVID, you're branded a leftist. And if you say no, I've looked at the scientific evidence and I think masks are no good, you're branded a right wing Trumpists and it's all politics. Part of the fact that we don't, that I don't trust the studies and part of the reason why I don't have studies at my fingertips is because, because I think even the media is afraid of, depending on the media, is afraid of disclosing studies and really being scientific because they don't want to be because it's all political. It's not about science. It's not about facts. It's not about reality. If it was, I think most people would have this curious attitude towards masks. Huh? I wonder if they work or they don't work. Let me think about it. Let me go read the studies or let me, let me ask my doctor. Let me do what my physician tells me to do. Right? Like I do on other health related issues, but I don't see that curiosity among people. I see people taking stands based on whether, based on politics, not based on science or based on curiosity. I would love to see people curious. People say, you know, I don't know. I wonder, but that's not what I see. Yeah. I mean, I can say certainly I'm curious and I'm not accusing you Tom of anything, right? No, I know. I know. And this isn't personal. I'm saying out there, when I look out there into the world, when I see the people who are trying to force us to wear masks on the one hand and the people who say, no, no, the masks are the biggest violation of my liberties ever. All I see is politics. I don't see curiosity in science. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a desperate need. I think I speak personally that I have it this desperate need to understand if it is effective. So I can make an informed decision and it seems like it's still up in the air. So to claim that to do it or not do it is some sort of a political thing, I guess is some, you know, I'm saying that most people are using it or doing it or not doing it based on political thing. I'm not saying any particular individual's choice is political. I'm saying as a broad observation, it has become completely politicized in the culture. Okay. All right. Thanks for the time. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right. Before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. 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