Yes, wearing masks is PROVEN effective to reduce covid-19 spread

biden urging the entire country to wear masks , social distancing , avoid large gatherings , hand washing frequently

You "might' get your wish KellyM. Biden and Zeke will put you in a mask 24/7. Have fun with thst.

When we cope with health issues, such as the pandemic, we listen to doctors' advise and science but NOT from those politicians and fiction. 

AGREED! 

more people are wearing masks than ever before yet the spike in COVID-19 is at its highest rate  

Not in the countries that have been doing it all along ... such as

People, myself included, have become more laxed with about gatherings in general, both the small, intimate, and familial, and the large and public. People seem, in general, less vigilant about touching their faces after touching things in public and such. Probably washing their hands less. Using hand sanitizer less. It seems like more people are wearing masks, and maybe they are, but we are not doing all of the things we should. Again, myself included.

COVID will probably be around for a couple of years. One knucklehead on msnbc said yesterday while taking about trumps legal fights about the election results said  he has killed 250 thousand Americans and that none of this had to happen if it wasn’t for trump

People are always ovary acting. Don't get me wrong, Trump has nobody to blame but himself. He really shot himself in the foot with his dumb, self-centered rhetoric. Dems baited him and he bit. However, this thing was going to kill hundreds of thousands from the beginning. I don't subscribe to the notion that Trump saved lives with his travel ban and I don't subscribe to the notion that he is responsible for the lives we have lost either. He mishandled things but we were never without enough ventilators, only briefly without masks. We'll have a virus, some think as early as next month but I think for most in early 2021. He was against closing down but most states did it anyway. Against masks but most states still had mandates. He kinda sucked but I don't see where many lives could've been saved. We'd still be over 200K.

Starting lockdown two weeks earlier
would have curtailed deaths by 83%
and saved 54,000 lives, Columbia finds

More than 54,000 lives in the US would have been saved and over
900,000 coronavirus cases could have been avoided if social distancing
measures and stay-at-home orders were imposed two weeks earlier,
new data has shown.

A study conducted by researchers at Columbia University has revealed
how an early response to the outbreak could have curtailed the number
of deaths in the US by 83%

The federal government and states began issuing stay-at-home orders
on March 15 - four days after the World Health Organization declared
the outbreak a pandemic.

https://tinyurl.com/y576geam

So you're saying lockdowns should have started 10 days before the outbreak was declared a pandemic? Sounds good in the hypothetical sense but in what world does this actually happen? On March 1, which would be the date for your 14 days earlier scenario, we were at 89 confirmed cases and 3 deaths. Who would've shut things down at this point?

I never said that, nor hinted that.

Columbia University research did and I presented THEIR results.

IN MY OPINION

trump should NOT have allowed over 40,000 AMERICANS who travelled to China and Wuhan back into the US to spread the contagion.  And in the 3rd week of February when it became absolutely clear that Europe was being affected BIGLY, is when he should have instituted a **TOTAL BAN** on all incoming flights/ships/traffic into the US -- unless he acted to set aside multiple quarantine centers in isolated areas.  Exceptions only for trucked goods, etc -- but not people.

That would prevent MOST (not all, but most) of the incoming contagion.

And that followed with massive manufacturing of needed PPE, using whatever act or authority necessary.

Then, in mid-March -- rather than DOWNPLAYTING THE PANDEMIC as we all heard on the audio tapes -- he should have made a NATIONAL mask mandate and immediate restrictions on large social gatherings.

Of course he would have been fully aware of all this had he directed his team to study and FOLLOW the Pandemic Playbook left by the Obama team.....which trump didn't do.

This would have significantly cut cases (and a lot of sickness even among those who survived), hospitalizations, and deaths.

In effect, we would be in a good place right now, like Australia, or Japan, or New Zealand.

Yes and COVID-19 produced 20x more deaths and counting than H1N1 in the U.S. The Trump administration has done such a fine job with their playbook. 

"We've done an INCREDIBLE job" - dr.death trump

trump regime's mostly preventable death toll = 239,002

NOV 10: COVID death rate comparison

Japan                     = 14  per million
Taiwan                   = .3  per million
Hong Kong             = 14  per million
S. Korea                  =  9   per million
New Zealand          = 5   per million
Australia               = 35  per million
trump regime = 739 deaths per million

Stat source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

@DeezyAZ81

 There would be millions more dead if H1N1 had been nearly as lethal as C19. We're damn lucky it wasn't as Obama was a failure.

If the queen had balls she would be the King. You can't come in here, hypothesize, and then try to pass it off as a valid point. Obama had a pandemic response team that Trump shelved. Obama had pending PPE and ventilator orders that Trump canceled. I don't blame Trump like others do but I have to call out bullshit when I see it. And there's nothing more bullshit than playing the "if" game. It's all good though. You know I don't have a problem with you.

Could have, should have, would have.

Simply No. 

Colombia is a liberal university so of course their study is going to come to that conclusion  

In update, US center for disease control recommends mask wearing which protect wearers and others around them.  Over 70% reduction in virus transmission in various instances.  Universal mask wearing can avert lockdowns especially when combined with adequate social distancing, hygiene and ventilation.  One  analysis found 15% increase in universal mask wearing can prevent up to $1 trillion in economic losses.   Institute for health metrics estimate universal mask wearing can prevent 130,000 US  deaths by next February.

70%  is good enuf for me 

Wearing masks could save
130,000 US lives by March,
NIH director says

“If most Americans pulled together to do the right thing and
wore a mask in public, this simple, selfless act would save more
than 130,000 lives in the next few months alone,” Collins wrote.

Collins said only about half of Americans wear a mask in public,
citing a study by the team responsible for the University of Washington’s
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation coronavirus model.
The team predicts that Covid-19 deaths could surpass 1 million
in the US by the end of February on this trajectory.