A short thread on how face masks work, why we wear masks *to protect other people from ourselves* and not the other way around, & why wearing face-shields without a mask, masks with valves, or masks that hang open on the bottom or sides IS ACTUALLY DANGEROUS FOR EVERYONE ELSE...

I am going to start off by citing from a great paper by @trishgreenhalgh about the benefits of mask wearing, which you can read in full here:

Masks can work in 2 ways: protecting the wearer, & protecting other people from exhalations emitted by the wearer. Surgical grade masks are supposed to do both. They block out small particles emitted by the source, AND they filter those particles out from other emissions

For cloth masks, however, they are not so good at filtering out tiny particles which can contain viruses. But what they are good at doing is limiting the large droplets people give off when they breathe or cough – before they become aerosolised.

This means when you wear a cloth mask, the most important role that it plays is not protecting you from other people's exhalations but *protecting them from yours*. @trishgreenhalgh calls this 'source control' i.e. 'protects other people from droplets emitted by the wearer'

We need to understand misinformation & disinformation as systems, not just individual actions. An economy of false information.

[this thread continues from what I posted last night, about some of the most prominent South African misinfo posters]

When I started teaching courses on false information systems a few years ago at Wits, I made a point to look at it systemically: there are producers of information, distribution channels/platforms, and audiences (which can also distribute/reshare content).

To try and understand the types of false information, I also felt it was important to look at the intention/motivation of the producers of the false info. What motivated them? Money? Notoriety? Political agenda? (all of these types are in play)

It's NB to understand motive of the false info maker so you can effectively disrupt or correct their false and/or harmful information. A guy in it for clicks/fame requires different strategy to a paid actor or propagandist – although both messages/content may be the same

What we're seeing with Covid-19 misinfo is that the content created and shared by deniers is effectively the same as the conspiracy theories shared by lobbies that are anti-government, anti-media, or who blame Soros etc. This is not an accident, although original motives diverge