Some science on masking and exercise

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Dec 20

RE: Masking on the Chedoke Stairs.  Letter to the editor, Spectator of this date.  In my younger days, I used the run the Chedoke stairs.  It is a 2 person wide set of steel stairs that run between Scenic Park and the Chedoke Golf Course at the top and bottom respectively of the Hamilton escarpment.  Scenic Park is a small park that lies at the foot of Upper Paradise Street at Scenic Drive on Hamilton's West Mountain.  It is often used by people for cardio exercise.  Steve Warrick of Ancaster takes exception to people who exercise on the stairs not wearing masks.

Whenever I read letters like Mr. Warrick’s, I better understand how a tenth of the East German population became informants for the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police.

Mr. Warrick expressed concern that people running the Chedoke stairs for fitness weren’t wearing masks, and therefore placed people like him at risk of catching COVID-19.  They weren’t conforming, and he wasn’t happy about it.

I know this is a little complicated, but follow me here.  There are no scientific studies that demonstrate a measurable degree of transmission prevention of viral diseases by the use of surgical masks.  And there won’t ever be until an organization like ASTM comes up with a test protocol.  And they won’t because real-world use of surgical masks is too uncontrollable for a test procedure to provide meaningful, quantitative results.  The urgency to wear surgical masks comes from the perception that some masking is better than nothing, not from quantitative scientific testing.

Physical distancing outdoors with minimal interaction between people has kinda, sorta been shown quasi-scientifically to reduce transmission probabilities.  Running the Chedoke stairs would be a test case of this scenario.  But since transmission probabilities are the point at issue, let’s look at them.

With 1,000 active cases in Hamilton, the chances of the next person you encounter is contagious is one in five hundred.  The thirty people running the stairs are all youngish and healthy.  That would include Mr. Warrick.  Contagious people don’t feel well enough to run stairs, especially since the virus affects breathing.  In short, people running the stair are self-selected healthy people, not contagious people.  And if no virus is present, no virus can be transmitted.  There are greater probabilities of Mr. Warrick hurting himself on the stairs in some other way than getting infected, and so his concern is wrongly placed.

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