According to wikipedia he now an "ardent" anti-masker for Covid and now people are trying to get him to step down from Brave browser. Does this guy just not learn?
Which shows what a joke Wikipedia is - a series of fiefdoms controlled by heavily biased editors ... the Talk page for that article is hilarious. It (correctly) points out that "ardent" is used nowhere in either source linked - one of which is a tweet, the second a NYT article that itself references a tweet. The dialogue is purposely crafted to encourage the reader to form a prejudiced opinion. Why would this even be relevant to his bio?
The guy literally invented Javascript and cofounded Mozilla. So he made a few political contributions that the Twitter mob didn't like. Maybe if Mozilla focused its efforts more on fixing actual bugs instead of countless UI/UX changes and seemingly purging their ranks of wrong-think, maybe more people would use their browser and we wouldn't be asking these questions.
I personally despise that we have a browser monoculture, but there are few legitimate reasons to use Firefox on platforms that support Chromium.
I don't think supporting a mandate to wear a basic cloth mask is a hill anyone should be willing to die on.
I'm fiercely, fiercely pro-mainstream-science, and there's no doubt that proper N95 masks (or better) are very effective against respiratory disease transmission. But mask mandates almost always permit basic cloth masks which lack strong evidence of efficacy. If we're not going to mandate an effective mask, I honestly don't see what the point of the mandate is.
N95 masks work. Well designed, well fitted, correctly worn, hygienically cleaned cloth masks probably work okay, though good evidence of this is still limited and based largely upon assumptions. From my own observations, the overwhelming majority of people are wearing a mask of poor quality and/or in a manner which the scientific consensus couldn't possibly agree was effective. And I doubt most people are washing them with soap and water every single day.
If we're not going to mandate an effective mask, I honestly don't see what the point of the mandate is. It makes as much sense to me as seatbelt mandates accepting a knitted scarf as an acceptable seatbelt.
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"Cloth face masks show minimum efficacy in source control than the medical grade mask. The efficacy of cloth face masks filtration varies and depends on the type of material used, number of layers, and degree of moisture in mask and fitting of mask on face."
"The use of cloth masks during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is under debate."
"Until a cloth mask design is proven to be equally effective as a medical or N95 mask, wearing cloth masks should not be mandated for healthcare workers."
"In 2015, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to compare the efficacy of cloth masks with that of medical masks and controls (standard practice) among healthcare workers in Vietnam. Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups."
"Your cloth face mask isn't protecting you against the coronavirus variant omicron, health officials say. As common as cloth face masks have become, health experts say, they do little to prevent tiny virus particles from getting into your nose or mouth and aren't effective against the new variant."
"They found that the effectiveness of the masks varied widely: a three-layer knitted cotton mask blocked an average of 26.5 percent of particles in the chamber, while a washed, two-layer woven nylon mask with a filter insert and metal nose bridge blocked 79 percent of particles on average. Other masks scored somewhere in between."
