Here's the thing about the mandatory indoor mask use debate. Like everything else with COVID-19, we're just delaying the inevitable. Cases will rise, either soon or in the fall/winter, and then we'll scramble to implement a policy to try to mitigate it. 1/

Seems like medical officers of health must be waiting for one of two things: more studies or more cases. Blows my mind that they would wait for the latter when we knows it's inevitable. As for the former, it's all going to be continue to be muddy data for the next year. 2/

You're not going to get a clear RCT showing efficacy of cloth masks. It's not going to happen. And the studies we do get will actually skew negative because it's hard to prevent patients crossing over into the intervention group in a frigging pandemic. 3/

So what I would press leaders on is this: What is your objective threshold for instituting this mandatory policy, in the absence of further studies? # of cases, distribution, etc. No more subjectivity, people are tired of these decisions made on the fly. This one's easy. 4/

And for those MOHs that are reluctant to jump right to mandatory indoor masking for everyone, can we start with all indoor employees? We enforce far worse on employees with much less evidence. 5/

And part of the communication of a mandatory policy would be that this is our best evidence NOW, and that evidence may very well change. Protect science/medicine/authority against the real possibility of being wrong and trust being eroded. 6/