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So I think that, you know, there are multiple ways in which masks work and sort of obsessing about exactly which one and what the mix is is really just kind of a way to diminish what the effect is and to like make it seem like an open question when we we have really good

evidence from a lot of studies that the mandates do work. Yeah, Ellie, I just appreciate so much

how you framed this to begin with for exactly, you know, the reasons I think that you're

you're kind of bringing in right now because I feel like there is, you know, within

science, I guess, there's kind of a structural

preference or like a structural bias towards like, okay, well, we know that things really work

if they work at like the smallest possible unit level. You know what I mean? So like a mask

mandate is just an aggregate of like a million different, you know, masking decisions.

And we need to understand if the masking decisions, you know, if like how, how, yeah, like how efficient

the filtration is for you as an indif- and I just appreciate that your work kind of inverts that

and forces us to look at sort of like a higher structural level, which I think is kind of an important

corrective. You know, that's more of like a public health sort of way of thinking than thinking,

you know, like, what are the actual mechanics of how this mask works on an individual's body

versus what effect does a mask mandate have on the general level of COVID transmission,

which is a much more actionable type of question. Yes, exactly. And I feel like that's the reason why there's such pressure

to answer the irrelevant question. Yeah, exactly. Any other question. Literally any other question.

I think part of the resistance to masks is an ideological, like, sort of project of knowledge production

is literally a misdirection away from that specific question. Yeah, I think so. And I think also,

you know, one of the reasons that there's kind of this need to misdirect is that in addition to

all our good evidence we have that when you have mandates in place, COVID cases are lower

than when you don't have those mandates in place. We also have some really good data that

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