Seeing some of the anti-mask crowd grasping at straws on social media and jumping to knee-jerk reactions based on misunderstanding of how the virus and testing process works. These folks if weighing in with strong opinions need to make sure they understand the facts and are not simply grabbing onto the first branch that plays in with confirmation bias taking place on the topic.
Today (Saturday) as many likely caught saw 23 new cases in Brandon leading to an increase in active cases of 17. Today’s cases highly likely are still ones acquired before the mask mandate came into place by time you account for:
-time to show symptoms after acquiring virus (Fed gov website has median of 5-6 days... could be less or could be as many as 14)
-time to go for test
-time to wait for test results (seems to vary, I know of one positive this week that took 3 days to learn their result)
-time for Province to report those numbers in their daily briefings
They are saying 1 incubation period of the virus/14 days as period before could expect to see impact in mandatory mask use that is in place.
Regardless they are not describing masks as a magic wand by themselves. They must be used in combination with the measures they are constantly reminding of including physical distancing, frequent thorough hand washing and staying home when sick.
Fingers crossed that wider mask adoption under the mandatory order shows some results in the days ahead as confirmed cases catch up to the time frame that masks became mandatory (Monday/5 days ago).