The Late Late Show, February 29

Ryan Tubridy: “Are face masks worth a damn?”

Professor Luke O’Neill: “They are if you are infected.”

Tubridy:”If you’re the infected person?”

O’Neil: “Yeah, the number one advice is to stop you coughing. I could cough on you but the face mask will trap the virus. If you’re not infected you have no reason to wear a face mask. Two reasons. One, people fidget with it anyway, you know? And secondly it goes in through the eyes as well. This evil virus will penetrate the eyes and that’s not covered anyway. There is no evidence that wearing a face mask will protect you at all. The main reason is to stop you spreading it.”

Tubridy: “If you don’t have this,.”

O’Neill: “There is no need to wear a face mask ever. Absolutely not.”

Tubridy: “At all?”

O’Neill: “At all. That’s the recommendation.”

Turbridy: “So why are people panicking a little bit about…”

O’Neill:”They’ve seen too many horror movies. ”

Meanwhile…

The Tonight Show, April 30.

Professor Luke O’Neill: “You hate this but the science has changed in the last three…there’s new information has come along…”

Ivan Yates: “I’m actually prepared to indulge this…”

O’Neill: “…new information…asymptomatic spread means you got to wear a mask. It was good before, coughing meant spreading, you wore a mask if you had symptoms. Now we know it spreads with no symptoms. The great analogy is it‘s like a fire burning in our cities…you’re breathing embers that might get the fire going again. A mask will stop the embers.”

Luke writes:

I realise the ‘science has changed’ but what happened Professor O’Neill’s warning about the eyes? He said ‘This evil virus will penetrate the eyes and that’s not covered [by a mask] anyway’. Does this still apply? Or has the science changed on that also?

Anyone?