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> Non-valved N95 are vastly superior to all other low cost / disposable masks, yet they are difficult to find In the study you link, surgical masks come in sec
by arcturus17 6y ago
> Non-valved N95 are vastly superior to all other low cost / disposable masks, yet they are difficult to find
In the study you link, surgical masks come in second, extremely close to non-valved N95, at nearly 0 relative droplet count.
Are surgical masks not considered disposable and low cost, or are they hard to find in the US?
Where I live, they are price-capped by the government and available everywhere from pharmacies to grocery stores.
- DeRock 6y agoIf you look at the supplemental figure S1 here: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083.DC1/abd3083_SM.pdf https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2020/08/07/sci... You'll see that the N95 exhibit an order of magnitude greater reduction than surgical (99.9% vs 99% reduction against no mask baseline). Whether this practically matters, I don't know. If surgical masks are much cheaper/easier to manufacture, then I concede that those should be the focus. However, my point still half stands. Most cotton masks perform poorly. If AA was basing this policy on empirical effectiveness, they would ban those before valved N95.