One recurring thought I’ve had about the requirement for N95/FFP2 respirators/masks to be closely fitted: Any gap in the seal will drastically reduce efficiency

One recurring thought I’ve had about the requirement for N95/FFP2 respirators/masks to be closely fitted: Any gap in the seal will drastically reduce efficiency, but a respirator worn in a reasonable manner will always be more efficient than a square mask with enormous high-flow low-resistance gaps on both sides. In hospitals, high importance is rightfully placed on correctly fitting N95/FFP2 and up – this is so that they function to spec and can be formally assumed to work like the specification indicates so they can be applied as a tool in general use by, well, by a population of staff. This does not mean that respirators which are worn in a reasonable manner will ever be as poor filtration devices as gaping masks, especially not if the pathogen is airborne / aerosolized and operates almost purely as air flow, not droplets with mass and inertia to consider. And COVID-19 is airborne and must be considered as airborne. There were five links, and the fifth is a collection of papers :) There is also a significant amount of detail and discussion and framing and context in adjacent tweets i all the links.