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Switching to an N95 mask gives a 75x boost in Covid protection

• h0nd 5y ago
  • terminalcommand 5y ago
    Sadly this is true in low income countries. My country cannot afford N95 masks, we used to use textile masks, now we have access to some filtered ones. We didn't have timely access to vaccines. Now that we are vaccinated the government pushes for herd immunity, because we cannot afford lockdowns.
  • postsantum 5y ago
    South Africa? Is the idea of omicron parties floating around?
    • sgt 5y ago
      I'm in South Africa. A lot of people wear masks especially at stores, malls etc, but outside of that most people do not seem to bother. To be honest I'm fed up with masks now, so I'm gradually starting to just go without. No complaints so far.
• renlo 5y ago
  > It will take 25 hours for an infectious dose of COVID-19 to transmit between people wearing non-fit-tested N95 respirators Is this backed up by _any_ real world data? Because this seems to be overly optimistic, judging from the way Omicron has been spreading.
  • blip54321 5y ago
    Most spread, including omicron, is small (unmasked) friends-and-family gatherings. NY did contact tracing to find that. Those are extended, in-door gatherings without masks and with close proximity. I don't think omicron's spread says /anything/ about the efficacy of masks.
  • grumple 5y ago
    How many people are wearing N95s? I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild, only KN95 and that's still relatively uncommon. Most people are still going into social settings with no masks, so that's a more obvious reason for the spread.
• deleted 5y ago
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• timwaagh 5y ago
  I switched from an n95 to surgical masks after a month the reason being they are cheap enough to throw away. Also government forbade them in public transport. Even if they do allow it I don't think I'll go back.
  • worstestes 5y ago
    Forbade N95 in public transportation? Why is that?
• melling 5y ago
  I saw a comparison yesterday that claimed with a cloth mask, being in the same room with someone for 30 minutes was enough to catch Covid. A surgical mask provided an hour of protection. With an N95, you would need to be in the room for 25 hours. I believe that was with both people wearing a mask
  • larubbio 5y ago
    I think that stat came from a chart in this article https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/a-quick-note-on-masks-and-cdc-guidance https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/a-quick-note-...
    • paulcole 5y ago
      Also this one: https://www.axios.com/n95-mask-protection-covid-958039c9-07f1-45a1-81e7-b7436707fee5.html https://www.axios.com/n95-mask-protection-covid-958039c9-07f...
  • Scoundreller 5y ago
    There’s a 5x5 or so graphic floating around of how many hours are safe in different masking situations. While I agree with the relative arrangement, there’s a risk of misinterpretation. Early in the pandemic some claimed their interactions are short so They can wear no/crappy masks, overlooking that it’s a police officer and their entire day is made up of short interactions…
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • hcks 5y ago
    Interesting intuitive point of view. Too bad there's no evidence for any of that
    • Zoneman 5y ago
      The infographic is based on ACGIH's Pandemic Response Task Force[1]. The list of references for respirator/mask information is available on their site[2]. I can't speak to the veracity of the evidence provided, but there is evidence. [1]: https://www.acgih.org/covid19/ https://www.acgih.org/covid19/ [2]: https://www.acgih.org/covid19-references/#resp https://www.acgih.org/covid19-references/#resp
• tablespoon 5y ago
  I think this has been more or less understood all along, but it's good to repeat it since I'm sure there are still people who haven't gotten the message. If you're looking to protect yourself, wear an N95. They're also now easily available in hardware stores again.
  • RobertRoberts 5y ago
    The "95" in N95 represents the filtration effectiveness. So _any_ leakage means the mask fails in it purpose of filtration.
    • brianmcc 5y ago
      Hence it gives "only" a 70x boost in protection, not a 100% protection cast iron guarantee.
      • RobertRoberts 5y ago
        For how long? 10 years of exposure with a leaky mask is not 70% any more, more like .05%.
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
      It's the minimum standard, really. Most reputable N95s seem to hit over 99% in real tests.
      • jve 5y ago
        This was lately on HN, so you can check yourself: https://www.armbrustusa.com/pages/mask-testing https://www.armbrustusa.com/pages/mask-testing
    • GavinMcG 5y ago
      That's not true: leakage decreases protection, but there's a scaling relationship rather than a complete elimination of efficacy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24275016/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24275016/
• daenz 5y ago
  Does this hold true for people with beards?
  • ls15 5y ago
    Yes, if they shave
    • Scoundreller 5y ago
      Even if they don’t, the n95 will filter better than whatever lower-grade mask they were otherwise wearing.
      • micromacrofoot 5y ago
        yes, but if it's not forming a tight seal it might not be filtering enough to matter
      • BigJono 5y ago
        Will it? If your beard prevents a seal you're just going to be sucking in air from through the sides like you would with a standard mask, no?
        • Scoundreller 5y ago
          some will go through the mask (and be filtered). Kinda like adding a 100kohm resistor in parallel with a 10k ohm. Most current will go through the 10k, but there will still be some going through the 100k ohm.
  • BryantD 5y ago
    Short answer: N95s are not as good if you have a beard, but they are still better than cloth. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34006963/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34006963/ for details.
• dghlsakjg 5y ago
  The important part is buried: The fit of the mask is the most important factor, Bodenschatz, said. “It turns out that leakage dominates over filtration.” Masks should have a tight fit around the face and nose to minimize any air leakage.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • verytrivial 5y ago
    I switched to N95 some months ago after being called back into the office. It is incredibly clear upon first wear that air has a much great chance of going through this style mask instead of around it. Basically, if the mask fabric isn't slightly inflating and deflating on each breath, you're wearing it wrong. It's stunning to me that literally billions of pounds are being spent on now futile testing without getting this basic stuff right.
    • dboreham 5y ago
      I'm skeptical of any ear-loop design (although I wear them myself in relatively benign environments such as Costco). For "hot" environments such as airports, shuttle busses, airplanes, I've switched to the kind that has bands that go around the head. The difference is profound: when taking the mask off you notice that there are _smells_ that have been filtered by the mask. Never had that experience with the ear loop kind.
      • oxymoran 5y ago
        An airplane that has constantly filtered air is a hot spot but Costco is relatively benign? Your risk calculus is out of whack.
        • verytrivial 5y ago
          Dispersion matters, as does exposure time. A single inhalation of recently expelled air can be enough. You might waft past someone in Costco, but you could be sitting in the air current of someone shedding virus particles for hours on end, even if the particles are eventually being filtered by A/C.
• glofish 5y ago
  Notably the paper that they refer to does not actually count infections it is all about meta analysis, and simulation and particle size etc No actual controlled evaluation that measured protection against the actual infection has ever found effect remotely as strong as claimed here - and sometimes the opposite is found. Yes, mask may work in some circumstances, but everyone wearing them all the time in social settings? The issue is far from settled. As an example Austria has mandated N95 masks since Summer, people, store clerks take it seriously and actually enforce them. Been there myself and seen/experienced that myself. Is Austria on a different track when it comes to the epidemic? Not really. Where is the 75x protection?
  • rgrieselhuber 5y ago
    What is the denominator?
  • burlesona 5y ago
    Why isn’t there more protection shown? Is it people not wearing the masks well? Or not wearing them consistently? One thing I’ve thought was ludicrous since the beginning of the pandemic was the idea that you should mask in a restaurant “except while eating.” That’s comically stupid. I understand we love our restaurants and don’t want them all going out of business (and that huge workforce being unemployed!), but there’s no point fooling yourself, if you aren’t going to wear the mask the whole time when you go somewhere then there’s really no point.
    • irishloop 5y ago
      But risk isn't a 1/0 binary. Every moment you are wearing a mask changes your risk. Spending 1 hour in a restaurant vs 10 hours in a restaurant. It all adds up and it all matters. So yeah, taking your mask off while you eat is definitely going to raise your risk. But not as much as simply not wearing a mask the entire time you're in a restaurant, moving around, getting closer to people and different areas of the restaurant, which probably all have variable particles in the air, etc.
      • 5y ago
• Zababa 5y ago
  Are those masks better for people with glasses? I have to wear a mask in public transportation and at work, and I always get fog on my glasses. This sounds like a small thing, but having to adjust how you breathe all day just to be able to see properly is tedious and tiring.
  • notjustanymike 5y ago
    Glasses person here: yes. Way less fogging.
  • mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Can confirm they are much better for glasses than surgical masks, the air that does leave goes downwards and outwards from the mask far more than up to the eyes.
  • JZL003 5y ago
    Yes and it's actually a sensitive test for fit. If you get fog then air is leaking out unfiltered, so when you breathe in, it's also not filtering that part. It's imperfect bc you can have gaps around your chin which won't fog up. But it's one of the nice parts of the good filtered masks. And in the winter it helps keep the bite of cold away
  • laurent92 5y ago
    No. But it’s still worth buying a 10-pack and see whether it solves some of your problems, because in the worst case, you still have 9 masks which will actually protect you from the virus.
  • buybackoff 5y ago
    I've bought a pack of N95 couple of days ago. Glasses are a major first problem. When I exhale most of the air goes out above straight into the glasses. With the cold temperature outside it's problematic to see. But IMO this proves the point that N95 masks are mush better. It slightly collapses when I inhale and most of the air goes through it, the fit is good. While for ordinary masks the air goes freely through the sides. Ordinary masks protect others from large droplets, but small droplets or aerosol go freely with the air. N95s become quite wet inside quite quickly for that reason.
• chrisco255 5y ago
  • Hokusai 5y ago
    Normal behavior in many countries in Asia. I wash my hands several times a day, as, I have done since I was a kid. Are you expecting nature to adapt to your first world expectations on comfort?
    • hiptobecubic 5y ago
      No, I think they are expecting people to just get sick and die the way we accept automobile accidents, lax regulation on body-destroying foods, air pollution significant enough to measurably impact cognitive function, etc. It's not like "fuck it let's just get covid" is the first obviously bad idea we've adopted to reduce our mental burdens.
      • jaywalk 5y ago
        > they are expecting people to just get sick and die Or are they expecting the vast majority people to just get sick with flu-like symptoms at the worst, like we do every single year? Covid is never going away, at some point we have to accept that and move on.
    • rimliu 5y ago
      Can we please stop repeating this "normal behaviour in many countries in Asia"? Because those countries still get flu and covid. Something being normal somewhere does not mean that it has any measurable effect.
    • yonaguska 5y ago
      Is it normal to wear a mask when you are not sick? Or is it only when you're actually sick. My understanding was, that it is something to wear if you are actually sick. Treating everyone, regardless of symptoms, as being a spreader of disease seems wrong.
  • nnvvhh 5y ago
• api 5y ago
  My gripe with mask mandates is this. Those cloth masks do almost nothing. The holes in cloth are like a gaping barn door to a virus. Same goes with those bandana over the nose masks. Cheap surgical masks are a bit better but not great. I guess the goal was to do something rather than nothing, but unless you are at least using a medical grade mask you're not accomplishing very much. It's like mandating seatbelts but not specifying type so a shoestring tied across your chest is considered a seatbelt.
  • black6 5y ago
    > I guess the goal was to do something rather than nothing The appearance of not doing nothing has driven every recommendation/mandate/edict during the past 2+ years.
  • kerneloftruth 5y ago
    Cloth masks satisfy those policing people to wear a mask. For me, that's 100% effective.
  • _coveredInBees 5y ago
    I believe that while cloth masks are not very effective at protecting you, they are a LOT better at reducing viral spread if you are the infected party. So it still can be quite effective at reducing overall spread of Covid. That being said, if you want to better protect yourself, you should probably be wearing a better quality mask. It's the reason why I've only ever worn KN95 or N95 masks since the start of the pandemic.
  • wolverine876 5y ago
    What is that based on?
  • kevstev 5y ago
    The original guidance IIRC is to both wear masks and maintain social distance. My interpretation of this was that if you are wearing a mask, not only are you filtering the air you take in, but also out, and even with a cloth mask, you are at the very least reducing the radius of what you are shedding vs being unmasked and talking out loud. To me this was all null and void if you are sharing a tight enclosed space for any significant period of time- like a restaurant, or even an office. Then you need something like an N95 to get any significant protection. I understand people's frustration, but I think its important to remember that organizations like the CDC are trying to make a recommendation that balances many factors like convenience/discomfort vs availability of masks, vs what is actually understood about the transmissibility of the virus in its ever changing forms. Even taking that into account, it seems relatively simple to set up experiments that can test the effectiveness of these claims- and why no one has done this is kind of baffling to me- I am guessing these are prevented by ethics concerns where you will have to expose healthy people to the virus.
• praptak 5y ago
  The key quote from the study: "To calculate exposure and infection risk, we use a comprehensive database on respiratory particle size distribution; exhalation flow physics; leakage from face masks of various types and fits measured on human subjects; consideration of ambient particle shrinkage due to evaporation; and rehydration, inhalability, and deposition in the susceptible airways. "
• amelius 5y ago
  75x, ignoring everything else, that is. However, we don't live in a perfectly sterile world, so that number is probably going to be a lot lower in practice. A pity that they didn't measure that.
  • neuronic 5y ago
    It’s still useful if it is “only” 25x better or even just 4x.
    • amelius 5y ago
      Could be, but you have to take practicality into account. What if people use the same face mask several times a day, touching its surface every time they put it on? Even many government officials do this. Is it reasonable to ask people to use a stricter procedure and pay for their own face masks? Considerations like that ultimately determine the effectiveness of a measure.
• timonoko 5y ago
  Fake News. Here is the real-world study. It is pre-covid and without pro-covid bias: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190903134732.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190903134732.h...
  • Anthony-G 5y ago
    Thanks for the interesting counter-evidence. I’ve upvoted your comment but I suspect it would have attracted less downvotes if you omitted the blithe “Fake News” dismissal of the featured article.
• alexk307 5y ago
  There are 20 packs of N95 respirators sitting on the shelves at most Home Depots here in the US.
• zpeti 5y ago
  I really think anything less than N95, especially since the infectiousness of delta, is more a crowd control exercise than anything else on the part of people in power. No mask mandate has ever reduced the R number or growth trajectory anywhere in the world. And no study has ever confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that cloth and surgical masks work in any way against covid. KN95 perhaps, N95 definitely, but that's fairly obvious since it actually fits on your face and has a particle filter. I strongly believe this entire mask things is just a way for governments to make people feel like they are doing something. To make you feel like you are in control in a ridiculously out of control situation. I understand the reasons for doing that, but fundamentally it's still a lie.
  • elcomet 5y ago
    > No mask mandate has ever reduced the R number or growth trajectory anywhere in the world. And no study has ever confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that cloth and surgical masks work in any way against covid. KN95 perhaps, N95 definitely, but that's fairly obvious since it actually fits on your face and has a particle filter. Could you confirm this with a study ? This seems ridiculous
    • macinjosh 5y ago
      Can you tell the difference between places that had mask mandates and places that did not? https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/masks https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/masks
      • nchie 5y ago
        I don't get what the point of that quiz is. All of the example countries in it instituted their mask mandates between the first and second wave. None of them did not?
    • zacharytelschow 5y ago
      This guy seems to exist to create charts that a) show vaccination does nothing to stop Omnicron, which seems to be all recent charts or b) that demographically similar states/countries that are neighbors have virtually identical results when one has a mask mandate and the other doesn't: https://twitter.com/ianmsc/ https://twitter.com/ianmsc/ Given how infectious Omnicron is, these mask mandates are nothing more than talismans.
• rob_c 5y ago
  ...and are still pointless after n minutes in setting y without ventilation. Please lets just move on from mandate nonsense that clearly 2 years in is not working. I know this will get downvoted with a load of 'flatten the curve' style rhetoric. But seriously, you're pretending the combined economies of the west can't come up with a better solution and yet you want to start taking the species to space? Gimme a break, were better off confined to this speck of dust if this is the nonsense we're dealing with...
  • neuronic 5y ago
    ? What is your control group for claiming that masks don’t work? Florida?
    • rob_c 5y ago
      seriously, 2 years in with 90%+ of the population vaccinated and mandatory masks and Omicron spreads like wildfire in the UK and you are claiming a) the vaccines stop the spread or b) that masks work. are you ignoring reality or somehow going to blame the <10% who are probably also working from home...
      • neuronic 5y ago
        I didn’t claim any of that at all with my five word sentence. But I would certainly claim that vaccines and masks are doing more than zero to help, the studies and science are openly accessible. Even if vaccines and masks just helped stop 10% of infections it’s a gain. What’s your improved proposal to stop an aerosol-borne virus with that kind of R0-value in places you can’t exchange air effectively?
        • shakezula 5y ago
          I’ll give you a hint: they don’t have one. they just want to complain. Kind of shocking to see objectivity normally flexed by HN thrown out the window as soon as the subject of masks comes up.
• alkonaut 5y ago
  I wear FFP2 (n95 equiv I believe) but since I haven’t removed my beard since the start of the pandemic I can’t get a decent fit. So I guess it might protect others from catching my sneezes but I have no illusions that it will do much to protect me. Having kids at home who go to schools where neither teachers nor students have worn masks since the start of the pandemic also makes the idea of wearing a mask to the grocery store once a week feel pretty useless anyway.
• daveaiello 5y ago
  "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering updating its mask guidance to recommend that people opt for the highly protective N95 or KN95 masks worn by health-care personnel, if they can do so consistently, said an official close to the deliberations who was not authorized to speak publicly." CDC weighs recommending better masks against omicron variant, Washington Post, Monday, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/10/cdc-weighs-n95-kn95-masks-guidance-omicron/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/10/cdc-weighs-....
• martythemaniak 5y ago
  I've been wearing N95s ever since they became affordable (again) in the fall of 2020. I don't like masks, but if I have to wear one, I'm going to wear the best one and one that actually protects me. I mean this in the general sense of all particulate filters/respirators, rather than strictly N95s. I currently wear the 3M Aura. It fits very well, my glasses never fog up and it quite easy to breath through. I used an oximeter during a long 8hr session of wearing it and had no impact on my blood oxygen levels. I work out with these masks as well and it's fine, although I do need a bit more rest in between sets towards the end of my workout. As a bonus the headstraps don't just make it fit better, when I remove it temporarily, it sits around my neck like a scarf, rather than hanging off my ears under my chin. The masks may be disposable, but they also last long enough. If you get 5 and wear one each day of the week, then store them in a tupperware box, you can get a week's wear out of each one. $2-3 per week to be protected is a good deal. I've tried to give my extras away to family and friends and I've found some of them weirdly resistant. They're fine wearing cloth or surgical masks, but not these. I know there's no chance of getting everyone to wear these, but I don't think anybody should be wearing anything but. I wonder if some city/country somewhere could supply N95s to the entire population and strictly mandate them for a month whether they could stamp out Omicron.
  • notabee 5y ago
    Auras are great, mainly because of the nose padding. It seems to be slightly anti-slip in addition to adding some comfort. What's more shocking is that they very closely resemble a design that was made specifically for consumers around 2008 for dealing with pandemic situations, but somehow we're still debating over whether masks even work 13 years later. https://twitter.com/AbraarKaran/status/1476673083905699849/photo/1 https://twitter.com/AbraarKaran/status/1476673083905699849/p...
• preciz 5y ago
  More mask -> Less social interaction -> More media attention -> More fear -> More mask...
  • preciz 5y ago
  • Anthony-G 5y ago
    I’ve found the opposite to be the case. Masks facilitate increased social interaction as people can more safely meet each other indoors or share a car-ride – which is important when less daylight and colder/wetter weather limit outdoor socialising. The media are more interested in what’s new and in my country (Ireland) masks have been old news for well over a year.
    • preciz 5y ago
      Since masks mean less interaction (contrary to what you wrote) people are looking to fill part of that information void through mainstream media. Which is a fear machine at the moment. More fear -> More masking up Nobody said media is talking about masks all day. We are at the point that the damage is visible on children so I don't care about bowing to HN's liberal readers anymore. It is clear as daylight, mask mandates are damaging our society.
• ghshephard 5y ago
  Has there ever been a study that shows whether face masks work when used in public with COVID? I keep looking, and I find it kind of incredible that we're two years into a pandemic, and except for one study in Bangladesh with masks (that wasn't really that clear) - there is nothing to say that any of these masks are working. There are a bunch of studies with the Influenza virus (different virus) and surgical masks in school settings, both with and without disciplined hand washing - and the meta-analysis of those studies suggests that masks (not N95) - don't really do much to prevent transmission of the virus. I religiously wear my 3M 8210 N95, tight enough to leave welts on my face and indentation in my skull - so clearly I would like to believe it's helping - but I would kill to see a good Randomized Control Trial. Obviously wouldn't be double blinded - because of course you would know you were wearing a mask - unless you gave one cohort faulty masks, and the other ones actual filtering masks.... The ethics of doing this with Covid are obviously questionable, unless you could find a group that had already made the decision not to wear masks...
  • seoaeu 5y ago
    That "one study in Bengladesh with masks" involved 342,183 participants and produced clear evidence that masks work. What is the point of more studies if folks are just going to dismiss them out of hand?
    • mfcl 5y ago
      That's not what I have been reading about the study. The evidence seems to be on the pro-mask side, but it does not appear to be _that_ clear. I'm not an expert in masks, health, or even statistics, so I'm not here to say you are right or wrong. I'm just pointing out that there is a debate. That itself is enough to want to look for more studies, don't you think? To answer your question, the point of more studies is to increase confidence in our opinions and decisions, make better findings, realize errors, etc. And you are quickly jumping to conclusions with "folks like you are just going to dismiss them out of hand". Now, my question would be: what do you mean by "folks like you"?
      • seoaeu 5y ago
• circleit 5y ago
  That’s a cool stat, but whatever…Just traveled (USA) via airplane. When I arrived at the airport, people were sneezing and coughing everywhere. On the plane, same thing. I’m my Uber, same thing with the driver. I tested positive after all this, albeit with mild symptoms. Seems everyone has it. Also seems like no one cares anymore (at least all these people). If Covid was a more serious issue, we’d all be doomed. Doesn’t seem USA govt thinks this is a big deal because otherwise they’d shut everything down. Know why there are no flight attendants and flights canceled, because everyone on planes is spreading it. And now the quarantine days has been reduced. Carry on people…
  • rytcio 5y ago
    > If Covid was a more serious issue, we’d all be doomed. Or maybe people stopped caring because they realized that it's not a serious issue?
  • mring33621 5y ago
    Here is what I think (US-centric): - Most people are tired of masks and even if they use them, they are neither wearing them nor cleaning them adequately - Vaccination/boosters are the only reliable defense for the average person - In 3 years or less, people will wonder what all the fuss was about and simply will treat COVID-19 like a common cold. Your management and colleagues will expect you to show up for work, COVID or not. I'm not justifying this behavior. Just stating what I think we'll see in the future.
    • sfblah 5y ago
      This is right. Whether masks work or don’t is irrelevant. The policy failed. If an individual wants to not get Covid, the only solutions are vaccination and distancing.
    • _fat_santa 5y ago
      At this point with Omicron, it's also that the messaging has gotten so damn muddy and contradicting. Here's what I mean. * Get vaccinated to protect yourself. Well now we know you can get a breakthrough infection. * Get vaccinated to protect others. Well now we know you can still infect while vaccinated. * Wear a mask to protect yourself. Well now we know that masks don't really do a damn thing unless you wear an N95 properly, even then it's not super effective against Omicron. * Wear a mask to protect others. Again, we now know that masks do little to protect others with this variant. The frustration in all of this is, as a young and healthy person, I'm not worried about COVID. And if there is nothing I can do to protect others, please just let me sign the liability waver already. If I get sick and die, that's on me, just please stop enforcing mandates "for my own good".
• ezconnect 5y ago
  Pandemic is over, I hope we can now gather all the real world data on how we dealt with it and see which one was effective and which one was profit driven.
  • 1121redblackgo 5y ago
    How is the pandemic over?
    • npteljes 5y ago
      I think OP omitted "When the" from their comment.
      • 1121redblackgo 5y ago
        I think they said exactly what they meant.
        • svachalek 5y ago
          I think possibly they meant it's endemic now. Most officials don't want to call it that yet, but I think it's pretty well accepted that at some point, we're going to call the pandemic over not because covid is gone, but because it's just everywhere all the time.
• macinjosh 5y ago
  I can't imagine the negative environmental impact if everyone used disposable masks.
  • FabHK 5y ago
    Why would the impact be larger than people reading newspapers, or using disposable napkins/serviettes/tissues? It almost surely is small compared to transport, fashion, agriculture, etc.
• ransom1538 5y ago
  p100 all the way. They don't last as long, look freakish and are hard to breathe through. BUT! If you are around a TON of people for 20 minutes it works perfect. We have family that do surgeries p100 all the way.
• vixen99 5y ago
  What is the role of face masks, however effective, in a world where a variant of Covid-19 is endemic? Sooner or later we're going to catch it much as we catch influenza which year in year out, kills up to an estimated 650,000 people every year.
• spookthesunset 5y ago
  • ravenstine 5y ago
    At most, it's good information to have for those particularly vulnerable to COVID. Depending on one's vulnerability profile, N95 masks, or masks of any kind, can be wasteful and even harmful to the environment. For myself, my chance of getting seriously ill or death from COVID-19 is effectively 0%. SARS-CoV-2 is endemic, and I've had it twice, so I'm not gonna keep forking over my money for masks, especially N95s. But yeah, if we didn't have sufficient research on the effectiveness on masks by now, then the medical establishment has failed at its job. The CDC is supposed to control diseases, and yet masks were somehow a mystery decades after their inception? Wow. Why exactly should anyone have faith in these people?
  • xdennis 5y ago
    The science has been very clear: * masks don't work * masks don't work and they harm you * surgical masks and better work * cloth masks, surgical and better all work and here's how to make one out of a tshirt * cloth masks don't work, only surgical and better * surgical masks don't work, only N95 and better * ... * (predicted) type 2-6 hazmat suits don't work, only type 1 work.
  • _fat_santa 5y ago
    I find that many of the mandates are "feel good assumptions" rather than actual science. Take masks on airplanes, there have been 0 outbreaks of Covid as a result of a flight, and for good reason. Airplanes have heavy duty HEPA filters that will filter all the air in the cabin every ~3-4 minutes. On the one hand the science says that masks won't really do a damn thing on airplanes but we mandate them because its a "feel good assumption", when you walk on the airplane and see everyone wearing a mask, it makes you feel safer, even though it's not actually any safer. Same goes for social distancing. I heard somewhere that the initial number was 10FT. But then businesses complained that it would be unfeasible so they voted by committee and reduced it to 6FT. The last example I bring is in restaurants. I was recently in Hawaii and the rule is, if you are sitting down you don't need to wear a mask but if you are standing up you must wear a mask. Now I get why the rule is there and I'm not complaining about it, but think of how stupid this rule is from a scientific perspective.
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  • aldebran 5y ago
    Do you wear a seatbelt in a car? In an airplane?
    • xdennis 5y ago
      Besides being proven to work in the real world (not lab), seatbelts aren't comparable to covid measures because it's trivial to go years without every needing to use a seatbelt. You don't need to wear one in busses, trains, back of a car.
    • dukeofdoom 5y ago
      Sure one is proven to work, the other is about as well your underwear stopping your farts from smelling inside a car. Please just end the scary virus fear mongering. This panic is ruining more lives than saving.
      • aldebran 5y ago
        The airplane seatbelt isn’t to help in a crash scenario. It’s so that you don’t honk your head during a turbulence and injure yourself or others.
        • dukeofdoom 5y ago
          sure, but what do seat belts have to do with viruses.
          • aldebran 5y ago
            What does an abusive relationship have to do with masks?
            • 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
  KF94 masks have been a good trade-off between protection and comfort. They don't filter to the same degree as N95, but they are a hell of a lot more comfortable to wear, and therefore more likely to be worn consistently.
  • el-salvador 5y ago
    I've tried KF94 and KN95 and find them more comfortable than N95 too. I've also noticed differences in brands. Some brands have more comfortable brands than others and that makes them easier to wear.
• jokoon 5y ago
  I have been wearing a FFP3 mask for 18 months, which costs $10. I have washed it 2 times, but it can handle 50 washings. Apparently it's a much better mask, it has copper in it. Although I had to replace the tiny metal wire in it since it broke, to make sure it was air tight.
• Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  I live in Colombia where N95s are impossible for non-medics to get. But I can very cheaply (like 0.10 USD a piece) mail-order sticky metal pieces that vastly improve the fit of the masks I do use. They last basically until washed. Highly recommended.
• andrewla 5y ago
  This is pretty much meaningless. An N95, in order to be N95, must filter out 95% of 2.5um particles. For larger particles, this is almost certainly an lower bound as well, but for smaller particles manufacturing techniques and tolerances can produce a wide variety of responses. Since COVID has been detected in aerosolized droplets well under the micron size, as well as much larger particles in the 5-10um range, we really don't have a ton of information on how this translates to infectiousness for particulate sizes. We don't even have a good understanding of the degree to which infections can spread through tear ducts, which none of these masks address in any significant way. And from an epidemiological perspective, I don't think we'll ever find a signal; behavioral differences between regions is a far larger factor than mask type composition in a population. That said, I think it is intuitively likely that higher filtration and better fitting masks will generally reduce transmission and infection, but I don't think we have an understanding of what those order of magnitudes are. Studies like this seem especially misleading. And some things are somewhat counter-intuitive; like the way that plastic valves actually seem to make things worse for liquid transmission because of their lack of absorbance even as they are more effective at filtering dry particles.
  • travisporter 5y ago
    > larger particles, this is almost certainly an upper bound as well Shouldn't it be better at filtering larger particles, and therefore a lower bound? Or am I getting confused Agree that putting numbers like this are misleading.
    • andrewla 5y ago
      Yes, I meant lower bound. Corrected.
  • aldebran 5y ago
    If N95s weren’t effective wouldn’t more medical pros be catching Covid?
    • xdennis 5y ago
      Compared to what? Haven't a lot of them already had covid?
• gathly 5y ago
  My mask is N95 in public, but my main strategy is to almost never leave my apartment, which I live in alone. I think when people start talking about mask efficacy, it also depends on what you're doing with that mask. Are you only going to the grocery store once a week, or are you going out every day, to work inside a building, and going in and out of buildings all day? When they talk about a poorly fit KN95, is that on a person who runs into the gas station for 2 minutes, or someone who works at a concert venue?
  • timr 5y ago
    > my main strategy is to almost never leave my apartment, which I live in alone. This is incredibly sad. How many years of your life are you going to lose for a virus that is never going away? (A virus from which you are extremely well-protected after vaccination.) Now, I don't know you. Maybe you have some serious immune compromise condition -- like a recent bone marrow transplant -- that prevents the vaccines from being effective. But if not, what are you doing? Even if you're a 65 year old with multiple co-morbidities, your risk of serious illness after vaccination is in the 1-per-10,000 range, and death is in the 1-per-100,000 range. I'm not exaggerating: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7101a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7101a4.htm
    • gathly 5y ago
      I have diabetes, which makes it extremely dangerous to contract covid. I'm fully vaxxed and boosted, but Omicron breaks through vaccine protection. I also like my apartment and there's plenty to do here.
      • timr 5y ago
        > I have diabetes, which makes it extremely dangerous to contract covid. The paper I linked above covers diabetes. Please read it. In a population of 1.3M elderly (> age 65; aka "high risk") people post-vaccination, a total of 98 diabetics had a "severe" case of Covid (i.e. not just death). The adjusted risk factor was found to be 1.47, on a baseline of 0.015%. In other words, if diabetes is your sole concern, it certainly qualifies as elevated risk, but in no reasonable world is a risk measured in hundredths of a percent "extremely dangerous". And remember: these are elderly people. Your risk is almost certainly dramatically lower -- if you're in the demographic of the typical HN user, divide this by ten. I can't emphasize this enough: this virus is not going away. It will be with us for the rest of our lives. If you can't go outside now, you will never again be able to go outside.
• angryGhost 5y ago
  • jeofken 5y ago
    What are you talking about? The vaccine is Safe and Effective, and as soon as it’s rolled out, our governments will let us be free again. You should understand that the infringements upon our rights (at least here in many European countries) are done to protect you because the leaders in the political parties care for us, and truly love us. Questioning this is a threat to our democracy.
• aldebran 5y ago
  So much anti-mask rhetoric here. No mask < cloth mask < surgical mask < N95 etc < P99 etc None of these are 100%. Does not mean they’re 0% effective. When I cant get an entire Pizza but I can get 2 slices I don’t say ah fuck it, I’ll have none at all. Edit: if masks weren’t working at all, we’d see a lot of medical professionals catching covid. A lot lot more than we see now.
  • bjt2n3904 5y ago
    The "anti-mask rhetoric" is not about the effectiveness of masks, but the necessity of mandating them. As for me, I've been living quite happily without one since about July last year.
    • oauea 5y ago
      Must be nice being a healthy individual who doesn't care about spreading covid to less healthy people.
      • bjt2n3904 5y ago
        Terribly sorry about that. Perhaps if they have serious health concerns, they should take preventative measures such as being vaccinated, wearing masks, or isolating. But as far as the people I work with every day, who also do not wear masks, I have not spread COVID to any of them. Nor my family, nor my volunteer groups.
        • oauea 5y ago
          Masks exist to reduce spread. You're the one who has to wear them for it to be effective at reducing spread.
      • bmeski 5y ago
        This is the stupidest take.
      • smaryjerry 5y ago
        The difference is clear between states that require masks everywhere and states that don’t. Masks have no effect if they are mandated or not. My state has had every single new wave occur while already mandating masks.
• dmix 5y ago
  Why hasn't the market responded to demand for N95s? It's been almost 2yrs now and we're all still stuck using those blue surgical masks (which are mandatory in hospitals here in Ontaro, Canada) or whatever random stuff people buy, at best K95. Are there some grueling regulatory rules in place or has no just bothered? They just be getting pushed for mass production like the vaccines.
  • svachalek 5y ago
    There's something broken about this market, not sure what's going on. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/health/covid-masks-china-united-states.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/health/covid-masks-china-...
• trembonator 5y ago
• fuzzy2 5y ago
  I, for one, cannot understand people NOT wearing N95/FFP2 masks or at least similarly-shaped masks made of other materials. ;-) The standard surgical masks totally kill my nose. I understand that every face is different. For me, they are just that much more comfortable. And with other people not wearing their masks properly (or sometimes not at all, because some glass panel is clearly stopping the aerosol spread!), I’d rather have better protection anyway.
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  On the other hand: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190903134732.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190903134732.h... "A study published today in JAMA compared the ubiquitous surgical (or medical) mask, which costs about a dime, to a less commonly used respirator called an N95, which costs around $1. The study reported "no significant difference in the effectiveness" of medical masks vs. N95 respirators for prevention of influenza or other viral respiratory illness."
• jillesvangurp 5y ago
  The point of masks is not necessarily protecting the wearer from other people but other people from the wearer of the mask. It's kind of an unselfish and considerate thing to be wearing a mask: you might be infected without knowing and exposing others around you. A mask reduces that risk. If everybody wears a mask, you effectively have two layers of protection. A potentially infected person wearing a mask would mostly not be spreading the virus very effectively. Their mask would catch most of their droplets. Your own mask then reduces the risk further. If either of you doesn't wear a mask, the risk is much higher. If nobody wears a mask, higher still. It's not rocket science.
• vemv 5y ago
  With all the talk about seal tightness I'm deeply surprised so few people use a fitter to tighten their masks. I feel naked without my fitter - I'd feel the air leaking from where it's not supposed to.
• kleiba 5y ago
  I visited British Columbia a few weeks ago, coming from Europe, and was almost shocked to see that inside stores, etc., some people _still_ don't wear any masks, others wear them just covering their mouth but not nose (which I also count as "not wearing a mask"), and most people that do wear masks (properly) use simple cloth masks. Over here in central Europe, FFP2/N95 masks have been mandatory in such settings for a long, long time now.
  • rsanek 5y ago
    Interesting that Europe as a whole has fared worse across basically the whole pandemic vs. Canada: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_cases_smoothed_per_million&Metric=Cases+and+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=CAN~Europe https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
    • kleiba 5y ago
      Canada reached a very high percentage of vaccination across the whole population, and rather quickly compared to other nations.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• coderguy123 5y ago
  Yes sure N95s are better but they are so hard to keep on for long time for me since I wear glasses. I finally found a comfortable one made by Aegle, I think, but they seem to be out of stock everywhere.
• sva_ 5y ago
  I wonder in how far the effect is diminished by reusing those masks. I read somewhere, that they lose a lot of their protection after getting damp from wearing. These masks are usually single use, but people use them over weeks or more.
• PaulAnunda 5y ago
  Anyone recommend a trustworthy place to buy N95 or KN95 masks online?
  • newman314 5y ago
    https://www.projectn95.org/ https://www.projectn95.org/ seems to have good recommendations.
• AlwaysRock 5y ago
  And CDC recommends not using N95 masks so health care workers can get them. So... What should we do?
  • stiltzkin 5y ago
    Source on that?, CDC already recommends using N95 for Omicron and is widely available.
    • AlwaysRock 5y ago
      https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si... > DO NOT choose masks that > Are specially labeled “surgical” N95 respirators, as those should be prioritized for healthcare personnel
• president 5y ago
  There are always going to be leaks and there will never be 100% protection and there will never be "zero covid". The entire mask argument is irrelevant and only serves to distract and divide. We should have said from the very beginning that people should stay home if they don't want to catch the virus. And if you want to go out, it's at your own risk. It was that simple. Instead we have tripped over ourselves for 2 years trying to come up with ways to curb the virus without having any impact whatsoever, destroying and dividing the fabric of our society along the way.
• scotuswroteus 5y ago
  I don't get why this is something Axios is raising, they're a corporate, partisan trade rag that frames public health as a political issue. The medium is the message.
• decafninja 5y ago
  My wife and I, plus my side of the family, skipped cloth masks altogether. We managed to acquire a load of KF94 (Korean N95 equivalent) from friends and relatives in Korea and used them (and continue to use them). Neither my parents (dad is early 70s, mom is late 60s) nor my wife and I have gotten covid yet* On the other hand, my wife's side of the family quickly abandoned use of the KF94s and switched to cloth masks. All of them got covid in late 2020, and all of them just got omicron again. Everyone in both sides of the family got vaccinated plus boosters. * While obviously not 100% certain, we got tested frequently both using in-home antigen kits and PCR. I was probably the most at risk due to having changed jobs in early 2021 where everyone was told to come back to the office. However my employer provided free daily PCR testing, which I took advantage of. Have had 100% negative daily results thus far...