4 ms·
> "if you don't wear your mask 100% of the time, you might as well not wear it at all, since you could be infected in the 1% of the time you don't wear it. Thi
by throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
> "if you don't wear your mask 100% of the time, you might as well not wear it at all, since you could be infected in the 1% of the time you don't wear it.
This all depends on what the goal is. If your goal is to mitigate individual risk then 99% is better then 0%. If your goal is to never be exposed to the virus (immunocompromised, can't be vaxxed, comorbidity, etc...) then you arguably should not participate in something that requires you to remove your mask in public even 1% of the time. If you're a government trying to limit spread/hospital load then even something 20% effective will have an impact across an entire population.
- usrusr 5y agoIf the virus you're dealing with is so incompetent at spreading as those strains from early 2020 were that almost failed to reach R=1 despite being fully airborne (which we now know, but back then even experts fell for "airborne spread could not possibly be as slow as we observe!"), even something like 5% effective can be a swim or sink difference for the virus. That said, we are now in the omicron era and things are very different now (masks are a weak but nonetheless important tool for the project of "please take turns with sick leave, thank you very much", and nothing more, nothing less)