2 ms·
Several of my friends and coworkers do that. All of them have gotten covid. N95 masks reduce the risk of getting a respiratory disease, but they're nowhere clos
by chroma 4y ago
Several of my friends and coworkers do that. All of them have gotten covid. N95 masks reduce the risk of getting a respiratory disease, but they're nowhere close to foolproof.
A CDC study found that people who wore N95 masks were 83% less likely to get covid than people who wore no mask,[1] but that overstates their effectiveness. People who wear N95s tend to behave differently than people who don't wear masks. They get vaccinated more, avoid gatherings, and generally try to reduce their risk of infection in other ways. Also the timing of the study is important. It was conducted before more infectious variants such as omicron were around. And since it was conducted when California required masks indoors, only 5% of participants claimed no mask usage. So the study compared N95 people against the most hardcore anti-maskers, not the typical person who doesn't wear a mask these days.
It is for these reasons that I would bet that the real effectiveness of N95 masks is around 50%, not 83%. Useful, but not something that lets you go back to normal life risk-free.
1. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
- archagon 4y agoI have been traveling a lot this past year (a dozen flights), vigilantly wearing an N95 mask while indoors, and I've yet to get sick. Meanwhile, my slightly less vigilant travel companion got Covid during one of our flights, possibly from removing her mask to take a drink of water. Was it luck? Maybe to some extent, but I'm much more confident in the effectiveness of a well-sealed N95 than I was a year ago, that's for sure.
- chroma 4y agoI've noticed no pattern with me or my friends. I haven't gotten covid despite spending days unmasked, indoors, with people who were infectious. Some of my friends have gotten ridiculously unlucky, getting covid and taking weeks to recover despite being young, healthy, boosted, and wearing N95s everywhere. Of course general rules apply: A mask is better than nothing. Vaccines reduce the risk and severity of infection. But these interventions aren't as effective as originally claimed, and the variance in outcomes is massive. You can't just put on an N95, live life normally, and expect to avoid this disease.