4 ms·

You're still touching things, then touching your face. You're still breathing the same air as everyone. You're still moving through clouds of expelled vapor fro

You're still touching things, then touching your face. You're still breathing the same air as everyone. You're still moving through clouds of expelled vapor from everyone who has walked in front of you recently. There is no hermetic seal around your nose and mouth if you wear a mask. Your eyes are exposed to the air. And if you wear the same mask more than once, you are trapping all sorts of bacteria and other nasties in a soup of sweat, oils, and grime on your face. Masks are mostly theater in everything but controlled environments.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
> You're still touching things, then touching your face. > Your eyes are exposed to the air. I'm not the person you're responding to. Just what I do. The mask covers the mucus membranes, except around the eyes. And I've got glasses with side-shields for the eyes. And an ASTM-III mask over the N95 mask so that I can touch and manipulate the masks without touching the breathing surface of the N95. > You're still breathing the same air as everyone. You're still moving through clouds of expelled vapor from everyone who has walked in front of you recently. There is no hermetic seal around your nose and mouth if you wear a mask. It's a virucidal N95, so besides the filtering also kills much of the virus that it traps. While the filtering is not 100%, the killing on top of the filtering should greatly reduce risk of infection or transmission in the unlikely event I'm infected but don't know it. > Masks are mostly theater in everything but controlled environments. I used to get a respiratory infection about yearly. I haven't had a contagious illness that I am aware of since January 2020. Edit to add: And I take my daily shower after coming home for the day. I have never used a delivery service to grocery shop. I got about one month of work from home before coming back to the job part-time, and was fully back to the job by September or October of 2020.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  I wear an N95 when I go out but only my regular glasses. I too haven't been sick since January 2020. I used to get colds pretty much quarterly, and so it's absolutely worth it to me. If it bothers someone else to see me wearing one that's their problem, I'm not asking them to wear one.
  - qup 4y ago
    Has it bothered anyone?
    - cableshaft 4y ago
      I get the ocassional weird, sometimes mean look every once in a while, but I can deal with that as long as people don't stop and confront me over it, which thankfully hasn't happened yet, except a single time when some jerk walked past me and baa'd to suggest that I was a sheep back in 2020. I don't even wear a mask everywhere (not since I got vaccinated). I don't once I sit at a table at a restaurant, or at certain social functions. But somehow I still haven't gotten Covid yet (that I'm aware of at least), even after a few known exposures, so I'm guessing either it's helping at least a little bit or I had an asymptomatic case a while back. As far as I know, though, I could still have a moderate-to-bad case of it when I get it. My parents just both got it recently, for example, (that was one of my exposures, since they were helping me clean out my flooded basement just before they got symptoms) and it took both of them over a month before they got over it, and we share genes, so in theory I should have a somewhat rough time once I get it as well.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      It certainly bothers the person(s) who left 'Mask off!' graffiti all over my neighborhood.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- don_neufeld 4y ago
  I used to get them more than yearly, usually 3x or more per year, some of them were pretty brutal (Really bad coughs, fevers, night sweats, up to a week of PTO to recover) I have masked every time I leave the house since COVID started impacting Wuhan (we had Chinese operations, so saw early impact on the business side. If you saw me masking on BART in early 2020, wave) and I haven’t gotten a single illness of any type since then. It’s glorious. I am often close to the only person I see all day masking, and it blows my mind why people don’t get this advantage.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    > if you saw me masking on BART in early 2020, wave Which line, what time? :) I only started riding BART in late 2019, so only had a few months of it before stopping. I'm sure I would have been ill more often than yearly if my ridership had continued. I agree. Additionally the masks will more than pay for themselves when it comes time to cash out my accumulated sick leave when I leave this job.
    - don_neufeld 4y ago
      Orinda to New Montgomery, I used to start commute around 7:30, otherwise you couldn’t get a parking stop at Orinda.
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        You were about half an hour later than me on the way out, and we only overlapped through Orinda to Rockridge. I usually got the 2:something on the way back, and by then it was crowded enough I'm sure I wouldn't have seen you even if we were in the same car.
sampo 4y ago
> Your eyes are exposed to the air. Surface area of lungs: 100 m². Surface area of eyes: 0.0004 m². Difference: 6 orders of magnitude.
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
If there's a one in a million chance that my wearing a mask might prevent me from unwittingly getting or transmitting COVID and that spreading to a high risk person, I'll take it. You make your life choices, I'll make mine. Thanks.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

> You're still touching things, then touching your face. > Your eyes are exposed to the air. I'm not the person you're responding to. Just what I do. The mask covers the mucus membranes, except around the eyes. And I've got glasses with side-shields for the eyes. And an ASTM-III mask over the N95 mask so that I can touch and manipulate the masks without touching the breathing surface of the N95. > You're still breathing the same air as everyone. You're still moving through clouds of expelled vapor from everyone who has walked in front of you recently. There is no hermetic seal around your nose and mouth if you wear a mask. It's a virucidal N95, so besides the filtering also kills much of the virus that it traps. While the filtering is not 100%, the killing on top of the filtering should greatly reduce risk of infection or transmission in the unlikely event I'm infected but don't know it. > Masks are mostly theater in everything but controlled environments. I used to get a respiratory infection about yearly. I haven't had a contagious illness that I am aware of since January 2020. Edit to add: And I take my daily shower after coming home for the day. I have never used a delivery service to grocery shop. I got about one month of work from home before coming back to the job part-time, and was fully back to the job by September or October of 2020.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
I wear an N95 when I go out but only my regular glasses. I too haven't been sick since January 2020. I used to get colds pretty much quarterly, and so it's absolutely worth it to me. If it bothers someone else to see me wearing one that's their problem, I'm not asking them to wear one.
- qup 4y ago
  Has it bothered anyone?
  - cableshaft 4y ago
    I get the ocassional weird, sometimes mean look every once in a while, but I can deal with that as long as people don't stop and confront me over it, which thankfully hasn't happened yet, except a single time when some jerk walked past me and baa'd to suggest that I was a sheep back in 2020. I don't even wear a mask everywhere (not since I got vaccinated). I don't once I sit at a table at a restaurant, or at certain social functions. But somehow I still haven't gotten Covid yet (that I'm aware of at least), even after a few known exposures, so I'm guessing either it's helping at least a little bit or I had an asymptomatic case a while back. As far as I know, though, I could still have a moderate-to-bad case of it when I get it. My parents just both got it recently, for example, (that was one of my exposures, since they were helping me clean out my flooded basement just before they got symptoms) and it took both of them over a month before they got over it, and we share genes, so in theory I should have a somewhat rough time once I get it as well.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    It certainly bothers the person(s) who left 'Mask off!' graffiti all over my neighborhood.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
don_neufeld 4y ago
I used to get them more than yearly, usually 3x or more per year, some of them were pretty brutal (Really bad coughs, fevers, night sweats, up to a week of PTO to recover) I have masked every time I leave the house since COVID started impacting Wuhan (we had Chinese operations, so saw early impact on the business side. If you saw me masking on BART in early 2020, wave) and I haven’t gotten a single illness of any type since then. It’s glorious. I am often close to the only person I see all day masking, and it blows my mind why people don’t get this advantage.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  > if you saw me masking on BART in early 2020, wave Which line, what time? :) I only started riding BART in late 2019, so only had a few months of it before stopping. I'm sure I would have been ill more often than yearly if my ridership had continued. I agree. Additionally the masks will more than pay for themselves when it comes time to cash out my accumulated sick leave when I leave this job.
  - don_neufeld 4y ago
    Orinda to New Montgomery, I used to start commute around 7:30, otherwise you couldn’t get a parking stop at Orinda.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      You were about half an hour later than me on the way out, and we only overlapped through Orinda to Rockridge. I usually got the 2:something on the way back, and by then it was crowded enough I'm sure I wouldn't have seen you even if we were in the same car.

sampo 4y ago

> Your eyes are exposed to the air. Surface area of lungs: 100 m². Surface area of eyes: 0.0004 m². Difference: 6 orders of magnitude.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

If there's a one in a million chance that my wearing a mask might prevent me from unwittingly getting or transmitting COVID and that spreading to a high risk person, I'll take it. You make your life choices, I'll make mine. Thanks.