Whenever I go outside and see >50% people wearing disposable masks I wonder... Why? Did they only find out about the pandemic right now and it caught them off-guard? I have had reusable masks since April. I assumed everyone was doing the same, but everytime I go outside I prove myself wrong. I don't get it.
I don't believe myself to be able to always manage fabric mask clean. Possibly dirt mask is worse than nothing, so I always wear disposable mask. Also I heard that non woven mask works better than fabric.
> and really, what's the harm? If people think a mask offers them more protection than it really does, they might engage in riskier behavior. When I see people out walking around the neighborhood with masks on, I really wonder what they're trying to accomplish. You're not going to get covid walking outdoors passing within 6 feet of someone for 5 seconds. These days, my theory is more people get infected at home than…
New York State recently reported that 74% of infections spread between Sept and Nov 2000 took place during household social gatherings (based upon contact tracing data).
The data tells a different story. https://rationalground.com/post-thanksgiving-mask-charts-sti...
The data at this link has less than nothing to say about mask effectiveness. One graph says, for example, that mask mandate areas in the US have slightly higher infection rates than non-mask mandate areas. But this is extremely expected - high infection rate is what prompts areas to mandate mask usage. If I feel at risk (maybe because I observe people getting ill and dying), I comply. If I don't feel at risk, I don't…
> Also, why no Asian countries on the international charts?
Have you seen the news out of South Korea and Japan this week?
how much protection would be enough for you to wear one? 50%? 75%? Hell, even 1% is higher than 0 and really, what's the harm? Yea most people don't get very sick, except for the 300k that are dead just in the US.
2020 is coming to a close. In a couple of weeks we will have the final tally for the year. This is good because we can then compare it to other years in total. I suggest you check the all cause excess mortality figure. It's already been projected to be essentially the same. This is a really good metric to evaluate the threat level. Here's a nice graph of deaths per month per millon for a nearly 200 year perspective:…
I wonder if we would have noticed this before modern hospitals and record keeping. I suspect it would have spread much slower, maybe over a decade. In a village of 1,000, there might be 5 deaths that would have been written off as a bad flu, or whatever people used to call getting sick like that.
It’s surprising that after a year, people still haven’t figured out that reusable elastomer respirators with long life replaceable filter cartridges and >99% small particle filtration effectiveness are the best option from the perspectives of safety, overall cost and sustainability. I’ve been using the same pre pandemic 3M P100 industrial respirator with a retrofitted exhalation valve filter for months. It fits with…
Any reason why you went with the "P"100 (resistant to oils) instead of the regular "N"100?
It’s surprising that after a year, people still haven’t figured out that reusable elastomer respirators with long life replaceable filter cartridges and >99% small particle filtration effectiveness are the best option from the perspectives of safety, overall cost and sustainability. I’ve been using the same pre pandemic 3M P100 industrial respirator with a retrofitted exhalation valve filter for months. It fits with…
Imagine the archeologists in the year 100,000, sorting through rock samples and going "oh look, there's the mask pollution from the great 2020 pandemic"
Wait and see... the 20xx pandemic will be even bigger
The data at this link has less than nothing to say about mask effectiveness. One graph says, for example, that mask mandate areas in the US have slightly higher infection rates than non-mask mandate areas. But this is extremely expected - high infection rate is what prompts areas to mandate mask usage. If I feel at risk (maybe because I observe people getting ill and dying), I comply. If I don't feel at risk, I don't…
> Also, why no Asian countries on the international charts? Have you seen the news out of South Korea and Japan this week?
Do you mean South Korea and Japan where cumulative death rates per capita are now 1/60th and 1/40th of the US's equivalent figure?
No its because of Brownian Diffusion. Counter intuitively masks block particles smaller than 0.3 microns (such as virus’s) more easily than particles at around 0.3 microns in size. It is particles that are around 0.3 microns in size that filters have the most difficulty blocking. N95 particles block 95% of particles of 0.3 microns in size. N99 Masks block 99% of particles at 0.3 microns. As I understand it smaller pa…
Interesting. Is it that particles smaller than 0.3 microns have more dynamic and random motion? I mean, why is it that particles smaller than 0.3 microns are likely to be "stuck" where as at 0.3 microns they aren't?
I realized the original comment was about surgical masks.. I was commenting about the filtering properties of multi-layered polypropylene masks. I'm afraid its a bit beyond my Science / Engineering / Maths skills at the moment to try and explain it any better.. but maybe this link will help? https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00022470.1980.10...
Masks with exhalation valves (edit: and no filter :) are inconsiderate to others since they do not stop you from spreading virus particles. https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/11/new-airflow-vi...
> with a retrofitted exhalation valve filter
that definitely fixes it.
is there a way to know who has the exhalation filter and who doesn't, though?
How does a high-volume retail store know whether the rando with the elastomeric mask has a sufficient exhalation filter or not?