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Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

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Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#181

Post by miles »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #136
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masks are our "doing our part" symbols, the Covid ribbon if you will. The science on anything other than N95 masks is flimsy, but it's low-effort and low-cost, so why not. It feels like better than nothing, it probably is, so we go along with it.

Is the science flimsy? I genuinely thought that the science was very clear that good masking reduces the rate of community transmission?

The large study from Bangladesh last year[0] which was widely trumpeted with headlines like "Large Study Confirms Masks Work to Limit COVID-19 Spread"[1], averred that, "Villages where cloth masks were distributed experienced a 9 percent reduction in symptoms, while villages where surgical masks were distributed saw a reduction of 12 percent."

Stanford Medicine's assessment[2] states that, "Although there were also fewer COVID-19 cases in villages with cloth masks as compared to control villages, the difference was not statistically significant."

[0] https://www.poverty-action.org/study/impact-mask-distributio...

[1] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210907/masks-limit-covid-s...

[2] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#182

Post by simsla »

yosito wrote: post #139

N95s are effective, but I really don't understand the endgame of healthy, vaccinated people wearing N95s at this point. I know there are benefits in certain high risk situations, but covid is going nowhere, are we really gonna spend the rest of our lives wearing masks everywhere? At a certain point, we just need to accept that life comes with risks and we can't avoid them all, and trying to just ruins our ability to…

I expect I'll get infected eventually. I'd prefer not to get infected at a point when the system is (about to be) overloaded.

Omicron can't be meaningfully stopped, but it can be rate limited.

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#183

Post by hedgehog »

miles wrote: post #181
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the science flimsy? I genuinely thought that the science was very clear that good masking reduces the rate of community transmission?

The large study from Bangladesh last year[0] which was widely trumpeted with headlines like "Large Study Confirms Masks Work to Limit COVID-19 Spread"[1], averred that, "Villages where cloth masks were distributed experienced a 9 percent reduction in symptoms, while villages where surgical masks were distributed saw a reduction of 12 percent." Stanford Medicine's assessment[2] states that, "Although there were also f…

To put those in context, what the study did was promote masks across a bunch of villages. Some people across all arms of the study were already wearing masks of various sorts, so the data should be read as the combined effect of: the promotion changing behavior, people starting to use masks or replacing their existing ones, and then the net effect on transmission. So the % effectiveness quoted is the effectiveness of the new masks relative to whatever people were already doing watered down by how much putting up posters etc actually changes human behavior. Pretty remarkable actually.

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#184

Post by GeekyBear »

vba616 wrote: post #173
GeekyBear wrote: post #21

Scientists spent several years trying to convince the powers that be that Covid spread was airborne. >In an open letter published today (July 6 2020), 239 scientists from 32 countries urge the World Health Organization and other bodies to address the potential for airborne transmission of the coronavirus. The authors write that a growing body of evidence suggests “beyond any reasonable doubt” that the virus spreads i…

Many people still seem to think that it is transmitted on surfaces. Not instead of airborne, but additionally. And I don't mean experts or lawmakers (that I know of), I mean in my area of the US, grocery stores and gas stations (sometimes) have signs saying put a plastic bag or gloves on your hands.

The initial advice was all based on the theory that Covid had a droplet based spread: Wear a cloth mask to catch large droplets before they spread. Stay six feet apart, because large droplets fall to the ground within that distance. Use hand sanitizer and disinfect surfaces droplets might fall on. Put up sneeze guards at registers to protect the cashiers.

However, once you know the virus is fully airborne, you can focus on different things, like improving indoor ventilation in public spaces so you are constantly exchanging inside air for outside air.

We have HVAC systems that will help recover the ac/heat when you do this.

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#185

Post by hedgehog »

nradov wrote: post #88
toast0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Washington state and seeing that the hospitals are out of capacity again; national guard coming in to help and procedures deferred for a month per the governor. I don't know how it looks in other states. Whenever hospitals start deferring procedures, it's not great for health outcomes. One might hope that one outcome of this pandemic is more spare capacity in hospitals, but that's going to take a long time, if…

You might be able to delay it a bit. You won't be able to prevent it. The virus is here to stay and everyone will be exposed. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

If you get to pick it'd be way better to get sick in a couple months after the current wave has died down and there are beds, drugs, etc available for most patients.

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#186

Post by nradov »

hedgehog wrote: post #179
alfor wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the risks for kids under 5 ?

In the near term COVID isn't that likely to make them really sick but a non-negligible % of kids appear to get MIS-C or weird long-term effects like diabetes. If we can extrapolate much from adults getting the kids vaccinated will go a long way towards reducing those.

Based on CDC data the risk of an infected child getting MIS-C is about 0.02%, and the risk of dying from MIS-C is about 0.0002%.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mis-national-surve...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#187

Post by aakresearch »

drsnow wrote: post #174
josephcsible wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "afraid", I meant that we think it might happen, and think it would be bad if it does. Similar to how people can be afraid of global warming.

Ah okay. Why do you think it would be bad? Genuinely asking.

Are you genuinely curious or it is just a bait to subsequently dismiss a response under pretense that any "inconvenience" cannot possibly outweigh "common good" of universal mandatory masking? Because such was my previous experience of biting into such lures.

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#188

Post by fortran77 »

frogpelt wrote: post #57
daveevad wrote: post #31

> N95s aren't regulated for children, so if a mask says it's an N95 for kids, don't trust it. This makes me think we're still floundering at the basic protections. Our kids' school in the Bay Area recommends N95s for kids which, if this statement is true, don't exist.

From the beginning it has been obvious that the decision makers did not know what to do about this pandemic. I am not convinced that lockdowns and masks have decreased the positive cases based on comparisons between places that were heavy on lockdown and mask mandates and those that weren’t. Almost no one is wearing N95 masks. And many of those who wear masks only wear them some of the time or incorrectly. On a fligh…

I've been on several flights during the pandemic where someone on the plane was using a CPAP in-flight. This is allowed, even though CPAP's have been shown to aerosolize and spread viruses.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7298691/

I have raised this issue with everyone I could think of and nobody cares, or is willing to tell CPAP users they can't fly. This proves to me that the people in charge don't care about reducing COVID exposure.

I do wear properly-fitted genuine N95s while flying and have never had any flight staff tell me I couldn't.

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#189

Post by kyrra »

miles wrote: post #181
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the science flimsy? I genuinely thought that the science was very clear that good masking reduces the rate of community transmission?

The large study from Bangladesh last year[0] which was widely trumpeted with headlines like "Large Study Confirms Masks Work to Limit COVID-19 Spread"[1], averred that, "Villages where cloth masks were distributed experienced a 9 percent reduction in symptoms, while villages where surgical masks were distributed saw a reduction of 12 percent." Stanford Medicine's assessment[2] states that, "Although there were also f…

There are some critiques of the Bangladesh study, you can read some here: https://mobile.twitter.com/Emily_Burns_V/status/143312212476...

One big issue was that the mask pickup didn't equally reduce cases across ages. This leads to the training for wearing masks may have caused older groups to stop socializing, rather than the masks doing anything.

Re: Ready for an N95? Here's how to find a high-quality one that fits you well

#190

Post by whoisburbansky »

Victerius wrote: post #13
khuey wrote: post #6

The 3M Aura N95s are pretty comfortable and cost a couple dollars each at Home Depot. They're also pretty good about directing your breath away from the top so your glasses won't fog up when wearing them.

I don't wear glasses, but an issue I've noticed while wearing N95 masks is that my eyes start crying. I've thought it could be caused by the warm breath being directed upward toward my eyes.

I didn’t realize this happened to me until reading this comment. I think for me it was a combination of air flow redirection and just pinching from the metal bits high enough on my nose that maybe there’s some squeezing the tear ducts going on?
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