I used to work in the oilfield. We had to be clean shaven on site because in an emergency we may be required to use masks, and your face needs to be clean shaven to form a seal. That's how things are done when there is a real safety risk. The lack of CDC guidance on this point speaks volumes as to how serious this is.
Yeah, I know they are aware of the concept. It's just that they are mandating masks, but barely mentioning the facial hair issue outside of a few publications that, lets face it, basically nobody reads. It just screams politics over actual safety.
given the hysteric reaction of the American public to mask mandates I don't want to know what happens if the government tells people to shave. It sure does smell of politics but not from the CDCs side, they just have to make guidelines under consideration of how the public reacts
Within 10 minutes you'd probably have discrimination claims from angry hipsters, barbershops and a dozen different religious groups or something.
In the US requiring everyone to be clean shaven would be a clear infringement of the religious freedom rights of many people. It would be a non-starter from the get go.
It'd be interesting to see people getting denied a religious exemption against shaving because some bureaucrat wanted to flex a bit more power a bit longer.
We can barely get folks to wear the things in the first place, let alone over the nose. You want the CDC to add "oh and you have to shave your beard off" to the mix? Really?
> The lack of CDC guidance on this point speaks volumes as to how serious this is.
It speaks volumes, at least. Heckuva job, Brownie.
I'm still flummoxed by Fauci's -- let's call it -- equivocation about masks being pointless, for which he later apologized and explained he was trying to conserve the supply of N95s for medical personnel. There is certainly an admixture of manipulating the public to achieve a desired outcome (rather than leveling with the populace) and gross incompetence and callous indifference at play.
If they really believed it were that serious, I hardly trust they'd do any more than cover their assess.
> There is certainly an admixture of manipulating the public to achieve a desired outcome (rather than leveling with the populace) and gross incompetence and callous indifference at play.
When they decided they had to skip Xi variant, it was made pretty clear that the patricians have no intention of leveling with the plebs again.
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.
(As a bonus, they have the 9210, which has better straps, retail you generally only see the 9205, which is ok too, but the straps are just rubber bands and they don't fit as securely.
The Auras are great to wear but the straps on the 9205s really are flimsy and often fail after only a couple uses. 9210 is worthwhile if you can get them.
Yeah, I dunno why 3M even makes the 9205 TBH, the 9210 is just so much better, and while the 9210 are harder to find, when you can there doesn't seem to be a meaningful price difference.
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?
For N-95s yes. For other types of masks that are easier to counterfeit, no. Same goes for electronics. I’m leery of USB-C cables, but I’m fine buying a high-end DSLR lens for the same reason.
The Aura is, as other people have said in previous threads, the gold standard of N95 masks. I've been wearing them solely for the last 6 months or so, and they are great! They rarely fog my glasses, they are very comfortable, I'm not in any hurry to take them off when I'm done, especially if it's cold out.
The only downside is the straps: they both go behind your head, one high and one low. They take a bit to get used to, but you can't put them on with a hat on. But the plus is that they are very comfortable for the long term. Sometimes, with glasses, I have to take the glasses off to get the mask off.
The ones with the blue straps, the straps seem to deteriorate quickly if left in the sun, but I've only had a couple where the straps broke.
You can get them small quantity on ebay, and ebay seems to police the sellers, for around $2 each. You can also buy them direct from 3M for $1 in quantity 440, or at least you were able to 6 months ago when we last looked.
One issue I’ve seen with the Aura N95 is that the straps are flimsy and snap after several days of occasional use. I wish they’d make the straps stronger.
Imagine showing this article, complete with the date, to someone from March 2020. Two years into the pandemic and the media is just finally getting around to recommending that people wear basic respiratory protection? They would wonder if our manufacturing capacity had been destroyed in a war!
This whole pandemic has demonstrated abject failure of our institutions. It was very easy to pin it on a terrible micromanager whose most intelligent moment was brainstorming that people could inject bleach, but it's not like the CDC got right back to business when the "experts" were left to their own devices either.
High quality N95+ masks and face shields should have been distributed door to door by USPS as soon as the manufacturing capacity became available, as well as testing kits that they're just finally rolling out (credit where credit is due), hand sanitizer, and whatever other Covid paraphernalia I'm forgetting from the past two decades^Wyears. Using any of these things is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but the point of leadership is to show people the right direction, ask them to do the work, and to acknowledge that it is indeed work. Instead we got pandering to irresponsibility and performative altruism, and laissez faire choose-your-own-solipsistic-adventure - want to sew ersatz masks and pretend you're in the old country? Cool! Want to pretend to fight creeping totalitarianism by beating up on a grocery clerk? Also cool! Unsurprisingly, Covid Likes This :thumbsup:
One of the last things we need is even less faith in our public institutions and general society, but downplaying the scope of the failure out of tribal loyalty isn't the right thing either.
Those masks and face shields should sport US flags and bald eagles and nationalist slogans. Not only should we all have them, distributed by the government, but wearing them should be a visible form of patriotism.
I assume you're being sarcastic, equating wearing protective gear to fascist fashion like say the aftermath of 9/11.
But when a fire alarm goes off and everybody leaves a building, you're not being clever by staying. Sometimes conditions change and it really does make individual sense for everybody to move in the same general direction.
I don't personally need much leadership (I started wearing a respirator in March 2020), but given the ongoing dumpster fire of a situation it's clear that most people do. As I've gotten older, and especially as hammered home by the pandemic, I've accepted that groupthink is unfortunately going to exist regardless. As such, it may as well be nudged towards positive ends like encouraging people to protect themselves and their community, rather than destructive ends like denying that a problem exists.
I trust Korean Supermarkets like hmart for kn95! But even still some I got were counterfeit after doing the candle test:
One tool is a candle test, where people put on a mask and try to blow out a lit candle. If the candle can be blown out while the mask is worn, it’s a likely indication that aerosols can go through, according to Aaron E. Glatt, MD, MACP, FIDSA, FSHEA, chair of the department of medicine and chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau.
“If you can blow out a candle, that means that’s a relatively flimsy mask, it’s going to be a single ply, and it basically has holes in it," Glatt told Verywell. "If your breath can go through it, that means something else can come in as well."
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 indoors through tiny aerosols—a finding that should be reflected in the WHO’s recommendations.
Part of it is the pre-Omicron, it took more virus to typically infect people. So the more typical masks helped a lot. Now even a tiny bit can easily infect, so aerosol (as opposed to droplets) was not nearly as big an issue.
Regular cloth masks do not filter virus floating in the air you breathe and they never did.
Here's one of the scientists from President Biden's Covid advisory council being interviewed on PBS last year:
> I have had concerns that date back to april of 2020 about the concept of masking.
Needless to say it's a political hot button beyond anything I've ever seen in public health, and yet at the same time i think we've all done a disservice to the public.
When you actually look at face cloth coverings, those cloth pieces of hang over your face, they actually only have very limited impact in reducing the amount of virus that you inhale in or exhale out.
In fact in studies that have been done show that if an individual might get infected within 15 minutes in a room, by time and concentration of the virus in the room, add a face cloth covering you only get about five more minutes of protection.
I've been really disappointed with my colleagues in public health for not being more clear about what can masking does or does not do.
On the other hand if you use the n95 respirators and fit them tight to your face, you can actually spend 25 hours in that same room and still be protected.
So when you send a child to school for the day, they are only going to be there five minutes?
>Fitted particle-filtering masks like N95s are up to 75 times more effective at preventing infection with COVID-19 than surgical masks, according to a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
How in the world did you get to this retort from my statement?
My child is too young to go to school. If my child was school age I'd likely unenroll this semester. If that somehow were not an option I'd send with an n95. Are you satisfied?
Personally I think cloth masks are worthless for anything but the most casual exposure to the virus, and then for it to maintain any reasonable protective effect, you would need to remove and dispose of the mask as those luckily trapped virus particles can dislodge and infect. Continuing to wear a cloth mask that has accumulated virus particles in it just turns a chance casual exposure into a long term one.
So one, you would need to know you were casually exposed (most folks don’t)
And two, you would need to have a pretty good supply of masks carried with you at all times to replenish on every exposure.
I think you are likely making up the exposure risk based on "conventional" wisdom. I imagine the actual efficacy gain of a simple cloth mask has nothing to do with "trapping" virus particles. My guess for where the actual efficacy comes from is
1) not being able to touch your mucus membranes with your hands anymore
2) limiting the amount of air circulating near your face by limiting induced currents due to your inhale/exhale cycle
If I'm right, your conclusions about gaining the effectiveness of a simple cloth mask are completely off base.
Definitely curious if you happen to know of a study that looks at the mechanisms of protection for a non filtering mask!
Sure its CW, but my point was that any possible blocking of virus particles would be completely incidental/accidental, and because the mask is not effective at all at stopping those particles due to their size and weave of the cloth, anything incidentally blocked would not necessarily be blocked again but could still pass through even if you were no longer exposed to the initial source.
If you can point me to a peer reviewed study extolling the virtues of cloth masking, I’ll read it. But pretty much all of the positive masking studies with any real statistical benefit of protection seem to be centered around n95 or surgical masks—worn correctly and disposed of after one use.
You can't have it both ways. Either simple cloth is not good at filtering the virus, and therefore we shouldn't care about retransmit risk from "trapped" virus. Or it is good at blocking them (like an n95) and you can start thinking/caring about second order effects like retransmission of trapped virus.
I don't need a peer review study to tell me to ignore the epsilon squared term when the epsilon term is already being argued to be marginal. If an article comes through claiming the inverse, that is surprising and worth communicating at large.
No, I am not having it both ways. I don’t think cloth masks are effective at all. I’m responding to the “cloth masks are 5-33% effective” for incidental exposure commentary as a positive aspect of cloth masking. It’s a red herring that creates a false sense of security.
My point is that if a cloth mask is only partially effective for an incidental exposure than it must have been somewhat effective at a given moment, but due to virus size and cloth weaving…every moment that the particle didn’t reach your nasal passages due to that momentary chance then that virus still has a 67%-95% of entering you and infecting you every moment it is near you. So any incidental exposure becomes non-incidental.
I appreciate you clarifying your reasoning. I think it's straight up crazy/magical reasoning. But to be honest I don't have much more confidence in my own conjectures on this matter.
I don’t see what’s all that magical about assuming something that is 33% effective at any given moment would not all of a sudden become 100% effective at every other moment. But perhaps when you roll a die the same number appears every time. I just know that when I roll a die I generally have a 1/6 chance that my first number comes up again on every roll I try.
Perhaps randomness and chance is magical. I always thought it wasn’t.
Perhaps it's a failure in this communication mode. It seems to be that you've argued yourself down a garden path. From my understanding your statements are
A) using incorrect concepts (moment in time? A 15 minute infection window turns into a 20 minute infection window)
B) simply irrelevant. Unless you can provide evidence to the contrary, cloth masks aren't trapping any relevant amount of virus
Unfortunately, it got politicized, at which point facts no longer matter.
When we thought that Covid spread by the large droplets you spray out when you cough or sneeze, wearing a cloth mask to catch those droplets before they landed on people or surfaces that people will touch made sense.
> Scientists spent several years trying to convince the powers that be that Covid spread was airborne.
Several months, perhaps? The article you link to and the letter it references are both dated July 6 2020. Even now COVID-19 has only existed for a couple of years (not several).
It is impossible for anyone to have spent several years (by July 2020) doing anything relating to a specific virus or the consequential disease 7 months after the first known infection.
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.
I really don’t see the point unless you’re immune compromised or at some other high risk. Omicron is the evolutionary result you wait for, better at spreading and less health impact so it significantly outcompetes other variants (it has, something like 95% of infections). Peak omicron is coming withina master of days or already passed across the US. It’s virulence is such that you can only delay not expect to forever avoid or extinct the virus.
It’s time to admit defeat and plan for what that looks like and stop pretending like anything at this point is going to make this virus go away. It’s here, it’s going to kill about one person in a thousand of those left, and if you choose to not get vaccinated that’s your choice and if you’re not young you’re taking a significantly higher risk of death.
But unless you work in healthcare or care for the elderly you’re not going to do anything but slightly delay exposure to your neighbors because the new variant is so easily spread.
The moral issue is passed, the chance to save anyone but the most vulnerable is passed, and any efforts are only going to marginally delay the inevitable. You want to gamble and not get vaccinated, go for it.
People will be in denial about this for a long time and beating the morality drum for a long time, but in a hundred years a covid strain will still be around and people will be telling their children about how great grandpa got covid in 2020, like I just heard tell of my great grandfather getting the 1918 flu preparing to go out to WWI getting treated in a bed outside because there was no hospital space. That flu is still around this century and covid still will be next century.
Sorry, we lost, there are still going to be consequences but I can’t imagine anything changing regardless of what you do besides a matter of weeks of when you get exposed. Fauci said as much, that everyone being exposed was now more or less unavoidable.
If you disagree what long term changes do you think can be realistically achieved by doing anything whether or not it’s practical?
There are no vaccines for those under five years old. It appears it’s too much effort for everyone wear a mask until we get a vaccine for all. I used to think that this was how most people thought and behaved, but now it is confirmed clearly for me.
Fortunately CDC data clearly shows that there is no significant risk for those under five years old. COVID-19 is less dangerous to them than other common viruses such as RSV.
"Vaccine for all" is a pretty unclear and unmotivating goal. (And I'm inclined to say it wasn't what the goalposts originally were to begin with, but I don't have links to back up my memory.) There have always been and will always be people who can't get vaccines even if they want to, ranging from everything related to medical reasons (adverse reactions, etc.) to social ones (e.g., parents won't let them get vaccines) to others. How long do you want to wait around for a miracle vaccine to come that everyone can get? At some point you have to put a threshold on the percentage of the population you're willing to leave unvaccinated before you can go back to normal. Whether it should be 70% or 90% or 99% I don't know, and any discussion on whom to "leave behind" on vaccination is bound to make people angry, but whatever it is, it can't be 100%, or you will never move on and return to normal life.
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.
Sure, and diabetes around 0.05%, and then the assortment of cognitive, respiratory, and cardiac symptoms that are less life threatening but more common. AAP has a reasonable overview:
There's a fair amount of uncertainty but stack it up the likely negative outcomes and I wouldn't let my unvaccinated kid catch COVID if I had a reasonable way to achieve that.
- Hospital capacity is limited, staff burnout is real, and delayed treatments for non-Covid conditions are occurring. Given Omicron's tremendously fast spread, slowing spread even slightly helps.
- Infection isn't an all-or-nothing strategy. Innoculum, that is, the amount of virus you're exposed to, matters, and a smaller innoculum may reduce severity of symptoms.
- There remain many individuals who are immunocompromised or who have multiple risk factors for Covid.
- Though Omicron's severity is lower, it is not zero. Looking at South Africa, it appears that net total deaths are about 1/3 of previous Covid waves. South Africa's peak was early enough that we're probably seeing peak mortality about now.
- Further mutation of Covid is likely, and the more cases and more variants of virus are spread, the more likely those become. We've seen variants with greater severity (Delta) and greater infectiousness (Omicron). A variant combining those traits would be highly unfortunate.
There are countries which are likely to see major Omicron outbreaks. I've been watching India's new daily cases double every 3 days since January 4, growing from 59k cases then to 533k on 13 January, pretty much precisely as I'd projected. (I was, and am, very much hoping for that trend to break. Given India's pretty clear testing and data reporting issues, hitting a numeric target may not be especially significant. But the point remains that in a country of 1.4 billions, even with a relatively low incident fatality rate, India could be looking at 20--80 million deaths. More if healthcare services are overwhelmed.
Access to, and proper protocols for masks, could help.
"Though Omicron's severity is lower, it is not zero. "
There isn't a zero risk of any number of more dangerous things. This is no longer high risk, at all, for reasonably healthy people who are vaccinated and boosted. (those who aren't are foolish)
I'm willing to wait out the surge, but after that, I am hoping those in my community (bay area.... which doesn't have overcrowding of hospitals because of high vaccination rate) are ready to get rid of the masks and get on with normal life.
My point is that at a population level, the multiple of reduced severity * vastly greater infectiousness appears to be a net higher overall impact in terms of hospitalisations and deaths.
This is especially the case for countries which have to date managed to contain earlier Covid variants. Australia comes to mind.
The point is it’s too late, the peak already happened. You can’t slow the spread because the peak infection rate is already here and population dynamics are going to limit it now.
Good times for advice like this for masking were a month ago and a year ago.
It is time to admit defeat and act like it’s too late for those kinds of growth mitigations.
Dude, honestly, going out shopping during the cold and flu season without a mask, seems a little gross. And, at least around here, it's super cold and flu and covid season right now...
Why? I’m a living organism, we get diseases. If we don’t get enough of them we often get other diseases. I’ve gone out in public my whole life in all seasons and am not disgusted by a little infection threat, it’s what being alive is.
If you want to wear a mask, go ahead, you do you. But the time is quickly approaching where a government telling me I have to is going to be far beyond their legitimate purview.
We've been afraid all along that people would try to make masks a forever thing, and saying that not wearing a mask is gross is a big step in that direction.
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.
This is spot on. I'm really hoping omicron will be the wave that finally helps achieve some level of "herd immunity". It's sad that we had the opportunity to do so via vaccination but failed to capitalize. However a variant with high transmission and low chance of severe symptoms is the next best thing
There likely is no herd immunity to be had. Omicron infects those with previous delta infections, and there are cases being studied further from South Africa of omicron cases getting reinfections of omicron.
I think our best chance is faster vaccine cycles and better targeting of the sequences to impede transmission.
Immunity isn't a binary condition. Infection by any known SARS-CoV-2 will leave most recovered patients with a significant level of cellular immunity against all other variants. This won't necessarily prevent reinfection, but just like with every other coronaviruses the symptoms of reinfection cases will typically be mild.
The mRNA vaccines also seem to confer a significant level of durable cellular immunity against all variants, although they also don't reliably prevent infections.
That was what was said of delta, yet six months after, because of how many cases of delta were created, the next Omicron variant can reinfect previous delta patients. Just from looking at the broad waves of Covid, one should conclude that natural immunity conveyed by getting Covid does not protect us as a herd against future mutations. Because omicron is even more contagious, I might expect the next major variant in the same to faster timeframe, and that variant will have the grainy of bypass previous immunity to some degree.
Ya "herd immunity" wasn't the right phase... More so just that I hope we collectively developed a decent enough immune response that we see a dramatic reduction in hospitization.
The Delta and Omicron variants are sufficiently contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect those who otherwise lack immunity. Instead we expect almost everyone will be exposed. Fortunately the vaccines and other therapies are pretty effective at preventing severe symptoms.
> It's sad that we had the opportunity to do so via vaccination but failed to capitalize
We likely never had this opportunity; omicron spreads too well and evades existing vaccines too well. The good vaccines are down to ~50% effective, and omicron is 2x as contagious as delta. There was a short window between vaccines getting approved and delta that heroic vaccination campaign could have worked. And I mean heroic. It would have literally had to be 90% of the world population in a few months. Factories never could have scaled to the point, there'd never be enough public trust to hit 90%, and too many countries are incapable of running a campaign like this.
I don't think we lost, we developed a vaccine which reduces your chance of death by a factor of 20. (probably more than that if you are reasonably healthy) That's a win in my book.
I am rapidly becoming in the "vaxxed and done" camp.... happy to get vaccinated and boosted as many times as necessary. But after two years, this is no longer an emergency situation for the vaccinated. It is simply not a big risk anymore. All kinds of things are bigger risks.
I'm willing to wear a mask for a few more weeks but after that (when they say the surge will be mostly over), there is no point anymore.
> the "vaxxed and done" camp.... happy to get vaccinated and boosted as many times as necessary
My new year's resolution is that our institutions have until the end of the Greek alphabet to figure this out. I'll get boosters, but don't expect me to mask up for the Aleph-Tango-Susan-93 variant in 2024. Come hell or high water. I'm burying loved ones due to non-covid afflictions. If we blew it, we blew it. We can at least live while we die.
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 it happens.
On a personal note, I don't like being sick, so if I can delay or prevent that, wearing a mask isn't awful. And I don't like large gatherings, so I'm not missing out on much by avoind those.
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.
> It’s time to admit defeat and plan for what that looks like and stop pretending like anything at this point is going to make this virus go away.
This isn’t defeat though? Winning doesn’t mean nobody gets the virus, it means we’re minimised ham and impact as much as possible, where possible.
We might all get it, but there’s no reason for us all to get it at the same time and cause undue stress on our hospital system.
> really don’t see the point unless you’re immune compromised or at some other high risk
Because I have an active lifestyle and don’t really feel like risking chronic fatigue or lung damage unnecessarily? Because I have things I want to do, and having to sit at home isolating and being sick impacts my social life negatively? Because even if it’s not covid, I’m kinds of liking not sharing the air with that random person on public transport with some infection?
Even if Omicron is 10x more contagious and not serious enough to require 1/10th hospitalizations than previous variants, the load on healthcare system doesn’t become lower than previous variants. Use of Masks slow down the rate of infections enough so that healthcare system doesn’t get overloaded again and cause more deaths and sufferings of both Covid and non Covid patients alike due to system load and failure.
When I read comments like yours, I am very glad that I decided to stay in Japan at the start of COVID-19 instead of returning to US. Here majority of people wear masks, irrespective of type and fit, when they leave home and take off only after returning home. Only taking off mask when absolutely needed such as eating or drinking.
Wearing mask is all about reducing viral load rather than preventing infection completely.
I hope for better critical thinking and logical reasoning and discourse on forums like HN. But I guess I have become too old and jaded.
The outcome we’re looking for and seem to have found right about now with a peak is the the virus sweeping though the population, literally exposing everyone, and running out of new people to infect.
The peak happens when a high enough proportion of people have already been exposed it had it that the virus runs out of new people to infect. Because the growth rate for this variant is so fast, the post peak drop will be very quick.
Population dynamics with exponential growth are like that.
It seems like the only thing left to do is chase the impossible or just accept the situation and move on.
Exactly. Finding the "most effective" mask and mandating it isn't practical anymore. I live in a developing country and there are relatively few antivaxxers here. Not a lot of people here are against mask mandates either. However, the Omicron variant still caused a huge surge in new cases. N95 is just too expensive. You could already purchase a meal for one person with the cost of an N95 here. What choice would an average person who works less than minimum wage?
The approach here should be cultural. Encouraging employees to not go to work when they are sick should be normalized. Labor laws should be revised to include more sick leaves factoring in how prevalent COVID-19 has become. Public spaces should be retrofitted and redesigned to allow for a better ventilation. Controlling what mask people wear and how they wear is just too difficult to implement. Government must shift their focus away from the action of its citizens to the environment the citizens participate in.
> 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.
Other countries may have not been dropping the ball on this quite so badly as ours.
Looking for stuff that's been okayed for kids in Korea has served me well. I got a crate of KF94s for my kids shipped. Of course, then it takes research and time to make sure you don't get ripped off with counterfeits and what have you.
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 flight I took recently, they asked a man to remove his N99 mask in favor of the standard issue, light blue surgical mask you see everywhere.
Masks to me are symbolic. People wear them to show that they care and that want to obey the pleas to “do your part”. But with the implementation I’ve seen they probably haven’t helped much.
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.
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."
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.
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.
One of the very first studies posted to the CDC website about mask efficacy, "Absence of Apparent Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from Two Stylists After Exposure at a Hair Salon with a Universal Face Covering Policy — Springfield, Missouri, May 2020," appeared to indicate masks were overwhelmingly effective. The success of this study has not been replicated to my knowledge.
> Among 139 clients exposed to two symptomatic hair stylists with confirmed COVID-19 while both the stylists and the clients wore face masks, no symptomatic secondary cases were reported; among 67 clients tested for SARS-CoV-2, all test results were negative. Adherence to the community’s and company’s face-covering policy likely mitigated spread of SARS-CoV-2.
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.
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.
> they asked a man to remove his N99 mask in favor of the standard issue, light blue surgical mask you see everywhere.
They do this at a hospital I go to frequently (require a blue surgical mask uniformly) and I just put the blue surgical mask on top. Havent had any breathing problems or anything. The blue ones are pretty thing and useless in that state.
All they care about is following protocol, not efficacy.
I think the statement says that there are no legitimate N95s specifically labeled for kids, so any "N95" that has that labeling is suspect and may not live up to performance. But yeah, I can't imagine N95 designers were anticipating kids to ever need them.
Generally speaking, masks will be designed or optimized for heads in different sizes. Until you get to really young kids where they don’t fit, there’s no magical reason that they won’t work.
It's mind blowing how 3 years into a pandemic, we're just having the conversation about N95 and mask fit vs kn95 vs cloth mask. What a huge miss in public health. Should have been done summer 2020.
The most effective, cheapest solution was just to wear a properly fitted n95. Sure, vaccines good, retrovirals, yes, but this should have been done long ago. Given the airborne and aerosolized nature having a real mask would have gone a long way to reduce community spread. This was a known thing, not new science.
Since the beginning, I have been using N95s when I'm actually worried about catching the virus and think I might be able to prevent it (like grocery shopping early on, flights, etc.) I use cloth masks pretty much everywhere else for compliance or because I think the situation is low enough risk.
I did find it very interesting that the people most excited about masks were, for the most part, not particularly interested in masks that are actually effective.
There is also many simple things we could have done to reduce covid effects:
vit D
Vit C
quercetin
Sauna/hot shower/simulated fever
reduce BMI
sun exposure
cardio
Fit is critically important. There is no point in having an advanced filter material if the mask fit itself is leaking air everywhere.
>"An N95 is more protective because it has a better face seal in general than a KN95 or a KF94,"
N95 does not require manufacturers to test for fit. However, the headband normally ensures a better face seal. KF94 has a fit-test requirement, but it's bar is low -- 11% leakage to pass the test. The ear-loops really don't do much and in terms of face seal and filtering inbound air. Leakage is far greater source of pollutants than the filter failure (94%, 95%, 99% filtration).
I use common sense -- if the mask fits loosely and is easy to breathe in with, it probably is not filtering much.
It takes more effort to wear an N95 than nothing. But it’s certainly not impossible, and for most people (including my overweight, out-of-shape self), it’s not insurmountable.
It’s like wearing pants. You’d have a lot more mobility if you didn’t, but we do it anyway.
My understanding is that for Covid your mask is expected to filter exhalation, protecting others from any virus you may have in your system. My understanding is that masks do very little to protect you from inhaling unwanted virus carrying particles.
Of course, it seems to me that a good mask should really be doing both jobs at once, with a good seal. Which means no beards and headbands. My understanding since the beginning of this pandemic was that everyone was going to get this bug, it was just a matter of "flattening the curve". So, why are we still talking about masks? I sometimes fear that the right has turned it into a political issue, and in response the left has ALSO turned it into a political issue, instead of a rational one.
Cloth masks do little to protect you on the way in but do catch quite a lot on the way out even with side leaks. The intuition there is the tiny wet globs of fluid flying out of your mouth from breathing etc are pretty heavy and catch on the mask easily when fresh. That helps a lot. If not caught they dry out, becoming lighter and smaller, and then float in the air at infectious levels for up to a few hours. At a system level getting almost everyone wearing at least cloth masks helps slow spread down a lot.
Once you're dealing with exposure to an environment filled with the fine airborne particles you need a well-fitted N95 or better to protect yourself. Although the virus itself is tiny it's traveling in particles closer to 1 micron which N95 type filters work great for. You can still be infected through your eyes but as far as I know that's very rare in normal non-hospital settings.
So that's self-protection, but why bother? It's true that at this point most people will be exposed eventually and with three shots of the mRNA vaccines people are unlikely to end up in the hospital. Several reasons. First, slowing rate of transmission will reduce overloading the hospital system. That saves a lot of collateral damage to people with otherwise treatable problems when they get turned away due to the crowds. Second, if you are unlucky enough to get sick enough to need a hospital bed you want that to happen when there is plenty of capacity, availability of drugs, etc. Third, the treatment regimens keep improving as the medical world learns better treatments and better drugs become available. Fourth, how sick you get appears to vary with how much virus you are exposed to. So even if your PPE is not perfect you can reduce your odds of serious effects when infected. Around half of people infected experience long-term lingering symptoms and there's evidence even in kids that number is not negligible.
It's pretty clear masks are effective both at an individual protection level and as a public health measure, I'm not sure how they got turned into such a political hot topic.
I also thought masks was about exhalation, but the general public seems to have misunderstood this from the onset. Politicians probably helped that along, since it's easier to promote selfish mask-wearing than altruism.
However, I didn't see that in HN discussions. Now it seems goal posts have shifted, and HNers also expect inhalation protection. I'm assuming N95 masks have proven effective, so the bar was suddenly raised. Or something to that effect.
I find most N95s easier to breath in the many cloth masks simply because they actually hold their shape and don't collapse into your mouth every time you inhale.
I've been using FFP2 and N95s with the straps cut off, under a rather stiff cloth mask that is largely the same shape in the front as most respirators (so it doesn't crush the front), and is attached by a large velcro strap around the back the head (with holes on the side so as to go around the top and bottom of the ears). I've found this easier to put on and take off quickly, while maintaining at least as good a seal.
KN95s are a bit confusing to me in that, in my experience, they definitely don't have the common sense "this air is clearly being pushed through a filter" feel of breathing through a well-fitted FFP2/N95, but at the same time, don't give an obvious sense that there is a leak somewhere.
The same way cloth masks did not work, the same way surgical masks did not work, FP2 or N95 do not work either. You can't stop an airborne virus with a mask.
You are only going to fk yourself up. Saying that there is no cost to you in wearing a mask that is actually hard to breath in is a serious misrepresentation.
Check the epidemic progress for Austria a country that both mandates and strictly enforces FP2 masks. It is the same as in any other country.
"The relative risk of 0.17 suggests that wearing an N95 respirator reduces the risk of a SARS-CoV 1 and 2 viral infection to 17% of this population wearing the surgical mask."
Take a look at the people who work in the types of labs this virus leaked from: they're not wearing N95 masks, they're wearing full body positive pressure suits. Not PAPRs, because even the P100 filters on those don't filter viruses, but positive positive pressure suits with air plumbed in from somewhere else.
yes this is true - prolonged exposure - like students at school - masked with anything but full body protection will probably expose everyone. I am 180 degrees from my stance 12 months ago, now that vaccines have been released and proven.
Vaccine is the only defense.
But I dont mind masks, they have a lot of ancillary benefits. I wear them when I go in stores, it costs me nothing.
I'd guess that over 95% of people using these masks are unable to keep a seal on the mask. I'm still capital S shocked that we have not invented some better sealing system. Every time my glasses fog up, I know that whatever "protection" I am getting is nil, especially with omicron.
The OP is not "removed from reality", they are correct. We had many ways that we could have significantly reduced transmission - e.g. moving the majority of life outdoors (outdoor classrooms, outdoor restaurants/food-carts, outdoor shopping farmer market style). No one wanted to do this at any serious scale.
We need to do things that actually stop the spread, rather than continue useless healthcare theater. Design masks that can properly seal for the majority, or they are useless. Mandate uber drivers to have their windows down during drives - Mandate airlines to not pack people like sardines (which will NEVER happen).
Don't try to take this contrarian attitude with folks like this, it just makes you look like an ass. OP is not an anti-vaxxer. OP is not trying to hurt others. OP is frustrated y the lack of efficacy of current mitigation strategies.
Masks don’t magically block humidity. In cold weather, the mere fact that a mask redirects more of your exhaled breath upwards (through the mask) can cause fogging.
But yes, most masks seem to fit very poorly indeed.
You can stop an airborne virus quite effectively with a correctly fitting mask with sufficient filtration.
It is indeed true that wearing a mask with high pressure drop for a long time can be bad for you. You could try to find one with lower pressure drop and try to mostly stay outside and not wear it so much. (Or you could wear a poorly fitting mask such that lots of air bypasses the mask, with worse results.)
Can you share the sources of your information on this?
I sympathize with your view on this, because I've heard a lot of seemingly contradictory information on this. But if we're going to sort this out, I think we need to go beyond stridently stating our individual conclusions.
I just checked the data from https://covid19.who.int/ and Austria had 93 cases per 10,000 last week where as USA had 164 cases per 10,000. Which seems like a significant difference.
I don't know if Austria mandates masks but your last sentence doesn't seem to hold up according to WHO.
I know South Korea mandates masks and they had 5 cases per 10,000 last week. :)
Yes, Austria does, and it mandates FFP-2, which while not quite N95, is pretty close (roughly equivalent to the Korean KF94 standard - 94% filtering minimum, and they allow earloops and not just headbands, which generally fit a bit worse). Still lightyears better than cloth or a typical surgical.
The case numbers are meaningless due to differences in testing rates. They don't tell us anything reliable about which strategy is more effective. The actual infection numbers are way higher because most people never get tested. The only numbers that are even somewhat comparable between countries are hospitalizations and deaths.
The CEO of my local provincial health authority Dr. Michael Gardam had some comments on N95 masks. He said visitors to the hospital here were asked to remove their N95 masks and were given medical/surgical masks instead. Partly due to not knowing how old or contaminated the masks were of visitors but also for mask performance issues.
Dr. Gardam said, paraphrasing, N95 are good at filtering when you breathe in but when exhaling they are not so great (poor fit?). The medial masks were good filtering both in an out maybe not as good as the N95 for filtering inward of very small particles. N95 are best at filtering small particles but larger droplets can be filtered by either the surgical or N95 masks.
I ran into anti-maskers when trying to enter a hospital. A security guard wanted me to remove my P100 (in+out) and wear a cosplay mask instead. I escalated and talked to the Hospital's Director of Infection Control. When I told them that I was not comfortable with their ask, I was met with all of the standard anti-mask tropes - "Covid is too small to be filtered" "wearing a better mask is unnecessary" "hard to breathe" "you will pass out" etc. It was bizarre.
Eventually we agreed that I could come back with an N95 and wear their cosplay mask over my N95, which was acceptable per their official policy (and that it would be on me if I were to pass out). Why they couldn't lead with that option, or even post signs with examples of acceptable PPE combos, I don't know. What I do know is we're two years into this pandemic and ignorance continues to dominate at every level.
It wasn't a typo. I'm referring to surgical masks as cosplay masks, as they provide poor filtration compared to appropriate respiratory PPE. It was understandable that we made do when they were the best thing available. But their continued primacy in a developed country is a disgrace.
Cosplayers are too busy fighting anti-maskers to see that the basic reality that each one of us is the main party responsible for our own safety, and from focusing on that dynamic will protecting others follow. Imagine if the politicization of respiratory protection had been around the red tribe wanting to wear P100 valved respirators, and the blue tribe wanting a combo that filtered output.
Practically I'm a little surprised by the cosplay under N95 requirement, as that makes it impossible to visibly inspect the cosplay and also makes the sealing of the N95 worse. Never mind having to step back outside after receiving the cosplay, to avoid demasking in a crowded area. Although I might be happier with it because I could wear my P100 half-face on top rather than not really being able to put a cosplay mask over the P100's side filters. shrug everywhere has their brokenness.
Surgical masks are orders of magnitude worse at filtering particles and designed to protect people who are open on an operating table from surgeon sourced droplets.
It boggles my mind that the general public, media, and even healthcare workers treat N95 mask as if they are as good as it gets. Industry routinely uses elastomeric half- and full-face respirators with P100 filters, and they have been easy to find in stock again since August 2020.
P100 is a comparable grade to HEPA, both 99.97%. Respirators are more comfortable and seal well easier than purely fabric masks, they don't pull on your ears, they don't fog glasses, it's just silicone making contact with your skin instead of gross wet fabric so they are much more comfortable. They are also much more effective for smoke and pollen.
I wear a 3M model 7502 face piece with model 7093 filters.
If it doesn't filter the exhale, you're spreading to others. Especially if you're asymptomatic. That's one reason why many places (correctly) forbid masks with valves.
> That's one reason why many places (correctly) forbid masks with valves.
No wrong. The CDC has written guidelines here in favor of exhalation valves on N95 masks (which are filtered), the guidelines specifically recommend against not forbidding such masks if they are NIOSH-approved N95 ones:
My N95 filtering facepiece respirator has an exhalation valve. Is that ok? Will it protect both me and others?
Yes, an N95 filtering facepiece respirator will protect you and provide source control to protect others. A NIOSH-approved N95 filtering facepiece respirator with an exhalation valve offers the same protection to the wearer as one that does not have a valve. As source control, findings from NIOSH research suggest that, even without covering the valve, N95 respirators with exhalation valves provide the same or better source control than surgical masks, procedure masks, cloth masks, or fabric coverings. In general, individuals wearing NIOSH-approved N95s with an exhalation valve should not be asked to use one without an exhalation valve or to cover it with a face covering or mask. However, NIOSH-approved N95 respirators with an exhalation valve are not fluid resistant. Therefore, in situations where a fluid resistant respirator is indicated (e.g., in surgical settings), individuals should wear a surgical N95 or, if a surgical N95 is not available, cover their respirator with a surgical mask or a face shield. Be careful not to compromise the fit of the respirator when placing a facemask over the respirator.
[end quote]
Many countries will require N95 masks (many of which have valves, so that is acceptable). So on a plane from Amsterdam to Beijing, you might have to switch masks during the flight (because the Dutch, for reasons, don't allow valves in favor of less effective cloth/surgical masks, while the Chinese...for reasons, require N95 masks that might have valves).
I am indeed wrong. Thanks for the details and the link. I hadn't checked in on the valve recommendations since early in the pandemic. I'd edit my above if I could.
In practice many N95s filter over 99% of particles including around the important sizes for COVID. I think of them like drinking coffee from a paper disposable cup: convenient in many ways but more expensive over time and a crappier experience than ceramic. Lots of people will do it.
I do however use a 7502 with 2297 filters for high exposure and GVS Elipse for medium exposure like grocery store.
I have no intention of wearing one. I'm immunized, and I intend to expose myself to COVID frequently to ensure my immune response remains high, and if I get sick it'll be minor (and I'll quarantine in that case, since I don't intend to expose others).
There is no longer any reason to wear a mask or stay away from others if you are immunized, unless you are actually sick.
Are you testing yourself constantly to make sure you're not exposing others? The pernicious feature of COVID is the asymptomatic nature of many infections.
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 enjoy life.
It goes two ways - you spreading it, and you catching it.
From the spreading perspective, even if you are healthy and vaccinated, you might have it and you might be spreading it. Especially with omicron variant.
And from the catching perspective, even if you're careful, vaccinated, boosted, etc. you still can catch it and get sick. Maybe it's not going to kill you, but it turns you into a potential spreader.
I never panicked in the past about spreading the flu. I'd wear a mask and avoid visiting grandma if I were sick. But I won't live in a bubble just because there are things in the world that could hurt people. You can't reduce risk to zero. Why are we willing to fuck everything up to try?
Everyone will catch it. At best wearing masks will only delay that a little. Fortunately the vaccines and other therapies are pretty effective at preventing severe symptoms.
My challenge is that the over the ear ones just don't work with my hearing aids. They have a tendency to pull them off, and let's just say at $3k a pop, I'm rather careful I don't lose one.
I do think it's good that people learn to detect fakes, but the challenge in a way is trying to order 20 of them. You don't want to wait a week for the order to show up, and discover you now have 20 fakes.
The discussion here about masks is interesting. Many people talking about what their own personal preference for masks, exposure, etc. are.
I'd just like to say: the problem, and where the division (which causes bad health outcomes!) comes from is: deciding what your strategy is, and then trying to force other people to do the same thing.
If my strategy was: don't wear masks and hope to get omicron, and then I forced others to do the same thing, they would rightly be upset at me for it.
I want to point out that the strategy of trying to get Omicron for future natural immunity against other strains, while probably one that will work based on what we know about viral competition, is wishful thinking and not based on scientific fact (show me a study and I’ll change my mind.)
Imagine if somebody said you were required to take an injection which infected you with omicron, else you would be prohibited from participating in society.
I'd be okay with the option, but not the requirement.
> Imagine if somebody said you were required to take an injection which infected you with omicron, else you would be prohibited from participating in society.
But we just have to imagine that, since it doesn't occur in reality, right? Vaccines actually have some verification before they are thrown into the world, they aren't just injecting Omicron into your blood stream (which, actually, many anti vaxxers would prefer, since they are paranoid about mRNA vaccines for some reason).
The messaging flip flop by the authorities were were supposed to trust contributed too. Then the statistics seemed to suggest that it didn’t seem to matter as well (areas with mask mandates vs areas without them). Then, they simply became a virtue signal—“I am taking the pandemic seriously”
To me, I’ll wear a mask if required of a place I want to patronage, but will not at any other time. The efficacy vs discomfort equation is simply not worth it to me.
For whatever reason, people in this site seem to be cloistered in places that have mask mandates, when in most states this is a moot point because most states don’t have mask mandates. And at some point people will start leaving places with these mandates for places without them, because for some reason no one wants to admit that wearing a mask is really annoying.
It's just a selection bias. The story is about being "ready for an N95," so naturally people who live their lives via masking will be interested. Meanwhile, people in other areas simply go to the supermarket like they always did, go out to eat, etc. with no drama and no signalling.
reply