Ask HN: Is drawing a friendly face or picture on my N95 masks safe?
I figure it might make me less intimidating to have a smile or kitty cat whiskers on my masks.
Is this a bad idea? Will it lessen the effectiveness of the masks?
Is this a bad idea? Will it lessen the effectiveness of the masks?
Just my 2 cents, but I'd probably say if you draw on a small portion of the mask, like whiskers etc, it would be fine. The mask would still filter and I doubt the dye from a marker would change its effectiveness. The worst thing I can imagine is it possibly causing slightly less airflow in the parts that are colored, but I even doubt that unless it was just overloaded.
I'd be interested in other peoples opinion too, kinda curious myself.
It's being widely used around infected patients all over the world.
It seems to me that if it wasn't effective we should have seen a very big increase of positive cases in the population of health care providers.
Anyway, while you are technically correct the virus itself is smaller than the mask's ability to filter. What people are protecting against is the droplet transmission and, for that usage, the N95 masks are effective. The CDC, NIH and many scientists have stated they are even appropriate for health care workers in direct contact with patients because it will stop the primary means of the transmission when used with other proper PPE like glasses (or more properly in healthcare, face shields), gloves and gowns.
Of course, an N95 mask (or any filtering level, P100, N100 etc) won't stop you from getting a virus if you touch a contaminated surface then touch your face etc. But if someone is coughing near you an N95 mask is acceptable to reduce the transmission risk.