That's false and you are wrong and are posting dangerous misinformation that is harming society.
If I am infected it protects others. If I am not infected it protects me.
If I am infected it protects others. If I am not infected it protects me.
https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/coronavirus...
If you are well, you do not need to wear a surgical mask as there is little evidence supporting the widespread use of surgical masks in healthy people to prevent transmission in public.
They can say "little evidence" because only a few recent studies show that.
"A common claim is that surgical masks do not protect against respiratory viruses. This is not true. Several peer-reviewed studies in medical journals have found that correct and consistent use of surgical masks in household or community settings conferred a significant degree of protection against influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome and other respiratory virus infections, especially when combined with hand hygiene."
and
"Another misconception is that surgical masks should only be worn by symptomatic individuals. In fact, surgical masks are effective when worn by both respiratory virus-infected persons and their contacts. Furthermore, it is well recognised that even asymptomatic Covid-19 patients can still be infectious to others, rendering this recommendation inapplicable to the current pandemic.
Like other respiratory viruses, Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19, is largely transmitted by droplets from infected persons. Therefore, the scientific evidence in favour of mask use against other respiratory viruses is generalisable to Covid-19."
and
"have no hesitation in recommending universal mask usage for people living in neighbourhoods with community Covid-19 transmission"
By Dr Siddharth Sridhar, clinical assistant professor, Department of Microbiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong
https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3075103/coronav...
If you prefer, try this:
In this pragmatic, cluster randomized clinical trial involving 2862 health care personnel, there was no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza among health care personnel with the use of N95 respirators (8.2%) vs medical masks (7.2%).
"The coronavirus is an upper respiratory virus and a surgical mask does not protect you from that kind of virus,” he said. “In fact, when people buy up these masks and hoard these masks then they might not be available for healthcare providers to use for patient care.”
He said surgical masks are more effective on people who are already infected with an illness to keep them from infecting others rather than the other way around. He said other types of masks are not very effective at preventing you from getting sick either."
https://www.wibc.com/news/local-indiana/surgeon-general-surg...
>“Yes, a surgical mask can help prevent the flu,” Sherif Mossad, MD, an infectious disease specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, tells Health. “Flu is carried in air droplets, so a mask would mechanically prevent the flu virus from reaching other people.” It would work both ways, says Dr. Mossad, preventing transmission of the flu virus to others and for keeping a mask-wearer from picking up an infection.
Are you really going to change your surgical mask every 3 minutes to make it effective against getting infected?
How did you jumped from "reduced" to "completely useless".
> Are you really going to change your surgical mask every 3 minutes to make it effective against getting infected?
My typical situation is not surgical situation.
COVID-19 family is also pretty agile:
"The analysis of 22 studies reveals that human coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus or endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV) can persist on inanimate surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for up to 9 days."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019567012...
Good luck relying on the safety from wearing surgical masks! /s
Aaaand you wear them also to not make sick others by spreading your virus as far as you breathe.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9bd2e88c4296be54e7f845...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...
If everybody in the US could wear one of these when out in public, we would be in a much better place. The sad truth is we don't have enough to do that, not that this would not help.
Surgical mask looks like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_mask
There is no respirator embedded as you can see, it's just a simple piece of fabric.
The point of my original reply was that we could reduce R0/transmission rate only if everybody had to wear surgical mask in public. If you are the only one wearing it, it doesn't really help. Some EU countries now require everybody to wear a mask while shopping or using public transport.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Prague/comments/fkdxvj/face_masks_n...
I thought it was a lower respiratory virus. I have no idea if that changes the efficacy of masks but...
Read just today that an advantage of any mask is it keeps people from transferring the virus from their fingers to their mouth and nose. A paper on the effectiveness of home made masks, like from tee shirt material says they are in no way a replacement for N95 masks but are better than nothing.