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Comment by Reebz | Hacker News Reader

While I agree, it wasn’t just general public opinion. In NYC at least, it was widely stated in the media by government officials and doctors that masks were unnecessary if you’re healthy, and actually could be bad because people were 1) removing surgical/n95 masks from supply, 2) wearing a cloth mask improperly sanitized can make you sick with other things. I like how Jeremy’s site has directly addressed those original concerns.

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> In NYC at least, it was widely stated in the media by government officials and doctors that masks were unnecessary if you’re healthy, and actually could be bad

The WHO and CDC have been pushing that line as well. Studies linked to in the above article suggest that even home made masks provide some protection to healthy individuals. But even if they didn't, getting everyone to wear them would be extremely valuable for stopping the spread coming from people who don't know they have the disease. Also, "Don't come in hear unless you have something covering your face" is an easy rule for establishments to enforce, whereas "If you have Coronavirus you need to cover your face" is impossible to enforce.

Yet I've seen almost no leadership at any level in the U.S. pushing this (and this seems to be true in much of the West). Lockdowns buy us time, and we seem to be wasting that.

NYC government and health officials lied to NYCers when they told them that they should not wear masks.

does it have to be n95 to prevent spread? my understanding was the n95 rating protects you from infected people where a plain old surgical mask protects others from you. In other words, the n95 mask has what it needs to prevent you inhaling the virus where a regular mask has what it needs to prevent a sneeze or cough from escaping to the people around you.

Can you explain how that could possibly be true?

A surgical mask is just a simpler cheaper, less complete and less effective mask than an N95 mask, used in lower risk situations or when N95 is desired but not available.

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInf...

Your understanding is incomplete. Both filter virus particles with different degrees of effectiveness. Viruses are typically most present in aerosolized droplets which are much much bigger than the gap size of a surgical or n95 mask.

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