Should I be wearing two masks?
macleans.ca
macleans.ca
Let's do the math for surgical masks which are like n20. Adding two n20's gives you a n40, which is marginally better than the n95 double masks.
Let me vent by saying I was on the pro-mask side when the CDC and WHO were against them, I made a website that went viral and got 7 million view letting people know your government officials were wrong. I had my account banned from Reddit and Facebook over being pro-mask. I even got contacted by the CDC to think about taking down the site. I told them to fuck off. When this pandemic is over and we can do a post-mortem on the pandemic the CDC and WHO will have blood on their hands for the poor messaging around masks.
I for one have been double masking n95's for a while.
The rating percentage is for specific test setup. For biological aerosols, the result is quite different in that small particles are stopped by diffusion, and the filter rates tend to be better than rated for masks, as long as leakage is low.
Now, the situation is different with weak filtering materials such as used in surgical or cloth masks, but the result is not additive either.
Have you actually tested that the specific double N95 configuration even provides single N95 protection? (Esp. leakage) No? Then better not mess with the design.
Your advice is going to kill people.
> I for one have been double masking n95's for a while.
1) You don't have the equipment to check that those are actually N95s that meet the spec
2) You don't have the equipment to do a correct fit-test
3) Modifying safety critical equipment is dangerous. You haven't doubled the safety, you've made these masks less safe.
I'm pretty sure you're not wearing the masks tight enough. Here are example photos from people who spend a day in PPE:
https://twitter.com/LondonNurse2015/status/12472750559874252...
https://twitter.com/jbon93/status/1247626644208189444
https://twitter.com/RochesterKaren/status/124644595651562700...
https://twitter.com/gabbyjackson95x/status/12479391789623255...
I agree with you a 100%.
It was such a common sense thing. I was telling my friends back in Feb/March that they should make it mandatory.
Sometimes experts get it wrong and it costs millions of lives. So sad..
Usually people use sub par (cloth, surgical), badly fitted (loose rubber bands, misfitting nasal) masks or wear them wrong - the classic being a mask not covering the nose.
Everyone should be wearing properly fit and sealed N95 masks from well known brands like 3M. Pieces of cloth that vaguely cover the mouth and nose but leave giant gaps do not protect the user very well. A proper 3M N95 that intentionally worn un-fit, with large gaps along the nose and sides becomes an ~N40.
Unfit masks of any type, and fit "KN95" masks that have such a high pressure drop all air goes around the edges (they suck in and out) barely protect the user of the mask at all. Yes, they're better than nothing. Much like wearing sandals in a blizzard is better than being barefoot. But it won't stop your toes from freezing off and unfit, unrated masks won't protect you from aerosol infection.
The solution of two masks hardly helps if there are still large open apertures along the sides. The only real solution (within the USA) is to use the defense production act to force 3M and Ameritech to fully hire-up and run their factories full time, as well as building new electrospun N95 mask factories. Every single person in the USA (and canada, and elsewhere) should have enough N95 masks to use a new one each day. That is the only solution to the mask problem. Double masking with bad masks is just more security theater.
It's been an entire year. The excuse the real masks are only for hospital personel is no longer valid. The people deserve, they need, real masks.
We already have more deaths from COVID than ww2 yet...crickets on the mask production front. I’m guessing it is because in a year when COVID is not a thing anymore it will not be profitable to have that much capacity and corporations do not want to ramp up that much.
Also making masks is probably not the best strategy. If we used reusable p100 filters that would be much more effective even for the general public. I used to work with fiberglass wearing a similar respirator with an organic vapor cartridge and it was usable for hours at a time, so no idea why we haven’t started using these in high risk [grocery/prisions/schools] instead of KN-95/N-95 of which there is a counterfeit mask problem.
My guess is that in order to increase the number of people wearing masks, they're trying a new scare tactic: maybe you should wear 2 or 3 masks. Maybe they hope that will cause people to wear at least one.
Gotta herd the cattle somehow, I guess.
To respond to your specific statement, part of the problem is that "don't work" is too blunt and not quite true. "Don't protect the wearer" might be true. "Barely protect the wearer" would be. "Don't provide strong protection for others" also true. But even a poorly fitted cloth mask is almost certainly better than nothing. (Of course, I'd also believe that they likely provide a false sense of security, leading to risk-taking that more than offsets their benefits.)
This ties in with one of my biggest frustrations of the whole pandemic, at least individual behavior: so many people's risk analysis is just sorting things into "safe" and "unsafe", rather than thinking in degrees. "Cloth masks don't work" is unhelpfuly binary and non-specific. (Though including "poorly fitting" makes it better -- "ensure proper fit" is actionable advice.)
And while efficacy of "cloth mask" vs. N95 is good to know, "cloth mask" is a super-broad category. I'll occasionally see people specify "single layer cloth masks", but the only single-layer cloth masks are gaiters, and even those are frequently folded over double.
How good is my 2- or 3-layer cloth mask? What materials should I use? (To be fair, I have seen some people answer this question.) Is it relevant that I can barely feel my breath through it or around the edges even if I blow hard? How much of a difference does fit make?
Ideally we'd all have and use good quality N95s, but we shouldn't make perfect the enemy of the good. We need information that will help us do better, rather than a binary "N95 good; everything else bad."
What I am saying is that KN95 types in the USA are of such variably quality they are not a good choice. Use local standards and brands.
Throwing them away after 1 use would be silly. I personally have enough masks, and few enough indoors engagements, to let my N95 sit for a full month between re-uses.
And besides if you're arguing that we need to reduce landfill you shouldn't be advocating for any sort of anti-virus measures as any sort of population reduction will do more to reduce landfill than any sort of reusable mask could ever hope to accomplish.
Not like this: https://twitter.com/jane_whitelaw/status/1334653360683839488...
Or like this: https://twitter.com/jimmyhawk9/status/1354240965498654720/ph...
The N95 protects you, but many N95 masks have exhalation valves that blast particles away and make it easier for you to breath.
The cloth mask on top of the N95 protects others, by reduce the amount and distance of particles. This is especially true for N95 masks that have valves.
https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/scandinavian-walking-helm...
The second (often cheap surgical) mask is merely to protect the more expensive N95 since they’re in relatively short supply still. Surgical masks have plenty of supply and are cheap so they can be tossed out in between patients to limit the risk of cross infection.
Outside of healthcare settings, N95s are rare and often worn incorrectly so a second mask over the first is actually providing moderately more filtration and protection.