Hacker News Reader

Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

The masks most people wear basically only diffuse sneezes and coughs which makes immediate droplet transfer lower.

A piece of ordinary cloth on your face does not filter smog, does not prevent any airborne infection droplets from reaching you, essentially only lowers the chance of your cough hitting somebody else. You need an N95 or better to really do anything to protect yourself. Also even if you have a high grade mask, wearing it so it actually seals to protect you is hard and most people don't do it well.

View on HN

This should help make it clear: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/368/6498/1422/F1....

Masks do more to protect others than they do you. Which is why we are safest when everyone wears a mask.

Unless we are talking about fitted N95 masks, CDC used to say the opposite even about transmission to others: "There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure."

https://www.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

> Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

That's like trying to dunk on astronomers from the 1980s saying "there is no evidence yet of extrasolar planets".

That graphic depicts a surgical face mask, not a cloth face mask. Nice try.

Which is why I get annoyed at the flood of maskless wonders in UK shops since 'freedom day' (I am 65, and have a chronic respiratory illness). And I wonder whether the Great Unmasked coincides with the Great Unvaccinated.

Doubling-down on the downvotes:

When the checkout queue is moving slowly, some people try to move the queue forward by moving closer tho the person in front, even though the queue hasn't moved. I've noticed that people who do this are always maskless.

My local store is near a homeless shelter; homeless people face much greater threats than what amounts to a nasty respiratory virus. But I like social distancing; it tends to improve my sense of having personal space, as well as making me feel safer.

I can't work out what your other comment is getting downvoted for. It basically boils down to "some people are arseholes and they behave like arseholes" - which probably tells you all you need to know about the downvoters.

Oh - I'm not at all surprised. Many people have been bitterly opposed to mandatory masking since it was introduced. Among them are influential public figures with a reputation for being able to think, such as Peter Hitchens. It's not just ill-educated people, and they hold these views sincerely.

So I have to accept there's a way of thinking that makes it actually wrong to mask-up.

Incidentally, I walked off the street into a pub the other day, for a straight whisky at the bar - I didn't plan to hang around (nobody was masked, of course, because you can't drink through a mask). Well I was basically called out by this grumpy fella, because I came in masked. I mean, he was joking, but he obviously despised me.

If you want better filtering, you can always wear a cartridge respirator. They're also much easier to wear correctly -- they're hot, and the sweat on your face creates a seal against the rubber, making it very easy to tell when the seal is or isn't working.

I have one that I use when woodworking / sanding / varnishing, and the difference between a respirator and even a good N95 mask is like night and day. You can pull in a gratuitous volume of air through the respirator and it doesn't have that "there is a disconcertingly noticeable quantity of VOCs getting past this N95 mask" smell to it.

> VOCs getting past this N95 mask

VOCs getting past a well-fitting N95 mask is working as intended, isn't it? N95 filters particulates only.

There are N95 variants with activated carbon to filter organic compounds.

The basic multigas cartridge that comes in the half-mask bundle at Home Depot will happily adsorb VOCs.

I have a 6000 series with bare P100 filters installed, and they certainly cut smells, but that's probably not what they're designed for. Amusingly, throughout this entire pandemic I've only worn it for wildfire smoke-- it appears to be completely impossible for people to understand what I'm saying while I'm wearing it.

in fact covering your face does protect you, only less effectively so. Even eyeglasses reduce the covid transmission rate noticeably. Every little helps and compounds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com