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Comment by overton | Hacker News Reader

Early on in the pandemic, the Canadian IPAC (Infection Control and Prevention) establishment came down hard against theories of airborne COVID transmission, at first even going so far as to not recommend masking. Even now that the science of airborne transmission has been established, they're waging a rearguard battle to obfuscate/deny it and airborne protections such as better ventilation and masking. If you go to a Canadian hospital wearing an N95 these days there's a good chance they will insist you to take it off in favour of a "clean" surgical mask with gaps around the sides and nose.

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> If you go to a Canadian hospital wearing an N95 these days there's a good chance they will insist you to take it off in favour of a "clean" surgical mask with gaps around the sides and nose.

Happened to me many times. Sometimes they let me wear it over my (certified) N95, sometimes they don't.

I am so confused… how do they think covid spreads, then? Why should you wear a surgical at all, then?

The sign I saw at a hospital in Toronto said no fabric masks, only surgical. It’s probably about uniform coverage not overall efficiency, a compromise of most big central systems.

My corner flower shop has a sign saying surgical or FFP2, just like most shops I’ve seen in my area of Germany. If they can manage it, so should a hospital.

> If you go to a Canadian hospital wearing an N95 these days there's a good chance they will insist you to take it off in favour of a "clean" surgical mask with gaps around the sides and nose.

Wouldn't that just be because of protocol, ie. they don't know if you, a member of the public, actually have a legit N95 mask, or if you know how to correctly implement it, etc.

Is a surgical-mask better than a fake N95 mask?

actually have a legit N95 mask

Incidentally, if you want to validate 3M N95 masks, 3M has a web site for that.[1] You type in the code on the bottom of the box and 3M checks it. You can only do this once per code; the site will tell you if a valid code has been used before. They suggest signing and dating the box after doing this, to indicate that check has been done.

[1] https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/worker-health-safety-us/3m-safeg...

How do they know that one is not wearing a fake surgical mask then? The obvious conclusion is that parts of the medical establishment are still being dumbasses about masks, two years into the pandemic.

N95s often have exhaust filters which make a surgical mask safer for everyone else around you.

You can put tape over the valve on the inside and the outside and that works fine.

It's quite easy to find ones that don't.

Having some experience with hospitals and N95 they asked that we put a surgical mask over the one we came with. Pointless and unnecessary but I guess it’s easier than having staff validate the mask your wearing.

They never required we remove a mask.

Airborne transmission and the usefulness of filters still doesn't seem that clearly established - this study didn't find that much virus in the air even without the filters, and most of the real-world transmission seems to involve people who were directly exposed to virus particles before they even had a chance to go through a filter, via standing next to someone or directly in an airflow path coming from their direction.

thanks for pointing this out. it gets lost in the fervor of trying to "fight the virus". most of our interventions are useless, and yet, we still insist on doing them. the virus just isn't aloft and active for very long. that's why the most dangerous activity is close conversation, something we tend to do around people we know well (friends & family), not strangers in public.

That's certainly the dominant narrative, but it flies in the face of superspreader events where it appears that one or a few people infected hundreds. Did they directly breathe on everybody they infected?

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/outbreak-at-quebec-city-gym-link...

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm

https://elpais.com/especiales/coronavirus-covid-19/a-room-a-...

> Did they directly breathe on everybody they infected?

Maybe they coughed over shared food/drink trays.

The first case linked above was in a gym where patrons were supposed to be masked and two meters apart, and the second case had a CDC investigation which would have mentioned that as a factor if it were present.

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