The "95" in N95 represents the filtration effectiveness.
So _any_ leakage means the mask fails in it purpose of filtration.
So _any_ leakage means the mask fails in it purpose of filtration.
> So _any_ leakage means the mask fails in it purpose of filtration.
What do you mean by that? The "95" is just a statement of its performance characteristics, which literally every well-engineered thing has quantified (and are always less than "perfect").
Now if you want an N95 to meet its specifications, it has to be tightly fitted. However it's a spectrum of effectiveness, and unless the fit is ridiculously bad, the protection factor is still going to be better than a cloth mask, e.g.:
poorly well-
cloth or fitted fitted
No mask surgical mask N95 N95 Perfect
|O-------------------------O---------------------------------------------------O--------------O--------O|
Show one study in a vaccinated population of humans, that demonstrates any real-world effectiveness of masks.
The "good" here is never quantified, nor demonstrated. It's always an inference from some mechanism.
And your graph shows 100% infection rate with every setup that has any kind of leak at some point in time.
The minimum size of a covid19 carrying particle is 4.7 microns, resulting in at least 99.7% effectiveness at worst.
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7579175/# [2]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9487666/
2nd paragraph:
In a study by Chia et al. (2020), SARS-CoV-2 genes were detected in sampled aerosol particles with diameters >4 μm and 1–4 μm [20]. In a study by Liu et al. (2020), SARS-CoV-2 was detected in submicrometer aerosol particles ranging between <0.25 and 1 μm in diameter via a droplet-digital-PCR-based detection method [21]. In a study by Liu et al. (2020), the maximum SARS-CoV-2 concentrations of 40 and 9 copies per m3 of air were measured in aerosol samples with diameters of 0.25–0.5 μm and 0.5–1.0 μm, respectively [21].
Are those viable virus particles? Because that's what actually matters, not the mere presence of genes. Also, are the smaller droplets as effective at transmission as the larger ones? Scanning the paper, it looks like they get smaller as they desiccate.
From my scan, it looked like some of the smaller droplet sizes were due to desiccation of larger particles. As a particle desiccates, concentrations will change, and maybe they'll change in a way that makes the virus non-viable E.g., imagine a freshwater lake that contains certain amount of salt, as you dry it out it will get saltier and saltier, to the point where freshwater fish can no longer live in it. Eventually you get a salt pan.
And in the long run, we're all dead.
Masks won't save us.
If you are in a small room with a dozen infected people coughing...?