This is something I’ve heard a lot, and assuming it’s true, what’s the science behind it? Surely holes in masks are the same size no matter whether the germs are heading in or out, but I’m guessing it’s not about the holes and I’m missing something.
Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not an anti-masker, I’m still wearing it in shops for example. This is just me wanting to understand.
In: Biology
“Pants help stop you from peeing on others, but don’t help stop others from peeing on you.”
Imagine you and another kid in your preschool are facing each other. He needs a pee. If he pees and neither of you are wearing trousers, you get his pee on you. If you are wearing trousers but he isn’t, you get his pee on your trousers. If he’s wearing trousers it really doesn’t matter whether you are or not. He gets wet trousers. You walk away dry.
Pee is a cough. Trousers are the mask.
Covid is a fluid-borne disease. It leaves a person’s body in water droplets they breath out. The water droplets are what masks actually block, making mask effective at stopping you from spreading covid to other people. However, there are lots of places in your body that covid could enter through: mouth, nose, eyes, ears, genitalia, anus, open cuts, etc. Not all of these places are covered by masks, making them less effective at protecting you once you have been exposed.
It’s just not true. It’s something people started parroting 1 year ago. Every study done on this has shown a protective effect by wearing simple surgical masks, in and out of hospital settings.
It works by helping keep other people’s droplets off of your mucous membranes. It also helps keep your droplets off of other people’s mucous membranes.
They absolutely do help with preventing you from catching it. ~~I don’t know where you’re hearing that it doesn’t help with that.~~ [Edit: Okay, I do recall that was said at some point, but we’ve learned masks do help the wearer.]
It reduces the chances. It’s not a 100% thing. Fun fact: If two people have masks, that’s even more protection. It’s filtered when you breathe out, it’s filtered when you breathe in. So two people wearing masks have two layers of protection between them, if only one of them wears a mask it’s only one layer of protection. It adds up.
Not putting it into the air helps a great many people. Wearing the mask if you’re infected (and/or staying home!) helps tremendously. Wearing it if you’re not infected is really only protecting you for that moment, if you were somehow 100% certain you weren’t infected. But if you catch it, you will almost certainly spread it to at least one other person. So protecting yourself _is_ protecting others. And here’s the huge catch: Most people with active CoViD-19 are not aware they have it. They are asymptomatic. It’s extremely helpful when most people wear them, whether they think they have it or not, because that blanket level of protection makes the virus have a hard time spreading.
Imagine some guy decides to pee on your leg. If you’re wearing pants, they will partially protect your legs, but not really. If he’s wearing pants, this will stop any pee from getting on you by a lot. But if you’re both wearing pants, you should walk away without any pee on your legs. I think I heard this on Reddit but the image stuck with me and I think would really resonate with a 5 year old.
Let’s say a room has a high concentration of virus in the air – we’ll call it 100 arbitrary units. If a mask is 70% effective, you will still breathe in 30 units of virus.
If all the sick people in the room wear masks, the concentration of virus in the room drops to 30 units. That’s much less virus for your mask to have to block, making it much more effective at keeping the virus out.
If you add distancing, you’ll further lower the amount of virus you’re exposed to and the probability of getting sick.
Viruses float on water particles, which are big when you exhale and shrink as they float around and evaporate. Masks are better at blocking the big ones.
The virus is carried by little drops of water you spit around.
Imagine a guy with a small shield (the shield can’t cover his entire body) and another guy is shooting arrows at him from 10 meters away. Sooner or later an arrow will hit a leg or another part of the victim (for the virus: hands eyes and clothing are all valid targets)
Now place the same shield just an inch in front of the bow. How can an arrow ever leave the bow in the first place?
The problem is that **ideally** in order for your mask to protect you while in contact with potentially infectious people who aren’t wearing a mask you need to change out your mask every 4 hours (or as soon as it is damp). Otherwise you’re giving COVID and bacteria and fungi time to accumulate and multiply on your mask material to almost certainly infectious levels.
The world health authorities knew that it was not feasible at the beginning of COVID-19 to get people to comply with having to change masks 3 or 4 times a day – there wasn’t even initial supply for 1 mask a day. So it was a comprise recommendation taking mask supply and people’s habits / potential compliance levels into account.
So your mask can be a cesspool but at least it’s preventing COVID from being aerosolized.
If a more deadly, but equally spreadable variant emerges, they might have to revise that recommendation to N95(or equivalent) masks being replaced every 4 hours in order to have an efficient protection factor.
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