I have to admit, I am pessimistic about the efficacy of masking these days. BA2 is so transmissible that I just don’t see the sub-spec quality and wearing of masks the way most people wear them to be very useful. Many here have written about wearing good fitting K94, N95, etc., masks and that’s great, but those are by far not what I am seeing out in the wild. I see theater masks; loosely fitting cloth or surgical masks.
Many friends and co-workers have gotten covid so far. Some of them multiple times. All of them pretty conscientious. I think it must only be a matter of time for me (somehow, no one in my family has tested positive, despite multiple colds that have swept through since the pandemic - is the cold virus even more transmissible than covid? Our experience suggests that this is so.).
But I am flying to see my elderly father this weekend and I will wear a 3M Aura for that.
Really good summary of the reasons to wear a mask; however, I disagree with the part that people haven’t been told. The information is readily available (as you demonstrate in your post). Whether they choose to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist, are convinced that it’s all a hoax/conspiracy/evil plot by doing their own research on FB/FauxNews//fundie church, are taking (un)calculated risks, are just over it, or whatever, the information is right there, and what people do/don’t do with it is on them.
Yup still masking indoors here in Marin, CA. Outdoors, only if it is crowded / low airflow. We almost certainly had it in early 2020 (I had BAD anosmia, kept smelling ozone/electrical ‘smells’). 2X vax, 2X booster and we are headed to a super spreader… I mean wedding event in a couple days. N95s everywhere that isn’t outside. We timed our booster shots for max antigen when we are at the wedding, ugh.
We’ve been trying to lay low prior to travel and my wife will work from home for a week after we return (assuming we don’t catch it), Crazy world we live in…
You are not alone! One of my favorite tweedles of late went something like this: I actually like wearing a mask. It protects me, it protects you. And it gives me the illusion that I live in a society where people care about others.
Thing is, the (at least my) thought process has changed from “i will try to protect others by masking” to “screw you, I am protecting myself. If you can’t be bothered to protect yourself, I cannot help you. But I am not going down with you.” I also have easy access to legit medical grade N95’s, so there is that as well.
On a population level, those can still reduce overall transmission. Surgicals leak about 30% on me, a fit factor of 3. Two people wearing them will have a combined filtration of each other’s aerosols of 3x3, reducing their exposure by 89%.
As an individual, I want the best filtration I can get, not just something that will reduce the covid a bit overall. So it’s Aura or better, always, when indoors.
I think it’s been effectively drowned out by all the “back to normal” stories in the MSM now. In my area, marketing for indoor concerts, restaurants, and museums is a high priority for business owners. Beach season has also begun, along with the return of festivals and parades that haven’t been held for two years. Every photo I see is full of unmasked people grouped together.
So, I’ll keep up with the double-masking when I have to go out for medical appointments, and see if the numbers improve enough to consider travel and attending indoor events in 2023.
Also: Every time you get infected with covid, you risk long covid anew. So getting infected repeatedly is rolling the dice again and again. It’s an elimination game. If you get lucky once, you’re still playing the next round.
Oof, are you using them outside too? I have been to Disney World twice, and it was taxing and unpleasant with the heat then - I can’t imagine doing it masked, but there are large crowds out doors.
My kiddo is going to Silver Dollar City for her birthday with her mom next week. They plan to mask indoors, but still. I honestly am a little surprised they are going like that, considering how strict her mom was earlier.
I feel like I’ve been peer pressured in to going maskless… I was on top of it for so long, but when the mandates dropped this spring, and it seemed like everyone except me stopped masking, I started to feel self conscious, like I was being paranoid. At the time, all I could think was “remember what happened last time? We all thought it was over, stopped masking, and guess what came back with a vengeance.” And lo and behold, numbers are going up…
I’m thinking about starting again after seeing this. It still makes me really uncomfortable if I’m in a crowded space with no masks, and I kind of liked them for other reasons besides (there’s something kind of cool about all black clothes, plus a black mask, for example, lmao)…
If you feel comfortable sitting unmasked in a confined metal tube with 100-200 other strangers of unknown status, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ you do you I guess. I’m not comfortable with that risk.
It’s not even on the plane. The airport has some of the worst masking and highest risk of transmission. There is no effort to get adequate air volume turnover nor filtration as there is on the plane in flight. Nope, air travel is not on my plans for a good long while, I think.
Double masking can be better or worse than using a single mask depending on the combination.
Putting a surgical under an N95 makes it fit much worse. But one over an N95 can improve fit slightly, but it can make the performance slightly worse, but not overly so, it depends.
Double masking 2 surgicals makes for a slight improvement, but they are such crap to begin with it’s not worth doing unless they are your only masks. That combo can easily leak 25%.
CDC was recommending cloth over surgical if people needed to make two bad masks into a more effective combo, but you are much better off with a single well fitted N95, such as 3M Aura or a SoftSeal 3D (they come in 3 sizes).
We have our masks on lanyards around our necks. We mask anywhere indoors or in line (indoors or otherwise), or anytime we get into a large crowd. Most of the time outdoors though, even at Disney, it’s not too difficult to stay reasonably distanced, thankfully.
Well, that very tight head strap could make all the difference. Fit is very individual, and subject to different interactions between different masks. But only mask fit testing can say for sure.
A mask fitter such as Fix the Mask can get you better fit and reduce leaks of most masks, surgical, KF94 and even N95s without reducing the breatheability of the mask.
I still mask frequently when in closed spaces in public. Outdoors, I go with the statistics saying you are pretty safe. As someone working in the healthcare system, I need to be thoughtful about those I might expose and the pressure I’d put on the system if I had to be out sick.
" Wearing an additional surgical mask on top of the adjusted FFP2 masks, case iii , seems to have an overall negative effect on the total inward leakage compared to case ii . The effect of double filtering is negligible, as the filtration efficacy of the FFP2 mask is already large ( >99.98% for particles of >0.3 μm). A possible explanation for the decreased protection (increased inward leakage) could be that the additional pressure on the FFP2 mask caused by the surgical mask distorts the FFP2 mask and therefore causes new face seal leaks, or the increased breathing resistance leads to more leakage (67). For some individual subjects, however, the surgical mask on top of the FFP2 mask leads to a slight improvement, that is, decreased total inward leakage. In our early experiments, in which no diffusion dryer was used, we have observed an overall improvement for case iii over case ii . We therefore judge the results for wearing a surgical mask on top of an FFP2 mask as interesting, but, at this point, inconclusive."
