Quote:
Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby
The virus is transmitted via moisture droplets. Moisture droplets that manage to escape through those masks, don't travel as far as moisture droplets that are expelled with no mask at all.
If you want, you can experiment. Have someone fully infected with strep throat, sick as a dog, full of phlegm and puss, sneeze on you first without a mask.
After you recover from your own case of strep, have someone else with the same severity of strep throat sneeze on you but this time, while wearing a 3-ply paper mask.
You will probably be just fine.
Oh also that top blue layer isn't just paper. It's a fluid-resistant layer. Not fully waterproof, but moisture resistant. Breath can pass through it. Sneeze-snot cannot.
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Sar-cov2 is predominantly spread by aerosols. This is has been established. That you could catch it from someone coughing in your mouth does not change that in the slightest.
Here is a good review of the evidence of mask usage on viral transmission.
Do Masks Work? | City Journal
If you're too lazy to read the entire thing, I'll sum it up for you. They don't do anything and in fact trend to harm. This is based on the 14 RCTs on masks with hand washing and other variables. There are other observational studies and anecdotal stories which are the same or slightly positive.
This is not to say N95 don't work against aerosols. They do but even then, must be well fitted. Beards are out.
Cloth masks actually make health care workers sicker in one RCT.
Anyone who is suggesting a universal mask mandate without requiring an N95 is not following what the science is indicating.