[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by MandoMan

If you were having major surgery, would you want everyone in the OR to wear a mask? I would! People breathe out germs from their noses and lungs, and droplets of saliva spray out when they talk. Cultures are taken from noses for Covid testing, so people who have it have it there, ready to share. Half a century ago I spent three years at an operating room table passing instruments to doctors. Two years were in the US, wearing good quality disposable masks designed to catch droplets. (They weren’t paper. More
Iike special non-woven fabrics.) One year was in Africa, where our sponges were made of the same absorbable, multi-layer cotton fabric as laparotomy sponges. These were laundered, boiled, dried in the sun, and reused. There were no N-95 masks yet. I like to believe those masks served a purpose and prevented the spreading of micro-organisms. They were required. When they were invented, their use cut infections. When I arrived in Africa, my OR had a 50% surgical infection rate. When I left, it was 2%. Required sterile technique works. Properly worn, high quality masks do filter out organisms, each way. I know of a study in the UK based on surgeries done without masks that says they don’t stop the spread of infection in the OR, but I’d like corroboration of that, and I still don’t want people coughing in my face.

And all of that is true and well stated----about other people wearing masks around you. It does not change the almost nil value of wearing a paper mask to protect yourself