I was happy to greet a new employee today at work, a young kid with a bright future. He wore a mask into the office, I guess it makes sense if you're going to go somewhere new where you don't know the culture.
Anyhow, he was informed the mask was optional, and he promptly took it off. Literally no one in our office wears a mask or social distances.
It's nice, and it's not something I should be appreciating, but here I am.
These are dark times.
No sarcasm here but you're saying a mask (is it a respirator?) that's actually designed to block particles actually works?
Yes, it was a 3M half face respirator - the kind with two ports , one on either side of your mouth that you attach filter cartridges to.
I didn’t have it fit tested or anything but I was clean shaven. It was the real deal though - you could stick your face in a bottle of muriatic acid (not that I would advise that) or a tray of paint thinner and not smell anything. I was working with 35% HCl for the etching and I used the same respirator for a painting project with a bunch of paint thinner
The cartridges I bought for the etching project were for acid gas (6003 or 6006 I think?). The respirator came with some of those pink n95 particulate filters but I never used them.
I’m not scientist, doctor, or expert, but if they would have told us from the beginning that we all had to shave and wear fit tested respirators from the beginning to stop the virus, that would have at least been believable. I wouldn’t have thought it was worth it in the case of the China virus, but I would have at least believed that a respirator might work.
Again, I’m not a scientist, maybe the wufru is so much smaller than an HCl molecule that even a respirator wouldn’t stop it, but to try and convince me that a piece of cloth loosely strapped over my face with gaping .5-1cm holes around the side where the air freely flows in and out is going to do anything seems absurd to me.
Even a respirator; which basically has a rubber gasket that is form fitting to your face is completely worthless if you have facial hair. How much more worthless should these stupid face diapers be?
But then again, I’m just an ignorant racist so what the fuck do I know.
I have one of those too and they definitely work just like that. I've had the same sort of experience.
Our cloth masks and even the "medical" masks to almost nothing to nothing. Sure, I suppose it would be a little beneficial for someone to catch their sneeze in the mask but other than that the fit is so bad the air just goes through every gap.
It's bizarre how our culture is so anti-truth that telling people this makes them angry. The masks we wear are only safety blankets.