I choose not to wear a mask when I go out, but I'd like to play devil's advocate in order to better understand the whole situation. This is the second to last paragraph under "Mask, N95 respirator filtering performance" in the article:
These studies demonstrate that cloth or homemade masks will have very low filter efficiency (2% to 38%).
I put this statement together based on what I read; tell me what you think: "Cloth masks are very inefficient at filtering the virus. However because their efficiency is greater than zero, and because they do reduce the oral transmission radius of a carrier; the carrier's wearing of a cloth mask reduces the risk of spreading the virus to other people"
When someone wears a makeshift cloth mask they tend to have a feeling of false security against the virus. That false security leads to breaking the "social distancing" six foot rule.
The cloth mask will lead to an increase of face touching because the wearer adjusting the mask, pulling it down to talk, scratching their face, etc.
These actions further reduce the effectiveness of the cloth mask.
The study with 4 people has the right idea, just needs more people and definitely needs to figure out why they weren't detecting the virus on the inside of the mask (from people who were coughing and had the virus).
Most home made masks reduce the transmission rate of the virus coming in, by about 40-60%. Surgical masks are about 70-80% filtration coming in. You are still getting some exposure, just not as much. The transmission radius going out - as you put it, is a very good way of explaining it. It isn't stopping material from getting out during a cough, but it is trapping the larger droplets and impeding the flow somewhat of the tiniest ones.
The study's statement here: "Alternatively, the small aerosols of SARS–CoV-2 generated during a high-velocity cough might penetrate the masks." matches up with testing data 3M and other companies have done on cotton and surgical masks.
I choose not to wear a mask when I go out, but I'd like to play devil's advocate in order to better understand the whole situation. This is the second to last paragraph under "Mask, N95 respirator filtering performance" in the article:
I also read the article at the link further below at https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1342 and another article at https://www.healthline.com/health-news/face-masks-importance-battle-with-covid19 along with the user comments. I even went as far as looking for strong arguments to wear masks on various sites, and all I could find was "Because the CDC said so" and "Because countries with lots of people who wear cloth masks fared better" although I've seen no proof of correlation.
I put this statement together based on what I read; tell me what you think: "Cloth masks are very inefficient at filtering the virus. However because their efficiency is greater than zero, and because they do reduce the oral transmission radius of a carrier; the carrier's wearing of a cloth mask reduces the risk of spreading the virus to other people"
I think you may want to consider:
These actions further reduce the effectiveness of the cloth mask.
The study with 4 people has the right idea, just needs more people and definitely needs to figure out why they weren't detecting the virus on the inside of the mask (from people who were coughing and had the virus).
Most home made masks reduce the transmission rate of the virus coming in, by about 40-60%. Surgical masks are about 70-80% filtration coming in. You are still getting some exposure, just not as much. The transmission radius going out - as you put it, is a very good way of explaining it. It isn't stopping material from getting out during a cough, but it is trapping the larger droplets and impeding the flow somewhat of the tiniest ones.
The study's statement here: "Alternatively, the small aerosols of SARS–CoV-2 generated during a high-velocity cough might penetrate the masks." matches up with testing data 3M and other companies have done on cotton and surgical masks.
Sounds about right.