Masks are primarily to keep you from spreading your viruses to others, not to keep you from catching a virus.
With everyone masking and reduced social contact, I have been cold free for the last three years, unusually long for me. But now that masks are optional and mostly not used, I expect to catch one sooner or later.
Ahh no….
Guess why I wore a N95 only one time when I worked in a hospital???
To try to keep ME from catching a potential airborne virus from one patient….
And masks don’t work all that great with normal exhaled aerosolized droplets.
Based upon my own extensive research.
The average human being produces 250,000 to 700,000 every minute we breathe… Yep… It’s a whole lot… The vast majority of which are smaller than 5 microns. A great many of them in fact smaller than 1 micron.
Now if we are thinking about coughing or sneezing droplets…. Then yes… A mask can be very helpful in that circumstance. The size of those are typically 40 to 120 microns in size.. The human eye can see 70 micron sized droplets.
And if it only takes 300 to 3,000 virons to cause a infection in another person and we all produce 250,000 to 700,000 per minute breathing … Then what beta ratio and at what micron size virons must be kept from breathing in ??? Beta ratio at 500 at say 1 micron??? By the way testing of legitimate N95 did have a beta ratio of almost 200 at 0.3 microns. And how long are those exhaled aerosolized droplets viable in a particular atmospheric conditions ??? How many millions of them are still in the air ??
By the way … Aerosolized droplets settling to the ground is a part of Brownian motion theory that was advanced further by no other than Albert Einstein…
Masks attempt to work by 5 different ways…You Look up what they are. I’ll give you one way which is gravitational inertia… You look up the other 4 ways.
But NONE of that takes in to account for…. Leakage… Which will happen… Guaranteed… And air flow and differential pressure dictates once a leak is there… The mask is compromised and air will flood through that location…. Whether it’s your along your nose or along your jaw line or cheek line …
You do the math… I did… Told my own 70 plus year old mom that it would be very, very difficult to not catch certain viruses if they were spread by exhaled aerosolized droplets.
There is a reason why those people who went back into a particular mine a good number of years ago were wearing complete body suits and a totally self contained respirator system. Basically a hazmat suit… By the way that story was from the London Times and surprisingly The Huffington Post… Quite fascinating reading all I can say about that.
They weren’t wearing a N95 or P100 mask… Or a dumb “face covering”.
Which a “ face covering” is beyond worthless…When a former leader in my state stated a “ face covering” was all that was needed… I knew that it was all complete garbage.