Please explain to me why N-95 masks aren't the standard for EVERYONE to wear

My fab shop does a fair amount of work with stainless steel and we use

Moldex N99 and 3M P100 masks and have basically used up most of

our stock. I figure they do help protect wearer against the virus...others

not so much because of the exhale valves. The valves have a cover over

them which at least keeps a focused stream of exhaled air off others.

We switched the shop over to pressure feed full face plates with battery packs

and waist mounted blower/filters and used the respirator masks for

the Covid situation....at least till we run out.

My suppliers figure six months before masks become avail. again.

pinesol wrote:

The modeling without experimental verification can kiss my ever-loving double-cloth-covered you-know-what.

This scientific report from 2006 describes the various mitigations, and why we do not bother (except when politics intervenes).

...

The 2006 paper above is in plain English.

This scientific report reviews the failure of numerous studies to demonstrate the efficacy of universal masks.

...

Maybe try reading? If you disagree, I would love to see the evidence.

Cute. These look like two papers about influenza.

Here is some light reading in English specific to COVID-19:

A layman description of the last paper:

Has anyone even tried to wear an N95? First of all, they aren't reusable... they only work for about 8 hrs of continuous OR intermittent use. And I can say from experience, that's a really long time to be wearing something like that. Several coworkers are being prescribed migraine medication just to get through the day, due to constantly breathing in their own carbon dioxide for such a long period of time. Not to mention they're battery powered, so you're just asking for the public to waste resources that could be utilized elsewhere, which right now is entirely unnecessary. Fabric masks that are washable, which you should be doing daily, are absolutely enough protection and the research has only shown to prove this - you just need to actually wear it.

N95 should only be used by healthcare professionals in the workplace, and preferably with a face shield as to not soil the mask within those 8 hrs of use - but of course hospitals don't have even close to enough of those to go around, either.

Thank you, finally some sense being made here.

dullard wrote:

The primary reason for requiring masks by regular people is not to protect the individual but to reduce transmission because all the droplets from your mouth get caught in the mask and if everyone does it we become collectively less exposed to covid-19.

I saw a good interview with Taiwan's top public health official. She said "The main benefit to wearing a mask is that it breaks the habit of stop touching your mouth when you're out and about".

This makes total sense and I'm amazed I never heard it from anyone in Europe or USA. Not exhaling droplets is a good reason, but this one above is a REALLY good reason.

And Taiwan had 447 cases and 7 deaths. Second only to Vietnam in the developed world.

[quote]eurodonkey wrote:

breaks the habit of stop touching your mouth...".

Sorry, "breaks the habit of touching your mouth"

dunes runner wrote:

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people commonly fart and pass wind, so how are you accounting for that?

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People need to start putting duct tape on their butts, and not eliminating anywhere except in their own homes.

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No one should be allowed to go out in public without duct tape on their butts, and no one allowed into stores until this is verified at the doors.

rekrunner wrote:

Most butts have cloth coverings -- typically two layers. Butts are generally masked in public without the need for medical recommendation, and not seen as a sign of obedience.

Cloth coverings don't keep farts from passing through, as evidenced that some people have extremely stinky farts, and viruses are much smaller than stinky fart smells.

Thus I think that duct tape is the only option here, and inspecting everyone before they go into stores to make sure they're secure. We would not want there to be a fart caused covid19 outbreak in a store, which could potentially cause billions of deaths. Why is this not being done?

Ho Hum wrote:

Viruses quickly degrade outside the body. Depending on conditions, they could be "dead" in seconds to hours

Viruses are not alive and they don't reproduce.

Why some people think viruses are contagious is a conspiracy theory.

eurodonkey wrote:

==

I saw a good interview with Taiwan's top public health official. She said "The main benefit to wearing a mask is that it breaks the habit of stop touching your mouth when you're out and about".

==

This makes total sense and I'm amazed I never heard it from anyone in Europe or USA. Not exhaling droplets is a good reason, but this one above is a REALLY good reason.

During one of Trump's interviews, Fauci was standing to the side constantly pulling his face mask down and rubbing his face.

dunes runner wrote:

Ho Hum wrote:

Viruses quickly degrade outside the body. Depending on conditions, they could be "dead" in seconds to hours

Viruses are not alive and they don't reproduce.

Why some people think viruses are contagious is a conspiracy theory.

That's why I used quotation marks, but fine. They get degraded until they're no longer infectious.

I have no idea what you're trying to say about viruses not being contagious.

Thanks for the links. I have to review them more carefully. I noticed one of the papers boasted a lot of references (104 maybe?). The references from prior to 2020 are not about COVID-19, obviously.

Respiratory viruses in general are not new.

People have studied the various mitigations for years.

If masks were significantly effective, we would be avoiding thousands of influenza-like illness (ILI) deaths every year.

The Italians would have learned to use masks or whatever else worked, because they suffer a high mortality rate due to ILI year after year.

Here's another test to run. Ask people around you (who are not in health care or an allied profession) how many personal acquaintances under age 65 have died from COVID-19.

I have asked about a dozen relative strangers in New Jersey. So far the total count among people I asked is two. One was morbidly obese and diabetic (and I asked pointedly, "could stand to lose a few" versus "so overweight you recoil"). The other was at least early 60's and had his larynx removed due to smoking-related cancer.

COVID-19 is a mortal hazard for the immune compromised. While being old is a risk factor, it is the ones in care homes who get mowed down.

I have a N-99 mask. It is 5 times better.

gilt wrote:

I have a N-99 mask. It is 5 times better.

Well, I have an N99.99 mask which is 100x better than yours, so there!

Too add to some of this - N95s have to fit in order to seal properly. Prior to the pandemic I was tested yearly in a couple different masks. Different brands have different styles (ie. round 3m, duckbill-shaped Kimberly Clarke) that fit some face shapes well, but others not so well. A friend of mine doesn't fit any available N95s and has to wear one of those space helmet-looking PAPRs. If there isn't a great seal, the mask is not really too much better than a surgical mask at protecting people because viral particle can leak around the gap in the seal.

Additionally educating the public on how to wear N95s would require a decent amount of effort - I've seen folks walking around with the straps placed incorrectly, or with one strap off and one strap on fairly often. There was a picture of a PA state rep that went around a few weeks ago where the guy was wearing the mask upside down. Fitting a 3M to your face also takes a little bit of squishing and effort to get the full seal.

Teaching people how to appropriately don and doff the mask without contaminating the mask itself is also going to be more involved. Even among healthcare facilities education on donning, fitting the mask to your face, and doffing is scattershot, and I wasn't taught how to properly fit a 3M until I was a resident. If by chance I hadn't got fit tested on that particular day, I would not have learned and probably would have been exposing myself during the pandemic. This is with watching educational videos and getting fit-tested yearly.

It's not surprising at all that so few people know someone under 65 that died from Covid-19. Only 1 in 40,000 in the United States have died, and the vast majority are over 65.

Not really just that its affecting the over 65s. The main factor for most affected people (leading to death) is that they have increased ACE2 receptors.

The best way to artificially increase your ACE2 receptors is using drugs typically used for diabetics and heart patients.

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600(20)30116-8.pdf

Viruses quickly degrade? Are we sure?

Because the virus is passed through respiratory droplets. The surgical masks prevent the expulsion of droplets into the public environment. N95 offers no benefit over respiratory droplets in this regard.

N95 is useful in aerosolized contamination which is only encountered in very specific hospital settings.

One dozen strangers is an extremely small sample size. Why would one even believe the answers are real? Why would I believe you've even asked anyone? That's like me coming onto this moronic board and expecting any of you to believe that I personally know over ten healthy people under 60 that have died from Covid. You are just looking for answers that confirm your biases. Had most of those people told you they had a similar experience to what I have seen you would have simply dismissed it as false and never posted it on here.