Mike, while I am well aware of the size of the virus and the porosity of the masks, you miss the point. I don't want you to wear that mask to protect yourself. I want you to wear it to protect me, because your moisture-laden exhalations propel COVID-19 farther than the "naked" virus could go. Something like twice the difference in range between raw virus and virus on aerosolized sputum after a cough, sneeze, or sigh. The 6-foot distance is naked virus; but aerosol virus is more like 12 feet.
Doc, I read articles on this way back in April, before anyone was recommending masks in the UK or US. The studies were already done in the lab, and before Covid ever existed. I think I referred to them in the Covid thread. If someone coughs, the droplets can go over 20 foot, but with a mask most only go 6 foot, something like that. So my reasoning was that since lab tests were already done, there was already data that suggests a mask reduces transmission and therefore everybody should wear one.
To my astonishment, the scientific community remained silent. It was a combination of lying to us all to keep stocks for the medics and a complete lack of common sense over the issue. You don't need a scientific experiment so that you are 100% sure masks are effective. A barrier of sorts is likely to do something, and doing something will save a ton of lives.
Another ridiculous reasoning they used was that if you are not wearing the mask effectively, it is not going to work very well. But the same goes for handwashing and social distancing. I despair at what my own UK government did and I have little faith in both the honesty of the government and how smart a team of scientists can be. Groups of egg-heads having plenty of emergency meetings, backed by years of study and expertise, only to provide misleading, disingenuous advice that was wrong, and then with many of them ignoring their own rules about lockdown.
My reasoning doesn't require years of infectuous disease research. It is based on common-sense.
It is simple:
a) Masks provide a barrier and so are more likely to provide some reduction in infection rate than none at all, else why have the medics been using them for years when dealing witih infectuous patients? And I believe they reduced the risk of contracting Ebola, or one of the similar outbreaks they had.
b) Copy what the Asian countries did, since they did a better job of things than the West. You don't need any scientific studies about if masks work or not. Just copy the whole strategy of what was shown to empirically work for countries like South Korea.
Before the WHO recommended masks, I watched a 30 minute video by a South Korean doctor about mask usage. I think I might have linked to it in the Covid thread. He was saying the West was being dangerously arrogant about mask usage. But of course, the scientists want to take credit for getting the answers themselves. They were all idiots!
