Face mask effectiveness: What science knows now
In an interview for 60 Minutes, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook posed that question to Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech University professor specializing in aerosol science.
"They are very helpful in reducing the chances that the person will get COVID because it's reducing the amount of virus that you would inhale from the air around you," Marr said about masks.
No mask is 100% effective. An N95, for example, is named as such because it is at least 95 percent efficient at blocking airborne particles when used properly. But even if a mask has an 80% efficiency, Marr said, it still offers meaningful protection.
"That greatly reduces the chance that I'm going to become infected," Marr said.
Marr said research shows that high-quality masks can block particles that are the same size as those carrying the coronavirus. Masks work, Marr explained, as a filter, not as a sieve. Virus particles must weave around the layers of fibers, and as they do so, they may crash into those fibers and become trapped.
Marr likened it to running through a forest of trees. Walk slowly, and the surrounding is easy to navigate. But being forced through a forest at a high speed increases the likelihood of running into a tree.
"Masks, even cloth masks, do something," she said.
Not that I expect most people to believe it at this point...
Even if the research had come out that masks did absolutely nothing to protect against Covid, I would have absolutely no regrets for masking up. We did what we thought was the right thing based on the evidence available and it harmed no one. The worst that would’ve happened if we were wrong (outside of a false sense of security) is that we looked silly for awhile. The people that were vehemently against wearing masks were tool-sheds who were manipulated into their position by an Administration who assumed it would affect Democratic-leaning cities/states more and who are so blinded by their anti-science views that they didn’t even understand the threat posed by Covid. Mask wearers did the right thing and the evidence backs us up. Anti-mask idiots hopefully learned an evolutionary lesson, but I doubt it has really ever sunk in.
I remember reading a while back that MAGA counties had significantly higher death and serious disease rates. Probably still do. I'm not sure about the apartment Republican strategy of actually working to kill their core voters, but I guess we'll see how it works out for them.
I've read that TrumpCo wasn't as concerned with it out of the belief that more populous Democratic counties/states would be more heavily impacted by Covid. If anything, they tried to take advantage of Covid to use it as a natural bio-weapon and this is probably their worst, yet least talked about crime that they'll likely never face charges over. The strategy apparently blew up in their faces though, but by the time anyone realized, it was already too late to do anything about it. The damage had already been done.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/07/republicans-treated-covid-like-bioweapon-turned-against-them
Yup. I wiped my groceries down in the early pandemic. Turned out that probably wasn't needed, but it's a minor act that if the virus was in a different form could have helped.