I think the jury is still out as to what fraction of vaccinated people develop sterilizing immunity. But the numbers I’ve seen suggest that it’s a lot more than zero. I saw some study that tested vaccinated and unvaccinated people every week and found 90% protection from infection (not symptomatic infection) shortly after the Pfizer vaccine. I think it was an Israeli study. There’s also data from both Israel and the UK on the reduction of spread to unvaccinated peers of vaccinated people that suggests vaccinated people are a lot less likely to spread the disease.
I’m also waffling on how much to step down from my uncomfortable but tightly-fitting n90 mask to surgical masks and/or high-quality cloth masks. After my husband is vaccinated I will certainly do so. None of us is especially high risk. (Except that i tend to catch colds and am slow to recover. But i AM now vaccinated, and i had a pretty normal reaction to it.)
I think I’ll still wear the better mask for higher-risk indoor stuff. But i went to pick up takeout the other night just wearing a cloth-with-filter mask.
It is not known for absolute certain that vaccination stops spread of the virus. It’s only considered extremely likely. Saying that “The vaccines do not prevent spread of the virus” is pure fearmongering, and is likely to have no effect other than discouraging vaccination.
So while the folks who are worried about sterilizing immunity have a point, Pfizer seems to be giving us a vaccine as close as one can hope from a vaccine.
My mother-in-law in Busan gave me about one hundred of the KF94 masks before I returned to Beijing last year, and then shipped me another hundred after the mask shortage was over.
I have not had access to any masks ending in “95” whatsoever.
All we were ever issued at work were surgical masks. I couldn’t get any other sort for months and relied on cloth ones I made at home.
Which is why some of us who have been called “essential workers” have been a little pissed off about we get lip service but are still treated as expendable.
I probably could get the higher end masks now, but since I have been fully vaccinated I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.
What I saw some months ago about the relative efficiency of the various masks was that KN95 masks are the best - but only if replaced after about 8 hours. Surgical masks are naturally less effective, but still pretty good except in a situation where there are many people together or when working with COVID patients. Double-masking is better, but I find that any mask gets wet inside after a while. And then you have bandanas. Apparently they are better than nothing, but only just.
This sort of info is out in the Internet, and ditto for the efficacy of the vaccines. Regarding which, I was vaccinated two weeks before coming into contact with a non-symptomatic COVID carrier. My wife got COVID, and recovered. I got relatively mild 'flu and was not even tested since I did not have all the symptoms. The vaccine (Pfizer in my case) does work, even a single dose, and I am pretty sure that I avoided a potentially nasty illness. I have no conditions to give cause for alarm, but COVID is unpredictable.
FWIW I just spent 9 days in a hospital in PA (not COVID-related). Thee overwhelming majority of medical staff I encountered were wearing the 3-layer “surgical” mask and not an N95. I assume that most of them were vaccinated against COVID and it’s also notable that anyone admitted to the hospital had received a rapid COVID test (nasal swab) as part of the admission process.
Rightly or wrongly I’m inclined to fall back from a KN95 to a 3-layer surgical mask as a result of what I saw.
The main question I would have would be about those doing the COVID tests. In my experience, the non-COVID wing were still just wearing surgical masks even back in November. Front desk and the entrance were wearing shields and facemasks. And I note Dr. Hope only seemed to wear his fancy stuff when he was on COVID wing duty.
The KN95’s and other N95 alternatives (R95, P95) have been available. A quick search shows this in many threads here going back to May 2020. People did mention skepticism as to whether they were “counterfeit” when they saw them at their local hardware store, but people wondered that about surgical masks as well.
Hmm, i stopped shopping in April. The legitimate suppliers I’d been using didn’t have anything “95”, or were restricting sales to medical establishments.
Yeah, everything was scarce for a bit last spring, in my experience. And the KN95s I eventually got were all from places like eBay and Amazon, rather than stores that have some more assurance of authenticity/quality.
And we were told for a long time not to buy N95s and similar in order to leave them for healthcare workers. Amazon wouldn’t even sell some of it to private parties.
May have been good luck, too. I got some KN95s from Amazon that were definitely substandard–the ones with the holes I mentioned before. I didn’t stumble on sites like ProjectN95.org until recently. I even bought a couple scalped “N95s” on eBay after getting the stimulus check, not realizing until later how less than official they were.
