[Deleted after mod banned person I was responding to.]
Sure, I question Fauci’s words. I question everyone’s words. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, when Fauci and others were trying to make health and policy recommendations based on admittedly incomplete information about a “novel” virus.
In this case, though, I am questioning whether he actually said something. I’m questioning your words in assigning a quote to someone. The quote is shocking enough that it would have made headlines on every news source if Fauci had indeed said it.
[ETA: I see MrPete’s thread ban, and will drop the subject.]
HEADLINES??? CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, are not news, and they hide those facts. So, who will make it a headline? Newsmax, etc. Search DuckDuckGo… there are many examples of Fauci’s BS.
( Good grief )…
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Aaron Collins, “the mask nerd” has done extensive testing of n95, kn95, and kf94 masks. He’s found that masks are quite robust. But cleaning them damages the electrostatic charge, and makes them much less effective. Leakage around the edges general dominates stuff getting through the fabric. His finding is basically that you should discard a mask if it gets soiled or if the fit stops being tight. So long as they are tight and look and smell clean and haven’t been damaged by contact with alcohol, they’re probably good for perhaps 40 hours of wear, and it’s best if you let them fully dry between uses. I’ve seen masks that claim to be rated for 40 hours of clean (read, “sitting in the office, light shopping”) use.
Here’s his YouTube home. There’s a wealth of information here:
As the linked article points out, public health advice has to work for everyone. It can’t be too expensive or too onerous. And the stated goal of the current CDC guidelines aren’t to keep each person as safe as practical, they are avoid so many cases of serious covid that the hospitals are overrun. And this makes sense. In addition to different health statuses, different people have different risk tolerances and public policy shouldn’t overwhelm personal choice unless the stakes are very high.
Especially if you have high risk people in your household, you might reasonably take more precautions than the cdc recommends. And how often you mask might depend in part on how uncomfortable you find masks, whether they interfere with other stuff you want to do, etc. You might also want to take more precautions shortly before visiting an elderly relative or going on a big trip than in every day life.
I would invite published cases, because i don’t think anyone is reliably testing or reporting them any more. Deaths are a very reliable metric, but they lag (true, perhaps unmeasurable) infection rate by a few weeks. Hospitalization rates are reliable in some jurisdictions, and are a little more timely than death rates. If you have local sewage rates, that’s (imho) the best metric, because it’s a leading indicator and everyone poops.
I follow my local sewage rates, which are quite low at the moment. I still mask at the supermarket because that costs me nothing (well, a few pennies for using up the lifespan of my masks) but I’m eating with friends and stuff right now.
I wonder about the varying nature of grocery stores in different parts of the U.S.
Here in suburbs of New Orleans … grocery stores only rarely feel crowded, even when there are a lot of people in there. I guess they built them huge and spacious back then these areas were first being developed. With the high ceilings, brisk circulating air, and lack of “people density”, our local grocery stores (and other big-box retailers) feel really COVID-safe to me and most others around here. Masks at grocery stores are virtually gone, among employees and patrons alike.
I am curious whether everyday grocery stores in, say, the large northeastern U.S. cities have smaller footprints, narrower aisles, and are just generally more tightly packed. Maybe giving more of a “better wear a mask here” vibe more often.
Grocery stores near me vary, but i wear a mask even in the large open unventilated ones. Why not? It really costs me nothing.
Thanks for the replies, everyone! To try to respond: I’m in the US. Everyone in my household is fully vaccinated, but each have conditions that put us at higher risk for bad outcomes from COVID. When we got it in the fall, we were all OK, with medical treatment and without hospitalization. I do not want to roll those dice again, if I can help it.
The wastewater stats are really interesting to me!
In terms of masking, I had heard that the COVID-19 virus can only survive on droplets above a certain size, I assume large enough that an N95 mask would block those droplets coming in from the ambient air, as well as blocking droplets that I exhale, so my masking might protect both the community and me. I’m not an expert by any means. I could be wrong. I could be sharing outdated information, and I may be sharing info that was never right.
In any event, thanks again for the recommendations!
The physics of masks are complicated, but well understood by the people who make and rate masks. Very small droplets are actually easier to trap than middling-sized ones, because they bounce around in the air and get stuck on the electrostatic charge of the mask material. Quite a lot of studies have found that the medium masks are made of trap covid. The question about mask efficacy is more about how much air goes around the mask, rather than through it.
Ignorance fought! Thanks!
I’d suggest there’s higher risk and then there’s higher risk.
I am not quite age 65 and very-well-controlled diabetic. That puts me in the CDC’s “higher risk” category on two of the 21 qualifying metrics*. But I’m slender, healthy otherwise, no bad health habits, have excellent cardiovascular conditioning, and generally shed infections easily. My attitude is that COVID for me would be about the same as for an average 30yo.
Now somebody who’s my age and diabetic but is poorly controlled or uncontrolled, is obese, smokes, can’t walk to the mailbox without wheezing, has the early stages of COPD, and suffers from chronic UTIs is in an utterly different situation.
Only you know where on that spectrum you and your household lie. But recognize there is a spectrum.
There’s also a spectrum of genetic susceptibility to severe or long COVID. Which is a total crapshoot for anyone / everyone. Until they’ve caught it and find out whether they’re in the fortunate large majority or the unfortunate small (5%, 10%, 2%, 0.5%?) minority that is extra susceptible. One thing is for sure: the vaccines greatly shrink the number of extra-susceptible people. That everyone in your household is vaccinated is a major plus in that direction.
* See:
Same here.
This. Laypeople often conceive of air filtration in terms of sieving (i.e. using a mesh with holes smaller than the particles you’re trying to stop), because that’s what they’re familiar with:
Sieving works OK when you’re only trying to stop fairly large particles, e.g. macaroni noodles in a colander. But if you’re trying to stop really small particles by sieving, then your pore size ends up being so small that you can barely move any air. So instead, you build your filter from materials that use other mechanisms that will stop very small particles while still allowing you to move a lot of air. Wikipedia’s page on the HEPA (High Efficiency Particle Arrestance) filtration standard has a good explanation of the four particle capture mechanisms that a mask makes use of, with sieving being applicable only to the very largest particles:
Some of these particle capture mechanisms work better on larger particles, and some actually work better on smaller particles. As it happens, the most difficult-to-capture particle size for filters that employ all four of these mechanisms is right around 0.3 microns (300 nanometers), and so this is the size of the particles that are used to test how good a filter/mask is. So an N95 respirator, for example, can be expected to remove 95% of particles with a size of 0.3 microns - and it will filter even better for particles that are larger or smaller than that.
Scent molecules can be gas, liquid, or solid, so a mask being ineffective at stopping certain odors from getting through does not mean it’s ineffective at stopping solid or liquid particles.
For my part, I stopped masking about six months ago when COVID community levels in my area fell in to the “low” category and stayed there. The exception to this was a trip to Japan a few months ago. At the time, the vast majority of people there were still wearing masks, indoors and out, despite similarly low COVID prevalence. I just felt too self-conscious to go maskless indoors or on trains while I was there, but I always took it off when I was outside.
Thanks, @Machine_Elf, for that great explanation. I wish that info had been better publicized early in the pandemic. Or not completely ignored, as was a lot of info.
I’m only masking in places like grocery stores, these days. I was on vacation last week, and did not mask in restaurants. My family and I did not catch covid. I hope that was from low community levels, versus just luck.
I’m amazed to still see people driving in a car alone while wearing a mask. I often feel sorry for them, and wish someone would explain to them that wearing a mask by yourself in an isolated environment like a car interior isn’t really protecting you or anyone else. I appreciate the effort, but …
I did this early pandemic. Not because I thought I needed protection in the car, but because I was driving between multiple locations where I needed one. In an attempt to not touch/adjust/damage the mask I just drove around with it on.
As I became more comfortable with masks in general I no longer felt this was necessary. But maybe a person with a mask in the car isn’t as ignorant as you think.
One other issue is that if you take your mask off, you have to put it somewhere, and maybe there’s no good place to put it. Late last year my wife and I got mask tethers. Just like a tether that lets you hang reading glasses from your neck when you’re not using them, a mask tether lets your mask hand down in front of you when you’re not wearing it on your face. Very handy. Plenty of sources on line, including Amazon.
I, too, sometimes wear my mask in the car. Not because i am trying to protect myself from myself, but because sometimes it’s just simpler that way. I did it more early in the pandemic, when i had masks that were a little fussy to put on properly. Now that cheap and easy disposable masks are available, leaving it on isn’t as important.
But asking “why is she wearing a mask in the car?” is like asking “why is he wearing a tie in the car?” It’s not because either one is needed alone in the car, it’s just a matter of convenience, to have it already on when i get to where i will want to be wearing it.
I use a carabiner attached to my belt loop for that. Very handy.