You are reading a single comment by @ChainBreaker and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
These tend to refer to the medical blue face masks from hospitals, but what about N95 or N99 masks?
(I hear all about the touching face thing)
ChainBreaker-
what about N95 or N99 masks?
okay so: to the other points about disposable masks etc. disposable in this instance is probably better. Because you're going to get cross contamination otherwise. These things are your barrier, but you bring that barrier into your home and then what happens? Do you sterilise it? The rest of this response writes itself...
IMO be sensible: wash your hands properly and frequently, avoid touching your face when out and about.
The rest is luck.
benjam
Okay so, I thought about doing this last night but I'd had a couple of beers and thought I'd come at it a bit fresher.
Context: I'm not a Doctor but my other half is. Her specialist subject is Infectious Disease and Tropical Medicine in which she has an additional Masters from LSHTM. I am not a doctor but I happened to be a risk manager at a huge company during the SARS and Swine Flu outbreaks, so had to plan (in a small capacity) to mitigate those risks for 300k people. I'm not a doctor but I have also worked with people like Ben Goldacre to campaign for greater transparency in and build tools to expose disinformation in medical trials. But I'm not a doctor.
That said I spoke to my other half last night about this mask thing and: the benefits of them are negligible, practically zero for the kinds of masks that most wear. And almost exactly zero without the procedures that you would need to use in the home to avoid cross contamination. The guidance from organisations like the Mayo clinic concern medical-grade surgical masks primarily.
I say this because I read a little panic in this room and I hope this kind of rational thinking can help you. Like the wise @Rameye said, these masks still have value if you believe they do something, and that psychologically that is a positive. But please let's not pretend otherwise.
While I'm here:
LSHTM puts out an excellent podcast, you should listen to it: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pmEtPchcDhfud8R63vzDJ
Last weeks' 'more or less' on Radio 4 had a great section about Corvid-19, you can listen to it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000drn4
The death rate is currently 2% https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 @WornCleat but your 60% figure is as far as I know accurate.
Thanks.