Does the mask protect you if no one else is wearing it?

Florida, where I spent my winter vacation, now looks harsh Blackish purple Coronavirus-Case rate map. I’ll probably get COVID right now, as my fellow swallowers don’t seem to be overly worried about keeping their excrement on their own. The other day, a young man turned his head to the side and hit a rouge on the sand a few feet away from me.Another person took a large inhalation from the hookah He brought it to the beach, Then I blew a large cloud of apple-scented lung aerosol into the South Florida sky, and when that happened, into my nostrils. Indoors, I’m one of the few people wearing a mask.

In the early days of the pandemic, as in the 2020 era, this would have scared me. The mantra went, “My mask protects you, your mask protects me.” However, in the sunshine state, there is often no “mask”. However, some researchers believe that the tagline needs to be updated. Universal masking is still the safest, my The mask also protects me. And wearing a high quality mask between vaccination and boost (I’m) protects me pretty well, no matter who else is doing what.

Joseph Allen, a Harvard COVID and ventilation expert, states that “the risk is very low” if vaccinated, boosted, and wearing the appropriate N95 or similar indoors. “That is, nothing else in life is so low risk. I identify your risk as follows: De minimis.. The N95 mask filters about 95 percent of the suspended particles.But two surgical masks (one to me and one to you) filter only about 91%, Allen I wrote recently for The Washington post..Studies show that N95 is not completely sealed to the face in most people’s masks. Reduce wearers Uptake of 57 to 86 percent of coronavirus particles. And it’s on top of the protection that vaccines and boosters already offer.

Read: Parents are having trouble with masks at school

Ideally, everyone would wear a mask indoors for the next few weeks. But that doesn’t happen. The good news is that if you’re boosted and wear a high quality mask, you’ll be fine anyway.Some experts even think that people who have been vaccinated three times and have been vaccinated with N95 can get their own vaccine. Normal activity.. “Boosters provide strong protection against serious consequences, so they should feel pretty safe. The N95, which fits properly even when infected people are present and releasing the virus into the air, It reduces breathing volume by more than 95%, “says Linsey. Mar, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech, specializing in aerial transmission. “With vaccination [a] Boosters and N95 provide excellent protection. “

After all, N95 is for ER doctors to treat COVID patients in the first stage of a pandemic, before vaccines and boosters are available, and before most people start wearing masks indoors. I wore it. “These masks are literally designed to block infectious aerosols,” says Abraar Karan, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford University.He thinks more everyday people should do Upgrade the mask, And that for healthcare professionals, Need to create N95 Required.

The caveat is that the mask needs to fit nicely and should be N95 or similar.The cloth mask Slight protection Against Omicron. “Fit properly” means to prevent air from leaking from the sides of the mask, near the nose, or from the chin. If you wear glasses, it should not be cloudy. “When you breathe in, your face should collapse a little inward,” says consultant and occupational hygiene expert Lisa Broseau. “If you breathe outwards, the facepiece should expand a little.”

Unfortunately, you may have to make some fashion sacrifices: the type of mask that is most likely to fit you is the strap on the back of your head, as opposed to the ear loops. The kind of men’s masks that they have re- Just shave.. Ideally, the government should set up a “fit test booth” to ensure that the mask fits snugly, but even the experts who proposed this idea think so. I admitted that I wouldn’t do it. In any case, the N95 “is better than most masks if the fit isn’t perfect and is very good,” Allen says.

Not all professionals are so relaxed. Professor Jose Luis Jimenez, who studies the transmission of the disease at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said he wouldn’t go to an indoor environment with lots of unmasked people next month or so. “I don’t think it can be very safe,” he said.

Read: How strange claims about masks have been going on for months

Everyone I interviewed also thinks it’s important to pay attention to how crowded and well-ventilated the room is. Jimenez even recommends carrying a CO.₂ Monitor and bay when its reading exceeds 700 molecules of carbon dioxide per million. (Sure, most people don’t own or own CO,₂ monitor. Running a grocery store quickly is less risky than a concert, because the longer you spend in a closed space with unmasked people, the higher the risk of exposure. You may also want to avoid places where you have to remove the mask, such as indoor restaurants and bars.

Another thing to keep in mind is that personal risk, and risk tolerance, are still important. When interacting with the elderly and immunocompromised people, it is advisable to avoid the public indoor environment altogether until the end of this surge, even if you wear a mask and boost.And even if you are vaccinated, boosted, and wearing an N95, you Get a still groundbreaking case For example, of Omicron in the current movie theater. “If your goal is to avoid the infection, I think it’s possible, but during the surge, the chances of getting infected are much higher than when the surge wasn’t happening,” says Karan. ..

But healthy and boosted people Much less likely You will be hospitalized with COVID-19 and are generally less likely to experience severe cases. At this point, if you are relatively healthy and doing everything right, we are weighing the March 2020 style blockade and the equivalent of a mild illness. Some people may find it safe enough to put the N95 at risk.

The fact that the N95 protects the wearer is especially important. Because we don’t intend to put all Americans in the mask right away. Nine states —Including Florida— Banned the obligation to mask. In many areas where masks are needed, compliance is inadequate because there are few cases before Omicron attacks and these states and regions have been unable to regain pandemic restrictions when “malaise begins”. Often. People ignored Mask’s obligations when the COVID tragedy looked weak and the rules felt excessive, as everyone began to ignore the color-coded “threat levels” months after 9/11. Now it’s hard to get people to take COVID seriously again.

The effectiveness of one-way masking is also good news for those of us who feel that cautious people should not be forced to live on a reckless whim.Millions of Americans Will Not Accept Life-Saving Vaccines, and News About Omicron Not affected Their decision. In the perfect world, everyone was wearing a mask until the end of this surge. My mask protects you and your mask protects me. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in the United States and denying a pandemic has become a political Shibboleth. The cost of a quick test that can be created cheaply is $ 24 per pack. And where some of us want to protect ourselves, even if others don’t.