Not all N95 masks have the valve.
Look at the various photos of N95 masks. Only one of the pictured masks has the valve.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/disp_part/respsource3healthcare.html
It’s under “do n95 respirators come in different styles?”
Again, this is about the “state” government controlling you. This obviously bothers you, I get it.
I just don’t look at the world this way. Before LA county closed the parks, hiking trails, etc. large groups of people would congregate at trail heads, park entrances etc. I was annoyed that I couldn’t now hike my favorite trail but I get the bigger picture that limiting large groups of people from entering popular public places is probably a wise public policy move.
I NEVER felt like the government was “controlling” me; I looked at it like the government was attempting to “limit” me from contacting and spreading a potentially deadly disease within my community. In fact, I thank god there are elected officials to help guide people in the right direction. Can you imagine if everything was left to the individual?! Restaurants, bars and sporting events would be at full capacity these past several months. I have little faith in the individual doing the right thing in a pandemic, unfortunately.
To summarize, I’m fine having the government put restrictions on my movement in the middle of a pandemic. Better than the adverse effects of the virus taking my “freedoms” away.
YMMV
“The U.S. Department of Justice has thrown its weight behind a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down Maine’s 14-day quarantine for out-of-state visitors.”
I wonder how other states with quarantines will be affected.
The tough part is- how do you prove a negative? Its hard to know how many might have gotten ill or died due to exposure vs how many didn’t if the stylists wore masks. Sadly, while its hopeful that this situation might encourage people to wear masks, it seems that folks are pretty polarized and entrenched in their belief/opinions/choices/behaviors.
As an aside, I was at the supermarket today, in my mask, and at one point I had to sneeze. It is yukky sneezing into a mask. But I did (though the first reflexive impulse is to lift it up).
And that is part of the reason for wearing the mask – your sneeze was at least partially contained in the mask, and the part of it that got through was probably slowed considerably so that it did not go very far, instead all of your sneeze being blown at full speed to a distance further than normal social distancing recommendations. Other people in the store were much less exposed to your sneeze droplets than if you sneezed without a mask.
I would guess around 10% of the people at Costco this morning were wearing masks with vents. I’ve only been out about every 14 days to shop but this was new for me.
With as many people as these stylists exposed, a fair amount should test positive eventually if masks are of no efficacy. That’s pretty close contact and for a fair amount of time.
If none or only a few test positive, that’s a pretty good indication of their usefulness. Anyone who doesn’t see that is being deliberately obtuse imo. We aren’t likely going to be able to conduct experiments with control groups on this subject because it would be unethical to subject people to active virus. So people kind of have to use common sense in interpreting these kinds of events.
Socaldad- I have seen no clusters of cases coming from parks or beaches. So there was no science based reason to close them. Fortunately they are open now.
I’d like to know how the second stylist was infected. If the second stylist was infected by the first stylist, which seems likely, then we know the first stylist was infectious. And if the first stylist was infectious but didn’t infect all those people whose hair they cut, that suggests masks were working.
If the second stylist was likely infected by someone else, we know less. Maybe the customers weren’t infected because masks work. Maybe the stylists weren’t very infectious; most infected people don’t infect anyone else, for whatever reason.
I file this in suggestive evidence for masks, but (alas) not dispositive evidence. By the end of the summer, though, I think we’ll have enough evidence to be pretty sure masks work or don’t work.
Wisconsin today: Friday’s report from the Department of Health Services shows the state jumped well past 17,000 confirmed coronavirus cases.
For the second time this week, Wisconsin saw a dramatic rise in the number of the coronavirus test results and new cases identified, and also the second-highest death reports in one day.
The state’s public and private labs completed 13,602 tests – almost 3,000 more tests than Thursday’s record. That’s indicative of increased testing in Milwaukee County, which identified 450 new patients.
Statewide, testing identified 733 new patients in the past 24 hours – well past the record one-day total of 599 cases set on Wednesday. That’s 5.39% of the test results, which is about average for the past few weeks. New cases were reported in 38 of the state’s 72 counties.
The state now has 17,707 confirmed coronavirus patients.
568 COVID-19 patients have died with the 18 new deaths in Friday’s report. It’s the third straight day the death count was in the double digits and the fourth day in a week.
No, doesn’t sound like it.
Most people aren’t very good at reading minds, it’s important to remember that.
I am beginning to think you do not read my posts, @socaldad2002. that is the only way I can make sense of your responses. I have stated repeatedly that I do indeed wear a mask, that my family wears a mask, and that I would just like to see more scientific data on the efficacy of different types of masks. Is that really so shocking and incomprehensible to you? I,t must be, given your responses. I am grateful to other posters who actually posted links to helpful scientific studies-that was very useful, and I will happily cite those studies in my conversations with others. Please spare me your sanctimonious lectures on the great unwashed who do not believe in science-with 2 Ivy degrees, I surely do, but I actually like to see the data for myself rather than take your word for it.
@MomofWildChild , had you seen this?
“Gov. Janet Mills issued an executive order on Friday that Maine businesses accessible to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic must post signs by June 5 alerting customers that wearing masks in indoor public places is mandatory, and authorizing businesses to refuse service or entry to non-mask wearing customers.”
@roycroftmom, what are the best studies you’ve read about the efficacy of masks? I’ve seen nothing I thought was super-strong evidence for masks.
I recommend you read the whole article you quoted as even that article talks about the fact that masks protect others more so than yourself and are important for doing that.
The evidence supporting use of masks, even cloth masks, homemade masks, anything, is pretty darn solid in my opinion. That article was more about people getting a false sense of security from masks and not doing the other things that they should to avoid illness (social distance, hand washing, etc).
Because there are gaps on the sides. It isn’t fool proof protection. It greatly cuts down on how much you expel to others, though.
So the virus can’t penetrate the cloth material - it can only enter around the gaps of the mask? I have read studies conducted before Covid that cloth masks were ineffective in preventing viruses larger than Covid from entering through the cloth mask material. Have you read studies that cloth masks do prevent Covid particles from penetrating the cloth material?
If these cloth masks are effective everywhere but where there are gaps, would neck gators be more effective since they fit snugger around the face?
Like I said in a previous post, I carry a cloth mask with me and wear it when I go into a store where others are wearing masks. Based on what I have read, I have not been convinced they work, though. (Surgical masks and N95 masks are a different story, but we are not supposed to be wearing them.)
Yes, thanks. The new part is authorizing businesses to refuse service, although retailers are still not going to act like the police, no matter how “authorized” they might be.
Viruses are tiny. If the virus was aerosolized, it could come through the cloth (or through a surgical mask). But if it’s in a droplet, the droplet has some chance of being blocked by the infected person’s mask, and if it’s not blocked by that, it has some chance of being blocked by the other person’s mask.
We don’t know to what extent transmission is via aerosol particles versus droplets.
@ucbalumnus posted a chart and an article about the effectiveness of masks not that long ago. It was very informative, my husband even used the information as a safety tip.
I’m pretty positive of the poster but if not, I apologize. There was a great chart that the poster summarized a study and the link to that study.
Throughline a podcast also had a podcast about the history of masks. It was also interesting.