I am suspicious of the general advice against non-frontline health workers using masks (i.e. that anything short of a properly-fitted N95 mask is not only useless, but possibly does more harm than good). This air filter company claims that not only are masks a lot better than nothing; even home-made masks bodged out of cotton t-shirts or pillowcases catch 50-60% of virus-sized particles. Or as Naval suggested on Twitter, “billions of Asians aren’t wrong.”
I don’t know whether this is correct, but am leaning towards wearing a mask in public (I have a cloth cycling mask with insertable filters, so I’m not keeping them from medical professionals). Has anyone looked into this?
I am suspicious of the general advice against non-frontline health workers using masks (i.e. that anything short of a properly-fitted N95 mask is not only useless, but possibly does more harm than good). This air filter company claims that not only are masks a lot better than nothing; even home-made masks bodged out of cotton t-shirts or pillowcases catch 50-60% of virus-sized particles. Or as Naval suggested on Twitter, “billions of Asians aren’t wrong.”
I don’t know whether this is correct, but am leaning towards wearing a mask in public (I have a cloth cycling mask with insertable filters, so I’m not keeping them from medical professionals). Has anyone looked into this?
See previous discussion here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7K8fSFTnpfN4EBuZ8/how-useful-are-masks-during-an-epidemic
Cool, thanks. Still seems v. inconclusive… if anyone has more info, please chime in on that thread!