The suggestion of wearing cloth masks is not to protect the wearer, but to reduce the radius of spread from those who are infected but asymptomatic. In this case, of course the masks themselves constitute fomites, but the person wearing them is already infected. Macintyre addresses use of cloth masks by hospital workers to protect themselves from patients, which is a use case extremely sensitive to the masks acting as fomites and infecting the person wearing them
How would contamination get onto the mask, other than you? It seems like a strict improvement, even if it isn’t much improvement. Also the contamination should at least be only on one side of the mask.
I would expect that people in the general public are not careful to avoid touching their masks with their hands before putting them on.
With a filtration rate of 60% I don’t see how the contamination will stay on one side of the mask. Especially when it is wet after breathing in it for a while.
The suggestion of wearing cloth masks is not to protect the wearer, but to reduce the radius of spread from those who are infected but asymptomatic. In this case, of course the masks themselves constitute fomites, but the person wearing them is already infected. Macintyre addresses use of cloth masks by hospital workers to protect themselves from patients, which is a use case extremely sensitive to the masks acting as fomites and infecting the person wearing them
If there’s contamination on your mask and you blow air through your mask, aren’t you also blowing the contamination on other people?
How would contamination get onto the mask, other than you? It seems like a strict improvement, even if it isn’t much improvement. Also the contamination should at least be only on one side of the mask.
I would expect that people in the general public are not careful to avoid touching their masks with their hands before putting them on.
With a filtration rate of 60% I don’t see how the contamination will stay on one side of the mask. Especially when it is wet after breathing in it for a while.