I’ve been wearing a 3M industrial workman’s elastomeric P100 respirator (which has an exhalation vent, to which I later added a plastic fitting I found on Etsy to hold a disk of N95 mask material over that as an exhalation filter) when indoors in public almost all the time ever since COVID started: I had one in my tool collection then, and have replaced it and the filters every 6–9 months or so (which has never been difficult to do). It muffles my voice slightly, so I have to speak loudly and clearly, and I get some funny looks and occasional “witty remarks” about it, but no-one has actually been hostile. It’s also uncomfortable to wear for more than around 1 1⁄2 hours continuously., so when working in the office or on long flights I wear a well-fitting cloth mask with approved N95 inserts (or actually the EU equivalent). But the elastomeric mask flattens my beard so that it gets a good seal, and (along with staying current on our vaccinations, and during COVID spikes staying home apart from kerbside pickups and medical appointments) has so far kept me and my mildly-immunocompromised wife COVID free, as far as we know.
No, I don’t understand why everyone didn’t do this. Properly worn, a P100 blocks more than an N95 which blocks more than a surgical mask which block more than cotton, all of which block more than anything that isn’t worn properly. It’s also cost effective, since the filters and mask last a long time. Our goal during the pandemic has been to try to reduced our estimated COVID risk down to around the level of other risks that we take on a regular basis, and for me, with a beard and a partially-immunocompromized wife, an N95 didn’t do that. I could of course have shaved my beard off (and at one point did), but this way I didn’t have to.
I’ve been wearing a 3M industrial workman’s elastomeric P100 respirator (which has an exhalation vent, to which I later added a plastic fitting I found on Etsy to hold a disk of N95 mask material over that as an exhalation filter) when indoors in public almost all the time ever since COVID started: I had one in my tool collection then, and have replaced it and the filters every 6–9 months or so (which has never been difficult to do). It muffles my voice slightly, so I have to speak loudly and clearly, and I get some funny looks and occasional “witty remarks” about it, but no-one has actually been hostile. It’s also uncomfortable to wear for more than around 1 1⁄2 hours continuously., so when working in the office or on long flights I wear a well-fitting cloth mask with approved N95 inserts (or actually the EU equivalent). But the elastomeric mask flattens my beard so that it gets a good seal, and (along with staying current on our vaccinations, and during COVID spikes staying home apart from kerbside pickups and medical appointments) has so far kept me and my mildly-immunocompromised wife COVID free, as far as we know.
No, I don’t understand why everyone didn’t do this. Properly worn, a P100 blocks more than an N95 which blocks more than a surgical mask which block more than cotton, all of which block more than anything that isn’t worn properly. It’s also cost effective, since the filters and mask last a long time. Our goal during the pandemic has been to try to reduced our estimated COVID risk down to around the level of other risks that we take on a regular basis, and for me, with a beard and a partially-immunocompromized wife, an N95 didn’t do that. I could of course have shaved my beard off (and at one point did), but this way I didn’t have to.