One thing I fail to understand how there are so many mask mandates in the US but little care about mask quality. If you go through the trouble of masking, why not at least maximize the effect?
Mask mandates are generally about reducing how much risk people pose to those around them. Microcovid has:
No mask: baseline
Bad cloth: 1⁄2
Good cloth: 1⁄3
Surgical: 1⁄4
N95 etc: 1⁄6
Sealed N95 etc: 1⁄16
Since getting a good seal is quite hard, the benefit of better masks moves you from 1/2-1/3 for cloth to 1⁄6 for N95 etc at best.
In practice, places here that care about enforcing a certain quality of mask distribute free surgical masks, which is quite cheap and gets you most of the benefit.
I don’t think most non-rationalists understand that sealing is hard. I would expect that kind of person who bikes with a mask and no helmet to wear being pro-science to wear the “most scientific” mask. Culturally, that kind of behavior is hard for me to understand.
As far as rationalist circles go, there was mask innovation in the last year. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B00VAT74NG/?pldnSite=1 feels more comfortable to me then the FFP2 (N95 equivalent) I wore before and provides FFP3 (N99 equivalent) of protection. It’s also designed to actually fit tightly.
I’ve researched FFP2 masks before the pandemic for working in a dusty environment and the 3M design linked above fits better than anything else I found on the market.
One thing I fail to understand how there are so many mask mandates in the US but little care about mask quality. If you go through the trouble of masking, why not at least maximize the effect?
Mask mandates are generally about reducing how much risk people pose to those around them. Microcovid has:
No mask: baseline
Bad cloth: 1⁄2
Good cloth: 1⁄3
Surgical: 1⁄4
N95 etc: 1⁄6
Sealed N95 etc: 1⁄16
Since getting a good seal is quite hard, the benefit of better masks moves you from 1/2-1/3 for cloth to 1⁄6 for N95 etc at best.
In practice, places here that care about enforcing a certain quality of mask distribute free surgical masks, which is quite cheap and gets you most of the benefit.
I don’t think most non-rationalists understand that sealing is hard. I would expect that kind of person who bikes with a mask and no helmet to wear being pro-science to wear the “most scientific” mask. Culturally, that kind of behavior is hard for me to understand.
As far as rationalist circles go, there was mask innovation in the last year. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B00VAT74NG/?pldnSite=1 feels more comfortable to me then the FFP2 (N95 equivalent) I wore before and provides FFP3 (N99 equivalent) of protection. It’s also designed to actually fit tightly.
I’ve researched FFP2 masks before the pandemic for working in a dusty environment and the 3M design linked above fits better than anything else I found on the market.
BTW that foldable design makes the respirator fit in a pocket, which can be a big plus.