>“Yes, a surgical mask can help prevent the flu,” Sherif Mossad, MD, an infectious disease specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, tells Health. “Flu is carried in air droplets, so a mask would mechanically prevent the flu virus from reaching other people.” It would work both ways, says Dr. Mossad, preventing transmission of the flu virus to others and for keeping a mask-wearer from picking up an infection.
Are you really going to change your surgical mask every 3 minutes to make it effective against getting infected?
How did you jumped from "reduced" to "completely useless".
> Are you really going to change your surgical mask every 3 minutes to make it effective against getting infected?
My typical situation is not surgical situation.
COVID-19 family is also pretty agile:
"The analysis of 22 studies reveals that human coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus or endemic human coronaviruses (HCoV) can persist on inanimate surfaces like metal, glass or plastic for up to 9 days."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019567012...
Good luck relying on the safety from wearing surgical masks! /s
Aaaand you wear them also to not make sick others by spreading your virus as far as you breathe.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9bd2e88c4296be54e7f845...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...
If everybody in the US could wear one of these when out in public, we would be in a much better place. The sad truth is we don't have enough to do that, not that this would not help.
Surgical mask looks like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_mask
There is no respirator embedded as you can see, it's just a simple piece of fabric.
The point of my original reply was that we could reduce R0/transmission rate only if everybody had to wear surgical mask in public. If you are the only one wearing it, it doesn't really help. Some EU countries now require everybody to wear a mask while shopping or using public transport.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Prague/comments/fkdxvj/face_masks_n...
I thought it was a lower respiratory virus. I have no idea if that changes the efficacy of masks but...
Read just today that an advantage of any mask is it keeps people from transferring the virus from their fingers to their mouth and nose. A paper on the effectiveness of home made masks, like from tee shirt material says they are in no way a replacement for N95 masks but are better than nothing.
"The coronavirus is an upper respiratory virus and a surgical mask does not protect you from that kind of virus,” he said. “In fact, when people buy up these masks and hoard these masks then they might not be available for healthcare providers to use for patient care.”
He said surgical masks are more effective on people who are already infected with an illness to keep them from infecting others rather than the other way around. He said other types of masks are not very effective at preventing you from getting sick either."
https://www.wibc.com/news/local-indiana/surgeon-general-surg...