You are confusing "masks" as "surgical masks" aka. N95. He is meaning just the regular masks with no filtering whatsoever, that are very easy to manufacture. Hell you can even make them yourself. The N95 however, are quite difficult to build and require specialized machines to manufacture the filtering part, somebody linked a good article to it a couple days ago.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/8149292...

All in all, there is in my opinion no excuse to not to have everyone wear government provided masks, even though they don't offer complete protection. That would make it culturally the norm and hence many of the people who start coughing, but aren't sure do they have the virus, would at least have the mask covering their mouths to catch most of the escaping droplets. And also it would make it a little more difficult for everyone to rub their facial areas with their hands.

Surgical masks don't need to offer complete protection. For one thing, something is better than nothing. But more importantly, the reason people in Asia wear these masks isn't really to protect themselves from getting sick, it's to protect everyone else from getting sick from them. It's a product of a culture that values acting in the interest of the group instead of only in your own selfish self-interest.

So it's sorta like "herd immunity": if everyone is wearing a mask to keep everyone else from catching whatever they might have, it makes it much harder for diseases to spread around and everyone benefits.

To be clear, surgical masks and N95 masks are different things. Both are in short supply in the US.

Ahh, yes I was a bit confused on the terminology. So surgical masks are just masks with some filtering capability but without a respirator.

And N95 is a respirator, which is different from mask as it protects the wearer better from airborne particles?

This 3M product brochure explains it more clearly than anything else I've seen.

https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1794572O/surgical-n95-vs...

Surgical masks: 1. keep the wearer from infecting the patient 2. keep fluid spray (e.g. bleeding) from getting in the face

N95 respirators are meant to protect the wearer from airborne particles, which surgical masks don't really do at all, since they don't form a seal and air and particles still go around the mask into the mouth. Many N95 masks have an ubobstructed one-way output valve for easier breathing that will not protect the patient from the wearer.

And as it mentions, surgical N95 masks (the blue respirators many medical professionals wear in news photos lately) do both.

* Edit: Another 3M brochure shows that many of their non-N95 masks are also tested for filtration efficiency, even though not certified by NIOSH.

http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/312703O/masks-and-respira...

> So surgical masks are just masks with some filtering capability but without a respirator.

Surgical masks mainly prevent droplets from entering your nose and mouth, and your breath/sneezes/coughs from affecting others.

And the trillions of loss in economy could have been much lower if everyone wear a mask ( Surgical or not ) and kept business opening. It will also greatly flatten the curve in public health services, while buying time to find a vaccine or improve health services capacity.

There is no reason why Mask's supply problem could not be solved when you are looking at a comparatively speaking trillion of dollars package not to save the economy, but barely holding it up so it doesn't fall.

I am still baffled at the insistence that mask are useless, surgical or not. When there are ample of evidence to suggest it is the best tool to help and stop virus from spreading.

PPE recommendations are a bit confusing.

WHO currently says that healthcare professionals in non-AGP areas who aren't doing AGP should wear surgical mask, gloves, apron, and do a risk assessment for eye protection. All of that PPE is single use. This is the current practice in English NHS settings. See here: https://twitter.com/OutbreakJake/status/1242020875328684038

If aerosol generating procedures are happening the healthcare professional needs a fit-tested FFP3, gown, gloves, and eye protection. https://twitter.com/OutbreakJake/status/1242233685392396289?...

Surgical masks are fluid resistant, and this is an important part of their protective property. Home made cotton masks tend not to be fluid resistant.

If you are in contact with infections substances all day every day you need 99.99999% (I'm pulling this figure outta my ass, but you get the picture) protection. To bring R0 below 1 you need 75% protection. That's why we saw advice like "just wash your hands" - ultimately inadequate, but it wasn't apriori silly.

A lot of masks sold retail can’t be used in hospital settings in America. Many hospitals have strict rules about procurement and origination of things like N95 masks. Meanwhile, I can order comparable masks from China and have them in less than a week in quantity. It’s very much cultural as well as government response (why we are sucking so much at controlling this).

> I can order comparable masks from China

Why would you buy safety critical equipment from China? There are good reasons those hospitals have such strict requirements.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/12/c_138870714.htm

> A joint law enforcement operation by government agencies including the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) was launched in early February, with over 80 million defective face masks and 370,000 other faulty PPE items seized, SAMR official Yang Hongcan told a press conference Thursday.

https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-25/los-test-rapidos-de-c...

(350,000 tests supposed to have 80% specificity but actually have something like 30%).

For our use, faulty KN95 masks are better than nothing. Maybe they suck but it’s better than nothing and probably better than home made masks. You have to shop around and find reputable sellers that have been in business a while to mitigate risks as much as possible. I trust Aliexpress slightly less than Amazon these days which says a lot. Amazon used to have my unquestioning trust. Now I barely use them in favor of other retailers.

Are they? It's unclear whether KN95 masks are better than a piece of fitted fabric around your mouth and nose. That's the trouble with masks; we don't know what works and what doesn't.

I wi work on the assumption that it is at least as good with a probability to be better. We know how this virus is transmitted and what is needed to filter it, it’s just a particle. We have strong evidence from the healthcare community that these masks keep workers COVID-19 free. They definitely work on other viruses of a similar size...

> Why would you buy safety critical equipment from China?

Hospitals have done this for decades.

>Why would you buy safety critical equipment from China?

1) Because that's where it's made

2) Because they're obviously a lot more competent at public health than we are. We don't know WTF we are doing.

> If there aren't enough masks for health care workers, doctors and nurses will stop coming to work people won't be able to get medical attention the death rate will sky rocket because of lack of simple medical procedures, there will be panic in the streets, etc.

No, for the most part they won't stop coming to work, for better or worse. My wife is an RN in charge of a critical unit caring for confirmed covid-19 patients. They were asked to reuse masks and gowns a week ago due to lack of supply. As far as I know none of them has refused to go to work, and she in particular will be on 4 12-hour shifts this week.