I'm saying that donning PPE is hard, and that members of the public can't do it. They usually miss out several hand washing steps, or they don items in the wrong order, or they don't have a safe place to doff items.

You've said "wash your hands" -- you do that by touching taps/faucets. Most people would have to open a few doors to get to the taps. Now all those door handles, and the taps, are contaminated, so you need to clean them too.

> FWIW I use a 3M 7503 with discrete filters so there is a mask body to grab

The entire front face of that filter is to be regarded as contaminated. You must not touch it when doffing the mask.

People in this thread are claiming that one use of the mask is to prevent infected people from infecting others, but this mask has an exhalation valve, so it doesn't stop infected droplets leaving the person wearing it.

Masks provide marginal benefits to people walking around in public, but only if they're worn absolutely correctly. As soon as people deviate from the rigorous protocols those marginal benefits disappear. Worse, there's a chance that they increase risk. If people are touching their masks but not immediately washing their hands, or they are touching their face to adjust their mask then the mask is causing harm.

> From what I've seen, the intellectual argument underlying the "no masks" narrative is that individual mask use will "take away" from hospitals

WHO, CDC, PHE, etc have all been pretty clear that masks don't provide any benefit to members of the public. This thread is full of paranoid nonsense that this was a deliberate lie by the CDC/WHO to preserve stocks.

And the solution here is to gain experience. I don't "adjust my mask" because I've been using it for household projects for the past few years. My first grocery run with a mask was a month ago. I definitely got to points where I messed up steps or did not have a good plan, but I learned. The best time to start is now.

> Most people would have to open a few doors to get to the taps. Now all those door handles, and the taps, are contaminated, so you need to clean them too.

So then, the same exact situation they're in if they go to the grocery store without a mask? People obviously need to wash their door handles as well.

> The entire front face of that filter is to be regarded as contaminated

The 7503 is the face piece, with my point being that I can grab that part without touching the filters. I have the 2297 filters, which are large round cloth discs - exposed liabilities. The 7093 filters would be better as the filter element is encased in plastic, but alas that's not what I already had.

And yes, it has an exhalation valve which is sub-optimal. I'll try remedying this next time I take the whole thing apart to deep clean it.

> WHO, CDC, PHE, etc have all been pretty clear that masks don't provide any benefit to members of the public

They have not backed up this position with data showing that individual mask wearing is actively harmful, and neither have you. Furthermore, they do recommend that healthcare professionals wear masks, which is inconsistent - if masks are effective against virus particles in a hospital, they can be effective against virus particles in a grocery store.

A basic analysis of the physical system is that all contamination ending up on mask filters would have otherwise been breathed in. So even if all of the filtered virus ends up on someone's hands and is not washed off, that is still better than it being in their airways!

If mask wearing is not actively harmful, then why discourage it at all? The meat of your argument seems to boil down to "you're likely to do it wrong" which is neither scientific nor productive.