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Comment by ohazi | Hacker News Reader

People are downvoting the parent, but he/she is correct. So many people misunderstand these masks.

Surgical masks protect other people from your coughing / breathing -- they do nothing for you.

N95 masks are notoriously difficult to actually fit correctly. A mask with a filter needs to be completely sealed around your face. You should not be able to get any airflow in from the sides. The elastic is usually too weak, the masks themselves are too lightweight, and they rarely have anything but paper touching your face, so you're not going to be able to get any sort of seal with them.

The only mask that has any hope of protecting the wearer against inhaling airborne particles is a 3M-style cartridge respirator that's fitted properly. The mask should be heavy, the part around your face should be silicone or rubber, and you should be sweating enough to lubricate the mask so that it acts like a suction cup around your face.

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As I understood it their primary purpose was to get the wearer to not absent-mindedly touch their face, which is a much higher vector of infection than airborne inhalation of disease.

But because surgical masks are somewhat uncomfortable, it's apparently fairly common for people to touch their faces more to adjust the masks.

So I'm 100% in agreement with everything you said, but it still sounds like it's a decent idea for people in really crowded areas to wear masks to:

1. Not infect others during the period while they feel fine but are actually spreading the virus

2. As a more effective means of preventing spread via coughing and sneezing.

I agree with you, but if people in China are spending hours in line trying to get a mask, they're almost certainly not altruistically trying to improve the public health situation -- they've been misinformed about what the mask is going to do for them.

Let's be realistic here -- when the public is in a panic, their behavior gets worse, not better.

So they are doing the right thing for wrong, selfish reasons because they are misinformed.

Isn't there also a shortage of masks because everyone's snapping them up and hoarding them? If people who're actually ill can't get a hold of any because of that then I'd argue they aren't even doing the right thing period.

The insidious thing about this virus is that people can be contagious for weeks before they notice symptoms.

Citation needed. The incubation period appears to be 2-7 days, with 14 day quarantines used mostly to give margin for error.

"Surgical masks protect other people from your coughing / breathing -- they do nothing for you."

But the mandate to wear masks in crowded public places is to protect others from the wearer. Note there have been few if any reported cases of transmission on long flights from China. This may have something to do with mask wearing by carriers of the disease.

The parent is wrong. I understand why they might think that since the popular media is spreading misinformation by writing stories to discourage people from hording masks and in the process saying they aren't effective but that is false. The masks aren't a fool proof solution by themselves but in conjunction with other common sense hygiene they do reduce risk greatly.

Source?

See my other comments for a fuller explanation but source is...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/

not in medicine / physics, but wouldn't they still reduce airflow and so, while not entirely blocking things, still reduce dispersal / inhalation range?

agree people should not deceive themselves, however.

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