Any views on something (apparently wecan brand) like:
Have I just wasted some money? Seems as if they've got a dual valve unit out now.
(Yes I know it's more to protect other people than the wearer).
Stops the moisture from your breath building up inside the mask?
People who wear spectacles often have a problem with face masks, because the masks seldom seal very well across the bridge of the nose and below the eyes, even with a bit of bendy wire re-enforcement, and when you exhale, a lot of the moist breath goes up behind the spectacles and mists them up. The valve is supposed to help alleviate that problem. I doubt if the valve has a filter in it, so the valve is to help the wearer from getting misty spectacles, not to stop the people near you from getting a face-full of virus-laden snot.
I would imagine that masks designed for the particular purpose of stopping the wearer from either exhaling or inhaling virus-laden snot and not misting up spectacles, would have to be of a rather special design. Most of the masks available seem to be no more than simple dust-masks for construction workers or d-i-y people.
Face masks, as you acknowledge, do not protect the wearer at all so from the point of view of self protection have no function beyond "being seen to do something" (which politicians like).
A far as other than the wearer are concerned they offer a small degree of protection which is significantly reduced if there is an exit valve and more so if there are two.
Yes, although having something, no matter how useless, in front of your face now seems to be an entry requirement for some shops.
it is to let the virus out (you don't want to keep it)
It may stop you stop you touching your face . Many people do this normally without noticing.
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I don't think that is what the research shows. As a start have a look at what Professor Greenhalgh (Ox); Professor Royall (Bris) and Professor Kao (Edi) say about masks and some recent papers on the wearing of them.
As ever there are other views but those tend to denigrate the methodology of a recent paper rather than the efficacy of mask wearing.
Comments are in the public domain and not behind a science/ed paywall.
I have no wish to get drawn into a debate and leave it to everyone to make up their own minds.
I suggest that you read this and decide whether or not you've wasted your money:
Well, the "experts" got it wrong on the timing of the lockdown, quarantining those entering the UK, and letting elderly Covid-19 patients back into care homes. Do you think they got it right on face masks? The only thing which made sense was to keep PPE as much as possible for those who needed it in hospitals and care homes. Even then, much of it was the wrong type of PPE.
Simple masks, such as those worn by surgeons during operations are there to protect the patient, of course, not the staff in the operating theatre. So why are experts suggesting anything should be different with respect to the SARS-Cov-2 virus? What you are missing is that more sophisticated masks, such as "N95" offer greater degrees of protection to the wearer. The problem is that "N95" can cover different degrees of protection, as can the designations FFP1, FFP2, and FFP3, which tend to be used here.
FFP3 masks can take out most particles between about 0.3 and 10 microns, which are the sizes of particles most often coughed or sneezed out. There is also a degree of confusion about single particles of viruses being so small (only a few nanometres), that they will pass through the much bigger "holes" in the filters without problem. That /might/ be true if the holes were a simple, smooth, cylinder. But they are not - they are a convoluted series of "rough" channels which, in fact, a viral particle has difficulty passing through without getting caught on the rough edges. Consider that a mask is about 0.5 mm thick, so a virus particle around 5 nm across has to negotiate a path 100,000 longer than its size. Think of a tennis ball trying to negotiate a series of channels, some covered with Velcro, which is about 7 km long. OK, there are lots of other factors (such as the speed the particles move), but it shows that particle size isn't everything.
On some of them exit valves do have filters. Even so, the humble surgical face mask offers decent protection for others from an infected wearer. This is from "Influenza Virus Aerosols in Human Exhaled Breath: Particle Size, Culturability, and Effect of Surgical Masks"(
That paper was published 7 years ago!!! What were SAGE waiting for? It was common sense - for years we've been told to cover our mouths when sneezing or coughing.
If *everyone* had been wearing "face covering" (experts' weasel-wording for surgical masks) from the start there would have been a much lower transmission rate, and many fewer deaths.
The failure to recommend face coverings or masks earlier is another example of the government deploying fake science to justify a political policy of wanting all masks to go to NHS staff.
It turns out the excess death rate amongst NHS staff during this Covid outbreak is zero. Those masks could have been better used to protect social workers and care workers whose excess death rate is shameful.
My quick dodge to prevent my specs steaming up is to adapt the old bathroom mirror trick. Wipe the mirror / lenses over with soap and water and allow it to dry then polish it off with a clean cloth. The resulting film left on the surface resists steaming up quite well. I have no idea if other substances also work but an ordinary tablet of toilet soap works wonders.
Nick
To reduce the fatigue on breathing, and also reduce the amount of saturation of the filter fabric with hot wet air.
Depends on what you are trying to do. For DIY protection from dust etc, they are just the thing!
This kind of the mask is aimed at the reverse - i.e. it offers little protection to others, but is designed to protect the wearer from particulates.
Nick Odell presented the following explanation :
Fairy Liquid works well, just a tiny drop on a cloth.
I personally think anyone who uses anything more than a basic mask has wasted their money in this country, as we seem to be over the problem now. Yes the or number is going up but those who get more than a flu seem to be down, so hospitals are not under strain. Many hospitals are writing to their patients asking them to come in for their treatment again, and if the problem still existed, they would not be doing that. Brian
Given the way other countries are having a second wave, and just how badly this country handled the first one, it is a brave man who says we are safe.
Never quite understood the hate of masks. Given pretty well every other country uses them. A case of the UK thinking they know better? Again?
We are told that masks are to stop the wearer sneezing on other people. We are also told that sneezing is not a symptom of Corona. Go figure.
Coughing is though... and one can sneeze even when not ill...
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