UMD study: N95 masks nearly perfect at blocking Covid

&gt; Cloth masks also outperformed both KN95 and surgical masks. Milton theorizes that cloth variants were the second-most effective masks tested because of greater coverage that wraps around the face and gives a better seal than either KN95 or surgical masks. Flow resistance is also lower, allowing breath to pass through rather than around the filter.<p>I&#x27;m always baffled by the people who went around arguing masks did nothing. They don&#x27;t seem to have any problem accepting that a sneeze guard at a salad bar does something, or that a surgeon should put something on their face to prevent them from coughing into your open body cavity.<p>We can argue all day about specific masks under specific settings, or when it is worth it to bother, but &quot;putting something in front of your face prevents you from breathing out particles&quot; is in the category of &quot;things that are pretty f&amp;%*ing obvious&quot;.

Anyone have a link to the actual paper?<p>Compare this with: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cochranelibrary.com&#x2F;cdsr&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;14651858.CD006207.pub6&#x2F;full" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cochranelibrary.com&#x2F;cdsr&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;14651858.CD...</a><p>which states &quot;The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical&#x2F;surgical masks.&quot;<p>Anyone have a good insight on which has a more accurate methodology?<p>FWIW, I&#x27;ve been of the opinion that masks help (obviously they do something), so I&#x27;m inclined to doubt the link I gave above.

Link to study: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thelancet.com&#x2F;journals&#x2F;ebiom&#x2F;article&#x2F;PIIS2352-3964(24)00192-0&#x2F;fulltext" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thelancet.com&#x2F;journals&#x2F;ebiom&#x2F;article&#x2F;PIIS2352-39...</a><p>More surprising is that cloth masks were better than KN95s! That&#x27;s pretty cool. Sample size was quite small though (only 8 cloth mask participants) and the study in general had a pretty small sample size (surely it couldn&#x27;t have been difficult to find covid-positive individuals?).

The title is misleading. The study found duckbill N95 masks &quot;blocked 99% of large virus particles and 98% of small ones&quot;. This is important because the issue with masks was always to do with fit and longterm ware habits, not that N95 material was ineffective at blocking viral particles.

I dearly love my N95 duck bills and always wear them while flying. I&#x27;m not really worried about COVID now, but why would I want to risk getting from anything? A cold could ruin my trip. A few hours of discomfort, but I&#x27;m uncomfortable anyway.<p>I was surprised that the airlines were repeatedly trying to get people to remove their masks one time I flew on the tail end of the epidemic. Will they bring me chicken soup if I get sick?

Anecdotally, I’ve been wearing N95 indoors (outside the home) since the pandemic started and haven’t gotten sick yet, even when friends got sick from being in the same venue as me (e.g. office, airplane).

So weird that the state of our discourse, even four years post-pandemic, is still stuck on &quot;do masks reduce disease transmission&quot;, something that (1) has been paradigmatically settled science* since the dawn of the germ theory of disease, (2) has never been seriously challenged and (3) remains true every time (as here) it&#x27;s been re-studied. Yet...<p>* Not quite the same thing as &quot;true&quot;. Very rarely paradigms are wrong. But they aren&#x27;t here, and... I mean duh.

I believe that the conflict over masks stemmed from a fundamental difference in perspective.<p>Masks work great at blocking transmissions even if the fit is bad, much like covering your mouse when you sneeze.<p>Masks CAN work great at blocking absorption if fitted properly, but thats hard to do correctly<p>If you are a fundamentally selfish person you only care about whether masks prevent YOU from getting COVID, you don&#x27;t care about spreading it.<p>If you are non-selfish, then you probably care about both yourself and the broader community well being and are not only concerned about catching covid yourself, but also spreading covid to other people.<p>I think its hard for these two groups to interact because there&#x27;s not much common ground.<p>I would argue that if you only care about your own risk of catching COVID and don&#x27;t have training on N95 masks, then the argument that masks aren&#x27;t worth the hassle is probably right.

Is this when the infected is wearing it or someone trying to protect from getting infected?

I rarely saw people wearing masks over both nose and mouth. Favorite memory is the guy in the metro who took the mask off his mouth to sneeze (and no, it didn&#x27;t begin by covering his nose)

Why is this flagged?