Coronavirus #2: To Mask or Not to Mask?
The burning question of the day is whether everyone should wear masks to prevent coronavirus spread. My opinion is a definite maybe. Let me explain.
The problem of masking has become a serious one, not because it is likely to make a decisive impact in slowing the spread of COVID, but because it is an action that everyone can take. And it could be that hundreds of millions shaving a few percent off the rate of spread would be more effective than all the sweat and blood of thousands of healthcare workers. A hundred million drops of water can fill a pool faster than two people with buckets.
The problem with masking is this: Regular masks do not help all that much. The Coronavirus is about 0.1 micron wide. An N95 medical grade mask can only filter down to about 0.3 microns. So if a medical grade mask is not perfect, a regular fabric face mask is a bit like using chicken wire to keep mosquitoes out of your screened porch. In other words, a waste of time.
But it isn’t quite as simple as that. Although COVID is very small and can travel through the air, the vast majority of viral particles adhere to small droplets that people cough or sneeze out — and these droplets are larger than 3 microns. That’s why N95 masks generally work, especially if the wearer is standing a few feet away.
If you are standing a few feet away from someone with coronavirus who coughs and you are wearing a standard face mask, the smallest droplets will probably get through. So not much protection, although there is some.
On the other hand, if a person has COVID and is wearing a mask, the droplets will crash into the mask before all of them have a chance to aerosolize and take to the air. A bit more protection there.
Therefore, if you are wearing a mask and are coughed on by a sick person who is not wearing one, not much protection. If the person who is sick has a mask and coughs, and if you have a mask also, there is probably limited protection. Most of the protection will come from the sick person coughing directly into a mask, but the combination of two masks adds up. And limited protection will put a dent in the spread rate, provided everyone wears them. Some people masking won’t cut it. It has to be just about everyone.
The other advantage to wearing a mask is that it keeps you from touching your nose and mouth, which might prevent transmission if you have it on your hands.
But there’s one important caveat. You have to wash or replace the mask every time you go out. This is a crucial point. If you somehow get virus on the mask, the next time you use it you will be putting on a contaminated piece of clothing. That makes wearing a mask worse than not wearing one. If you don’t change or wash masks often, the mask is just a virus sponge, which is just as bad as it sounds.
So, to simplify: Masks work better if infected people wear them than if non-infected people do, so if the CDC is going to recommend them, it needs to be all or nothing. The people who have the virus don’t always know who they are, so unless everyone masks there is little chance that everyone infected will be masking. Second, you have to wash the mask thoroughly with each re-use. Reusing dirty masks is about as healthy as reusing dirty underwear. No, I take that back — reusing dirty underwear is much safer.
And finally, no one in the general public should be using medical grade masks. Because of severe shortages, hospital personnel throughout the country are re-using masks, which is a very bad thing. Until that problem is completely solved, for the general public to be wearing medical grade masks is the equivalent of killing doctors and nurses.
But always keep in mind that social distancing works much better than masks. The best way not to get a disease is to stay away from it.
