The mask is to protect others as much as it is to protect yourself. You can be contagious and spread it for up to two weeks without symptoms. It's unfortunate that wearing a mask is such a hardship for you.
This has to be the biggest mistake of the whole pandemic. Exhalation valves dramatically improve the comfort of masks. A cloth mask might give 50% protection, and a surgical mask about 75%, but even after you double the effects to account for filtering both on exhalation and inhalation, that's still only 75% (1-(1-.5)^2) and 94% (1-(1-.75)^2), which is worse than the 95% you could expect from a correctly fitted N95 mask with exhalation valve.
If you protect yourself then you also protect others, because you can't infect others unless you are infected yourself. This focus on filtering exhaled breath just results in people wearing masks incorrectly to avoid the problems of valveless masks, making the numbers even worse than the previous calculation. It's also much easier to motivate people with self-protection than altruism, especially when the people they're helping often don't reciprocate. We've had more than long enough to solve the production problems by now, so N95 should be the minimum standard.
As former military ( I assume that background is the reason for this), I just cannot understand what the deal is over masks. I can literally forget that I'm wearing a fitted surgical mask. They feel like nothing. What is so damn hard about wearing them? I hear so many grown adults whine and complain and dramatize having to put one on, and it just blows my mind.
Maybe I am, unknown to myself, a superhero, and my power is not having a hard time wearing a mask. Or maybe I'm not a spoiled entitled brat. Not sure anymore.
Protect who though? Who do masks protect at this point? People who are vaccinated? They have no need to worry. People who are unvaccinated? They made that choice.
There is literally no reason for a vaccinated individual to wear a mask. Vaccines work. They are the ticket out of this. Not masks.
>You won't learn anything, because you're a deranged wingnut with a trapped prior. But maybe the cognitive dissonance will be enough to get you to shut up.
Stick to attacking the idea instead of the individual. Personal attacks like this cause others to disregard your stance, even when they already disagree with the parent (like I did). It only works against the cause in the end.
I hear this quite often on the internet, yet I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a person wearing a mask in public pre-COVID. I’m in the US so it is extremely uncommon.
Where has all of the concern for the immunocompromised been before this? The flu is quite deadly, you know.
I can't stand this intimation that you're an asshole for not wearing a mask. If other people want to be precautious, they can get vaccinated and wear a mask and do the social distancing. It's not my problem.
If the standard is zero transmission, then they are useless. But that isn't had has never been the claim. N95 is better than simple masks, but they are more expensive, initially were in short supply, and uncomfortable.
But this is all about statistics. Simple masks reduce the chance of catching it by some small amount (say 15%) and reduce the emission of virus particles by something like 50% (it all depends on the mask). This doesn't mean the odds are cut in half; it means the exponent of the spread of the virus is cut in half.
It's a simple and easy way to reduce chances of spreading it to another person. It diverts airflow from directly forward, changing the distance outward that aerosols from your mouth go. Since, as you point out, this virus is spread via aerosols, this impacts the chances of spreading it, by reducing the contagion radius around you.
In an ill fitted mask? Not well. The suspension of the virus in aerosol is precisely why masks have any efficacy in the first place, since the viruses themselves could easily permeate without it.
