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Face mask effectiveness: What science knows now
(www.cbsnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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The fact that the idea of an air filter is controversial is frankly amazing.
They apparently only work in every situation except when put over your face.
Many think that it takes only 1 virus to catch the disease when, in reality, your body will easily deal with a small amount of unknown pathogens and does so many times a day.
Masks work because they reduce the overall viral load, so your immune system isn't overwhelmed.
What also doesn't help is how unintuitively percentages scale. A mask that is 90% effective doubles the viral load if compared to a mask with 95% effectiveness, even tho the difference is "only" 5%.
Influenza data shows that it takes about 1000 viral particles to infect a human. Assuming COVID 19 is similar, reducing viral load also significantly reduces severity of disease if you get it.
Do you know if the infection threshold is similar across different influenza strains or are some more infectious than others?
I do not. I'm sure it varies quite widely and it's very presumptuous to assume coronavirus is similar but I think the general point is valid. You'd rather be exposed to 300 viral particles than 30,000 and masks absolutely have a reductive effect. One thing that has been mentioned that I hadn't thought about is the concept that if you are exposed to a sub-infectious level of virus the immune system might still develop response/immunity and that it's actually healthy to be exposed to sub-infectious level of viruses.
Not only that but those percentages are for a given particle size. They will both stop 100% of ping pong balls, for instance. As mentioned in yoher comments, the virus is usually in aerosol, microscopic droplets of varying size.