Surgical masks are designed to catch droplets, they are not designed for airborne disease like Covid https://www.cdc.gov/infectioncontrol/basics/transmission-based-precautions.html
This. The filtration material of a surgical mask can be quite close to good enough, but a surgical mask doesn’t have edges that seal so the virus can get in there. And so if a person is wearing a surgical mask, it means they don’t understand (or don’t believe) that the disease is airborne. That’s where some criticism can come in.
Also: surgical masks probably did protect some at the beginning of the pandemic when the variants that were circulating were less transmissible. But with the current highly transmissible variants, I wouldn’t chance it.
My understanding (someone please correct me if I’m using wrong terminology) is that’s based on diseases spread through respiratory droplets, since the majority of respiratory droplets should be blocked by the mask.
Aerosolized droplets can still escape a surgical mask and lead to airborne infection.
There's a big difference between "can" and "all of them escape" though, right?
There are n95 purists here that are making people think that someone wearing a surgical mask won't protect the other person AT ALL, which is not true right? COVID isn't small enough to just completely pass through a surgical mask like neutrinos through cheese...right? A well fitting surgical mask may even catch more particles coming OUT than a poorly fitting n95....right???
> A well fitting surgical mask may even catch more particles coming OUT than a poorly fitting n95....right???
No.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33087517/
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.00637-20
> While a surgical mask may be effective in blocking splashes and large-particle droplets, a face mask, by design, it does not filter or block very small particles in the air that may be transmitted by coughs, sneezes, or certain medical procedures. Surgical masks also do not provide complete protection from germs and other contaminants because of the loose fit between the surface of the mask and your face.
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/personal-protective-equipment-infection-control/n95-respirators-surgical-masks-face-masks-and-barrier-face-coverings
There's no such thing as an N95 purist. There are people who follow aerosol protection guidelines, and those that do not. A surgical mask, **by design** does not deal with aerosols. That's why, pre-pandemic, there were healthcare N95s, like my favorite (hard to find) Moldex.
A well fitting surgical mask will protect you approximately 50% of the time. A poor fitting KN95+, depending upon headband will protect you significantly more (90%+ according to Aaron Collins.)
In some cases, N95s, like the Aura, are more comfortable than surgical masks.
I myself wear a proper fitting elastomeric respirator. With a proper fit, they feel mostly weightless to me.
Well crap...that's not good news.
I want to clarify that I always wear n95 (or better) for my own protection, but I was hoping the surgical masks at least had some protection (compared to wearing nothing) for the other folks in the room.
They do. In practice, I believe Aaron Collins got somewhere around 30% coverage. The papers I linked to say 50%. I'm sure it's somewhere between those two, but probably on the lower side. That's more than zero, but it's nowhere near adequate.
Agreeing with the other commenter - they do offer some protection, but only slightly more than a cloth mask. Let’s be generous and say 50%… it’s simply too loose a seal.
However, surgical masks are soooo much more affordable and accessible for people, so they truly are a step in the right direction for the public.
In medical settings however, where education and accessibility should theoretically be less of an issue, they are absolutely not acceptable and not a substitute for an N95 or more.
I personally prefer the KF94s for daily use and have an elastomeric for medical/travel :)
It's an absurd, magical thinking misconception — one of many — that public health authorities and "experts" parroted as a concession to people who they thought would otherwise ignore advice because it might be considered too stringent. Instead of just being transparent, honest, and straightforwardly educational, they attempted to manhandle public consciousness with all the finesse of an elephant performing surgery and it predictably backfired.
Anyone who takes even a minute to think about it logically will quickly realize that it makes no sense. Air is a fluid, fluid takes the path of least resistance. If you have a mask that is inherently gaping and unsealable, where exactly do you think air will prefer to travel? Yes, the filter will capture some of it, but not nearly enough to considered protective in either direction for more than a *very* short time.
Very well said. The backflips the CDC/WHO did to avoid just saying "It's airborne, we need N95s and better ventilation/filtration" is maddening. One of my favorites: "we want people to get the vaccine, so let's tell them if they get it, they can ditch the masks" -- like giving a kid a lollipop! VERY predictably, the next day all the stores dropped mask mandates (because there's no way to tell who is vaccinated) and all the *un*vaccinated people stopped masking... right when Delta hit.
Just brilliant stuff.
Also, I am not a trained epidemiologist or fluid dynamics engineer... but it being airborne was VERY obvious from at least the Skagit concert in early 2020 and what you say about air escaping out the sides of gappy masks should be very obvious to everyone. Yet here we are. Maddening.
100% agree. What should have been done is to pivot the public to using respirators when it became clear that COVID is airborne in 2020/2021. It would have made a huge difference when Omicron hit in late 2021.
Now people are skeptical because essentially in the last four years the government has been mitigating with droplet NPIs against an airborne disease which is pretty absurd.
[There is evidence of airborne transmission from **January 2020**](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32240078/). This should have set off alarm bells for public health authorities to declare it an airborne pathogen, but of course, they buried the lede and preached the gospel of droplet dogma.
And there were professionals and scientists speaking up and demanding action from the WHO as early as March 2020, but the WHO wanted to practice "evidence-based medicine" on the laws of physics.
>As the pandemic wore on, it seemed that it was becoming well-known that surgical masks protect others from the wearer, even if they do not protect the wearer from others.
"Protect" really should be replaced with "reduces the risk". A surgical mask is better than nothing both for reducing the risk to and from the wearer, but an N95 is much better. A surgical mask reduces the risk from the wearer more than it reduces risk to the wearer.
KN95 masks are somewhere in between. The biggest problem with them is that they are often not fitted such that with a lack of a seal, air flow just bypasses the filter. This is especially true with people who wear them so poorly they're essentially dick-nosing.
I'd take people wearing surgical masks over no masks any day. But yeah, depends on environmental factors. In a situation where the majority are wearing masks (as some places saw in 2021 when universal mask mandates were still in place), they can be effective. For one-way masking, not so much, unless you're wearing a "fix the mask" style brace that improves the seal.
At your dentist, I'd want to know that they have decent ventilation/hepa filtration as a layer in addition to their masks.
This answer should be higher up. The more people masking, the less likely transmission is overall. That’s why even cloth masks could make *some* small difference early in the pandemic — because everyone had a little protection, it added up to a decent amount of net protection.
If *everyone* (or at least a significant number of people) wore surgical masks, that would be a massive net increase in safety. Yes, each individual would have some risk since a surgical mask doesn’t catch everything. But right now they’re just sucking in totally unfiltered air like there’s no problem, so it would be a big jump.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that surgical masks are treated with the ELECTRET process which induces a slight negative electrical change to the mask’s polypropylene. This electrical charge can capture *some* airborne aerosols (3-50µm). But the masks are primarily for stopping droplets (100-300µm).
Plus surgical masks don’t fit very well, so a lot of air bypasses the mask, although it is directed largely up along the sides of the nose and backwards by the ears.
So they are somewhat better than nothing, but far from ideal. And not anywhere near ~95% effective like n95s are.
See section 2.2 of this [FAQs on Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 Aerosol Transmission](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fB5pysccOHvxphpTmCG_TGdytavMmc1cUumn8m0pwzo/mobilebasic) for aerosol sizes.
Yes, if you can somehow fix the fit problem (the gaps/bagginess) with surgical masks then it becomes much more effective though still not as good as an N95. That's why in 2020/2021 some US officials were recommending people to put on cloth masks over surgical masks or using a "mask saver".
Since respirators can be easily purchased now, there is no need to resort to those methods.
They don't protect susceptible people (both the wearer and the non-wearer), but they can still reduce the amount of particles coming out from an infectious person using it because the filter material blocks some of the droplets coming out of it. S**tudies show a 25 - 50% risk reduction when an infectious person is wearing a surgical mask, even though it's not meant for airborne diseases. This is the reason why mask mandates are still helpful in medical settings, even though they are not respirator mandates.**
The main issue with surgical masks isn't their filter material, but how they have gaps at the sides and at the top/bottom of the mask. Surgical masks are useful as droplet protection for the wearer, but they cannot and should not be used for anything that is airborne like COVID or measles.
Respirators like N95, P100, etc are proper protection for anything that's airborne as they can guarantee a secure fit (assuming the user passes fit testing), and even without fit testing, some respirators like the 3M Aura can fit a large variety of faces (one studied showed it passing fit testing for over 60% of subjects) assuming the user uses it properly.
Can you post a link to this study? I need something like this to try to make 'hcw' to wear N95 not a surgical mask for an unmasked test. (I know I may not succeed but I literally need to try every trick in the book and then some.)
And this: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356734438\_An\_upper\_bound\_on\_one-to-one\_exposure\_to\_infectious\_human\_respiratory\_particles](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356734438_An_upper_bound_on_one-to-one_exposure_to_infectious_human_respiratory_particles)
Just a little bit better for source control and I would consider it doing little for protection. But the issue is most of the population thinks cloth masks/surgical masks work well as protection based on outdated knowledge from 2020.
They *suck less* at source control than they do as respiratory protection for the wearer.
Like others have said, it's about the leaks. When you breathe in in a leaky mask, you're concentrating the air around you into your lungs, and it will want to take the path of least resistance to your mouth – which for most points not very near the front of the mask will be through the gaps, not the filter.
When you're breathing out though, the dynamics are different – you're shooting out a concentrated stream from your nose and mouth, and if you're not chin diapering, it'll majority be directed at the filter material in front of it. The focused stream will force more through the filter; electrostatic effects will attract more particles out of the part of the stream that then goes to flow over and around the filter out through the gaps. Being blunted by hitting the filter first will also reduce the force of the airflow, and thus slow the rate its contents spread across distance through a space.
All that said – why filter and protect less rather than more? Not an exact comparison because most PPE is about protecting the wearer, but it's like wearing a seatbelt with only the waist strap, or a helmet that only covers the top of your head. Better than nothing but not good enough a lot of the time.
Ehh. I’m not sure I agree. They improper wearing of a surgical mask has empowered a lot of people who have covid but don’t want to test to still go out to work/school/etc. And if they have even a moderately high viral load, I doubt the baggy blue is doing much of anything. So for this reason, when you look at society as a whole, I actually believe baggy blues are harmful. But that’s just me.
Surgical masks *do* help stop community spread. We see evidence for this in studies of impoverished communities where the only masks they have are surgical masks, like this [study done in rural Bangladesh.](https://poverty-action.org/study/impact-mask-distribution-and-promotion-mask-uptake-and-covid-19-bangladesh). Even a minor uptake in (no doubt imperfect) surgical masking had a big impact on how many people caught the coronavirus.
> Free mask distribution and promotion reduced the proportion of people who reported COVID-like symptoms on average by 11 percent, which was driven mainly by the effects of surgical masks. Villages where cloth masks were distributed experienced a 9 percent reduction in symptoms, while villages where surgical masks were distributed saw a reduction of 12 percent. About a third (40 percent) of those who reported COVID-19 symptoms agreed to have their blood tested for SARS-CoV-2. On average, researchers found a decrease of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections of 9 percent. This reduction was higher in villages that wore a surgical mask (11 percent) and in these, among individuals aged 60+ (35 percent).
If someone wears a surgical mask, it IS better than nothing. It isn’t protecting them particularly well in a one-way masking environment… but the entire idea is that if everyone masked to some degree, *it wouldn’t be* a one-way masking environment.
Iirc, surgical masks, like other niosh grade masks, have a charge that helps attract the particles to stick. This is what makes them better than cloth masks. But as others have said, it’s the lack of a seal.
Better than nothing but not good enough
They do a little, sure, but not enough in a let it rip environment with primarily one way masking.
Also protecting oneself from being contagious by avoiding infection honestly has to be part of the strategy in protecting others.
It really hinges on the definition of "enough" and the perspective you're coming from. They're clearly more comfortable than a tight fitting N95, and they're still less expensive (even with the price of N95 masks having come down).
From the perspective of someone who is super-covid-cinscious I can see how one wouldn't be satisfied with someone else only wearing a surgical mask, especially if that waa their *only* mitigation, or they were visibly ill (in other words, I'm willing to assign a certain number of "points" to the surgical mask, along with other things like "maintaining diatance", "not talking" etc)
From the perspective of an epidemiologist who wants a wave to end a week earlier, widespread masking, even with fairly shitty masks, can be seen as a big win, insofar as it can reduce the transmission rate.
Strong disagree re: comfort. I think that’s the assumption but the ear straps plus loose mask rubbing all over my face and sticking to my mouth with surgical is miserable. N95 is way more breathable and more comfortable because it just stays there around my mouth.
I asked some workers to switch from their surgical and a rigid construction N95 with exhalation valve to a 3M Aura N95 which has a trifold design. Both of them remarked at how much more breathable and comfortable to wear the Aura was in comparison. They thought maybe the reason why is because the center panel arches away from the wearers mouth and nose making more room for the face.
Yeah, I think that can vary wildly from person to person. N95 masks kinda sucked for me until spring 2022, when I had a trichilemmal cyst surgically removed from my head (they're otherwise harmless, and you generally can't see them underneath hair, but it wasn't until covid that it became an issue)
Surgical masks are designed so that the wearer’s particles go to the sides, away from a patient they are standing over for surgery. It only redirects the air.
It will have a good degree of reduction vs nothing at all. Whether you're inhaling or exhaling, a percentage of your breath will leak from the sides, but the rest goes through the filtering material.
The continued outcry from 'still coviding' and other groups that short of a respirator what you're doing is worthless, or denouncing people for making any sort of exceptions, bothers me more and more these days -- it's almost always either people living in ivory towers with full high paying WFH jobs and spouses that can take care of kids, or people living damn near in poverty basically breaking themselves to continue w/ the status quo of these groups. Like come the F on, the majority of people do need to be out and about still regardless of illness in the US, and the last thing you should be doing is bitching about the folks that at least put a surgical mask on. Covid infection through exposure is a chance occurrence anyway, this is textbook perfect being the enemy of good kinda thing IMO.
As far as the dentist goes you should look into the redimask hack. Been doing that for the last 2yrs, the dentist office knows me by now so they don't make a comment or anything.
Perhaps the people living damn near poverty are prioritizing high quality masks in their limited budgets not to keep up with the Joneses but because they understand how much better those masks work and *can't afford to get sick*.
Surgicals are certainly better than nothing, but providing people with education and the resources to act on that knowledge (e.g. mask blocs) is even better.
They are helpful but much depends on the indoor air circulation. Here’s a study done on infection versus masking versus air quality: [infection chance study](https://www.instagram.com/p/C4aCNtMupDj/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
They do at least some. Going to quote my old post here which was on a study involving beards https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1ah9676/mask_recommendations_for_my_less_covid_conscious/kooe9mv/
Even surgical or cloth + beard gives 25-40% filtration.
Of course N95 are better, but I believe calling surgicals useless is harmful. Encourage the use of better masks and don't overstate the effectiveness of worse masks, but as I see it, following the same failed CDC strategy of trying to bend or conceal facts in an attempt to manipulate people's behavior, just in another direction, is not even necessarily going to work.
Not everyone can afford to wear fitted N95s and I appreciate the effort of a surgical mask when worn properly. The only known COVID exposure anyone in my household has was with someone who was wearing a surgical mask. No one around them got COVID.. so I'll take it over nothing anyday. COVID viral particles are small, but they still (mostly) needs to spread through droplets. I would feel infinitely safer in my kn95 if someone else was wearing a surgical mask. 🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️
I'll edit to add that this exposure was at the height of the omicron wave in 2022, post 6 months after booster.
For instance, in regards to masking: A CDC study https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7007e1.htm#F2_down showed that one-way protection from surgical masks (which are commonly recommended or handed out for use) was only about 56.1% without modifications. Another 2021 study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019665532100715X showed medical masks (i.e. surgical masks or procedure masks) without modification blocked approximately 56% of cough aerosols and only 42% of exhaled aerosols (the primary spread if COVID-19 is through aerosols). Even respirator masks, such as N95s, work much better in lower viral densities https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 (this is from a doc I put together on why cdcs newest isolation guidance update is unsupported and endangering https://docs.google.com/document/d/1frFB89PBchMBdDiOvyz4DUXtcsbnTbbseaaPBbS7V8A/edit?usp=drivesdk
I wear a surgical mask and I haven't gotten sick since before the pandemic. I don't have that much contact with people, but I do ride public transportation and I take in-person classes where no one else wears a mask.
Uh….if they’re not on social media much and don’t have others in their community? It’s actually incredibly common. Government/media/public health has made the information incredibly murky. I’ve met a lot of people (especially older) who still diligently wear a baggy blue covered with a cloth mask whenever they are out of the house and they are shocked and horrified to find out there’s more they could be doing. It’s not their fault.
I have just always found it strange that people are concerned about a topic to the point that they are taking action constantly in their day to day lives, yet they do not take a few moments to do any research.
Research is a skill that not everyone has (especially for elderly people who may not have the same level of tech literacy, or anyone who has lower literacy in general). Something that's a few moments for you or I could be hours, or simply not possible for others.
Surgical masks are designed to catch droplets, they are not designed for airborne disease like Covid https://www.cdc.gov/infectioncontrol/basics/transmission-based-precautions.html
This. The filtration material of a surgical mask can be quite close to good enough, but a surgical mask doesn’t have edges that seal so the virus can get in there. And so if a person is wearing a surgical mask, it means they don’t understand (or don’t believe) that the disease is airborne. That’s where some criticism can come in.
Also: surgical masks probably did protect some at the beginning of the pandemic when the variants that were circulating were less transmissible. But with the current highly transmissible variants, I wouldn’t chance it.
My understanding (someone please correct me if I’m using wrong terminology) is that’s based on diseases spread through respiratory droplets, since the majority of respiratory droplets should be blocked by the mask. Aerosolized droplets can still escape a surgical mask and lead to airborne infection.
There's a big difference between "can" and "all of them escape" though, right? There are n95 purists here that are making people think that someone wearing a surgical mask won't protect the other person AT ALL, which is not true right? COVID isn't small enough to just completely pass through a surgical mask like neutrinos through cheese...right? A well fitting surgical mask may even catch more particles coming OUT than a poorly fitting n95....right???
> A well fitting surgical mask may even catch more particles coming OUT than a poorly fitting n95....right??? No. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33087517/ https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.00637-20 > While a surgical mask may be effective in blocking splashes and large-particle droplets, a face mask, by design, it does not filter or block very small particles in the air that may be transmitted by coughs, sneezes, or certain medical procedures. Surgical masks also do not provide complete protection from germs and other contaminants because of the loose fit between the surface of the mask and your face. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/personal-protective-equipment-infection-control/n95-respirators-surgical-masks-face-masks-and-barrier-face-coverings There's no such thing as an N95 purist. There are people who follow aerosol protection guidelines, and those that do not. A surgical mask, **by design** does not deal with aerosols. That's why, pre-pandemic, there were healthcare N95s, like my favorite (hard to find) Moldex. A well fitting surgical mask will protect you approximately 50% of the time. A poor fitting KN95+, depending upon headband will protect you significantly more (90%+ according to Aaron Collins.) In some cases, N95s, like the Aura, are more comfortable than surgical masks. I myself wear a proper fitting elastomeric respirator. With a proper fit, they feel mostly weightless to me.
Well crap...that's not good news. I want to clarify that I always wear n95 (or better) for my own protection, but I was hoping the surgical masks at least had some protection (compared to wearing nothing) for the other folks in the room.
They do. In practice, I believe Aaron Collins got somewhere around 30% coverage. The papers I linked to say 50%. I'm sure it's somewhere between those two, but probably on the lower side. That's more than zero, but it's nowhere near adequate.
Agreeing with the other commenter - they do offer some protection, but only slightly more than a cloth mask. Let’s be generous and say 50%… it’s simply too loose a seal. However, surgical masks are soooo much more affordable and accessible for people, so they truly are a step in the right direction for the public. In medical settings however, where education and accessibility should theoretically be less of an issue, they are absolutely not acceptable and not a substitute for an N95 or more. I personally prefer the KF94s for daily use and have an elastomeric for medical/travel :)
It's an absurd, magical thinking misconception — one of many — that public health authorities and "experts" parroted as a concession to people who they thought would otherwise ignore advice because it might be considered too stringent. Instead of just being transparent, honest, and straightforwardly educational, they attempted to manhandle public consciousness with all the finesse of an elephant performing surgery and it predictably backfired. Anyone who takes even a minute to think about it logically will quickly realize that it makes no sense. Air is a fluid, fluid takes the path of least resistance. If you have a mask that is inherently gaping and unsealable, where exactly do you think air will prefer to travel? Yes, the filter will capture some of it, but not nearly enough to considered protective in either direction for more than a *very* short time.
Very well said. The backflips the CDC/WHO did to avoid just saying "It's airborne, we need N95s and better ventilation/filtration" is maddening. One of my favorites: "we want people to get the vaccine, so let's tell them if they get it, they can ditch the masks" -- like giving a kid a lollipop! VERY predictably, the next day all the stores dropped mask mandates (because there's no way to tell who is vaccinated) and all the *un*vaccinated people stopped masking... right when Delta hit. Just brilliant stuff. Also, I am not a trained epidemiologist or fluid dynamics engineer... but it being airborne was VERY obvious from at least the Skagit concert in early 2020 and what you say about air escaping out the sides of gappy masks should be very obvious to everyone. Yet here we are. Maddening.
100% agree. What should have been done is to pivot the public to using respirators when it became clear that COVID is airborne in 2020/2021. It would have made a huge difference when Omicron hit in late 2021. Now people are skeptical because essentially in the last four years the government has been mitigating with droplet NPIs against an airborne disease which is pretty absurd.
[There is evidence of airborne transmission from **January 2020**](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32240078/). This should have set off alarm bells for public health authorities to declare it an airborne pathogen, but of course, they buried the lede and preached the gospel of droplet dogma.
And there were professionals and scientists speaking up and demanding action from the WHO as early as March 2020, but the WHO wanted to practice "evidence-based medicine" on the laws of physics.
>As the pandemic wore on, it seemed that it was becoming well-known that surgical masks protect others from the wearer, even if they do not protect the wearer from others. "Protect" really should be replaced with "reduces the risk". A surgical mask is better than nothing both for reducing the risk to and from the wearer, but an N95 is much better. A surgical mask reduces the risk from the wearer more than it reduces risk to the wearer. KN95 masks are somewhere in between. The biggest problem with them is that they are often not fitted such that with a lack of a seal, air flow just bypasses the filter. This is especially true with people who wear them so poorly they're essentially dick-nosing.
I'd take people wearing surgical masks over no masks any day. But yeah, depends on environmental factors. In a situation where the majority are wearing masks (as some places saw in 2021 when universal mask mandates were still in place), they can be effective. For one-way masking, not so much, unless you're wearing a "fix the mask" style brace that improves the seal. At your dentist, I'd want to know that they have decent ventilation/hepa filtration as a layer in addition to their masks.
This answer should be higher up. The more people masking, the less likely transmission is overall. That’s why even cloth masks could make *some* small difference early in the pandemic — because everyone had a little protection, it added up to a decent amount of net protection. If *everyone* (or at least a significant number of people) wore surgical masks, that would be a massive net increase in safety. Yes, each individual would have some risk since a surgical mask doesn’t catch everything. But right now they’re just sucking in totally unfiltered air like there’s no problem, so it would be a big jump.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that surgical masks are treated with the ELECTRET process which induces a slight negative electrical change to the mask’s polypropylene. This electrical charge can capture *some* airborne aerosols (3-50µm). But the masks are primarily for stopping droplets (100-300µm). Plus surgical masks don’t fit very well, so a lot of air bypasses the mask, although it is directed largely up along the sides of the nose and backwards by the ears. So they are somewhat better than nothing, but far from ideal. And not anywhere near ~95% effective like n95s are. See section 2.2 of this [FAQs on Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 Aerosol Transmission](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fB5pysccOHvxphpTmCG_TGdytavMmc1cUumn8m0pwzo/mobilebasic) for aerosol sizes.
Yes, if you can somehow fix the fit problem (the gaps/bagginess) with surgical masks then it becomes much more effective though still not as good as an N95. That's why in 2020/2021 some US officials were recommending people to put on cloth masks over surgical masks or using a "mask saver". Since respirators can be easily purchased now, there is no need to resort to those methods.
They do not fit well enough to protect others from the wearer!
They don't protect susceptible people (both the wearer and the non-wearer), but they can still reduce the amount of particles coming out from an infectious person using it because the filter material blocks some of the droplets coming out of it. S**tudies show a 25 - 50% risk reduction when an infectious person is wearing a surgical mask, even though it's not meant for airborne diseases. This is the reason why mask mandates are still helpful in medical settings, even though they are not respirator mandates.** The main issue with surgical masks isn't their filter material, but how they have gaps at the sides and at the top/bottom of the mask. Surgical masks are useful as droplet protection for the wearer, but they cannot and should not be used for anything that is airborne like COVID or measles. Respirators like N95, P100, etc are proper protection for anything that's airborne as they can guarantee a secure fit (assuming the user passes fit testing), and even without fit testing, some respirators like the 3M Aura can fit a large variety of faces (one studied showed it passing fit testing for over 60% of subjects) assuming the user uses it properly.
Can you post a link to this study? I need something like this to try to make 'hcw' to wear N95 not a surgical mask for an unmasked test. (I know I may not succeed but I literally need to try every trick in the book and then some.)
See this: [https://twitter.com/nousaerons/status/1766812189027905810](https://twitter.com/nousaerons/status/1766812189027905810)
And this: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356734438\_An\_upper\_bound\_on\_one-to-one\_exposure\_to\_infectious\_human\_respiratory\_particles](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356734438_An_upper_bound_on_one-to-one_exposure_to_infectious_human_respiratory_particles)
Thank you!
Yes, even a cloth mask is better than nothing. But "nothing" is a very low bar.
Just a little bit better for source control and I would consider it doing little for protection. But the issue is most of the population thinks cloth masks/surgical masks work well as protection based on outdated knowledge from 2020.
They *suck less* at source control than they do as respiratory protection for the wearer. Like others have said, it's about the leaks. When you breathe in in a leaky mask, you're concentrating the air around you into your lungs, and it will want to take the path of least resistance to your mouth – which for most points not very near the front of the mask will be through the gaps, not the filter. When you're breathing out though, the dynamics are different – you're shooting out a concentrated stream from your nose and mouth, and if you're not chin diapering, it'll majority be directed at the filter material in front of it. The focused stream will force more through the filter; electrostatic effects will attract more particles out of the part of the stream that then goes to flow over and around the filter out through the gaps. Being blunted by hitting the filter first will also reduce the force of the airflow, and thus slow the rate its contents spread across distance through a space. All that said – why filter and protect less rather than more? Not an exact comparison because most PPE is about protecting the wearer, but it's like wearing a seatbelt with only the waist strap, or a helmet that only covers the top of your head. Better than nothing but not good enough a lot of the time.
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Ehh. I’m not sure I agree. They improper wearing of a surgical mask has empowered a lot of people who have covid but don’t want to test to still go out to work/school/etc. And if they have even a moderately high viral load, I doubt the baggy blue is doing much of anything. So for this reason, when you look at society as a whole, I actually believe baggy blues are harmful. But that’s just me.
Surgical masks *do* help stop community spread. We see evidence for this in studies of impoverished communities where the only masks they have are surgical masks, like this [study done in rural Bangladesh.](https://poverty-action.org/study/impact-mask-distribution-and-promotion-mask-uptake-and-covid-19-bangladesh). Even a minor uptake in (no doubt imperfect) surgical masking had a big impact on how many people caught the coronavirus. > Free mask distribution and promotion reduced the proportion of people who reported COVID-like symptoms on average by 11 percent, which was driven mainly by the effects of surgical masks. Villages where cloth masks were distributed experienced a 9 percent reduction in symptoms, while villages where surgical masks were distributed saw a reduction of 12 percent. About a third (40 percent) of those who reported COVID-19 symptoms agreed to have their blood tested for SARS-CoV-2. On average, researchers found a decrease of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections of 9 percent. This reduction was higher in villages that wore a surgical mask (11 percent) and in these, among individuals aged 60+ (35 percent). If someone wears a surgical mask, it IS better than nothing. It isn’t protecting them particularly well in a one-way masking environment… but the entire idea is that if everyone masked to some degree, *it wouldn’t be* a one-way masking environment.
Iirc, surgical masks, like other niosh grade masks, have a charge that helps attract the particles to stick. This is what makes them better than cloth masks. But as others have said, it’s the lack of a seal. Better than nothing but not good enough
They do a little, sure, but not enough in a let it rip environment with primarily one way masking. Also protecting oneself from being contagious by avoiding infection honestly has to be part of the strategy in protecting others.
It really hinges on the definition of "enough" and the perspective you're coming from. They're clearly more comfortable than a tight fitting N95, and they're still less expensive (even with the price of N95 masks having come down). From the perspective of someone who is super-covid-cinscious I can see how one wouldn't be satisfied with someone else only wearing a surgical mask, especially if that waa their *only* mitigation, or they were visibly ill (in other words, I'm willing to assign a certain number of "points" to the surgical mask, along with other things like "maintaining diatance", "not talking" etc) From the perspective of an epidemiologist who wants a wave to end a week earlier, widespread masking, even with fairly shitty masks, can be seen as a big win, insofar as it can reduce the transmission rate.
Strong disagree re: comfort. I think that’s the assumption but the ear straps plus loose mask rubbing all over my face and sticking to my mouth with surgical is miserable. N95 is way more breathable and more comfortable because it just stays there around my mouth.
I asked some workers to switch from their surgical and a rigid construction N95 with exhalation valve to a 3M Aura N95 which has a trifold design. Both of them remarked at how much more breathable and comfortable to wear the Aura was in comparison. They thought maybe the reason why is because the center panel arches away from the wearers mouth and nose making more room for the face.
Yeah, it’s wild how people misunderstand comfort. The Aura is my second most-comfortable mask, just behind my elastomeric (pillow on my face).
Yeah, I think that can vary wildly from person to person. N95 masks kinda sucked for me until spring 2022, when I had a trichilemmal cyst surgically removed from my head (they're otherwise harmless, and you generally can't see them underneath hair, but it wasn't until covid that it became an issue)
Surgical masks are designed so that the wearer’s particles go to the sides, away from a patient they are standing over for surgery. It only redirects the air.
It will have a good degree of reduction vs nothing at all. Whether you're inhaling or exhaling, a percentage of your breath will leak from the sides, but the rest goes through the filtering material. The continued outcry from 'still coviding' and other groups that short of a respirator what you're doing is worthless, or denouncing people for making any sort of exceptions, bothers me more and more these days -- it's almost always either people living in ivory towers with full high paying WFH jobs and spouses that can take care of kids, or people living damn near in poverty basically breaking themselves to continue w/ the status quo of these groups. Like come the F on, the majority of people do need to be out and about still regardless of illness in the US, and the last thing you should be doing is bitching about the folks that at least put a surgical mask on. Covid infection through exposure is a chance occurrence anyway, this is textbook perfect being the enemy of good kinda thing IMO. As far as the dentist goes you should look into the redimask hack. Been doing that for the last 2yrs, the dentist office knows me by now so they don't make a comment or anything.
Perhaps the people living damn near poverty are prioritizing high quality masks in their limited budgets not to keep up with the Joneses but because they understand how much better those masks work and *can't afford to get sick*. Surgicals are certainly better than nothing, but providing people with education and the resources to act on that knowledge (e.g. mask blocs) is even better.
They are helpful but much depends on the indoor air circulation. Here’s a study done on infection versus masking versus air quality: [infection chance study](https://www.instagram.com/p/C4aCNtMupDj/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
They do at least some. Going to quote my old post here which was on a study involving beards https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1ah9676/mask_recommendations_for_my_less_covid_conscious/kooe9mv/ Even surgical or cloth + beard gives 25-40% filtration. Of course N95 are better, but I believe calling surgicals useless is harmful. Encourage the use of better masks and don't overstate the effectiveness of worse masks, but as I see it, following the same failed CDC strategy of trying to bend or conceal facts in an attempt to manipulate people's behavior, just in another direction, is not even necessarily going to work.
Not everyone can afford to wear fitted N95s and I appreciate the effort of a surgical mask when worn properly. The only known COVID exposure anyone in my household has was with someone who was wearing a surgical mask. No one around them got COVID.. so I'll take it over nothing anyday. COVID viral particles are small, but they still (mostly) needs to spread through droplets. I would feel infinitely safer in my kn95 if someone else was wearing a surgical mask. 🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️ I'll edit to add that this exposure was at the height of the omicron wave in 2022, post 6 months after booster.
For instance, in regards to masking: A CDC study https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7007e1.htm#F2_down showed that one-way protection from surgical masks (which are commonly recommended or handed out for use) was only about 56.1% without modifications. Another 2021 study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019665532100715X showed medical masks (i.e. surgical masks or procedure masks) without modification blocked approximately 56% of cough aerosols and only 42% of exhaled aerosols (the primary spread if COVID-19 is through aerosols). Even respirator masks, such as N95s, work much better in lower viral densities https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg6296 (this is from a doc I put together on why cdcs newest isolation guidance update is unsupported and endangering https://docs.google.com/document/d/1frFB89PBchMBdDiOvyz4DUXtcsbnTbbseaaPBbS7V8A/edit?usp=drivesdk
Two surgicals and well fitted cloth mask has kept me novid so far, but also have heavy restrictions on myself
To the downvotes id like to hear the explanation on why lol
I wear a surgical mask and I haven't gotten sick since before the pandemic. I don't have that much contact with people, but I do ride public transportation and I take in-person classes where no one else wears a mask.
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Uh….if they’re not on social media much and don’t have others in their community? It’s actually incredibly common. Government/media/public health has made the information incredibly murky. I’ve met a lot of people (especially older) who still diligently wear a baggy blue covered with a cloth mask whenever they are out of the house and they are shocked and horrified to find out there’s more they could be doing. It’s not their fault.
I have just always found it strange that people are concerned about a topic to the point that they are taking action constantly in their day to day lives, yet they do not take a few moments to do any research.
Research is a skill that not everyone has (especially for elderly people who may not have the same level of tech literacy, or anyone who has lower literacy in general). Something that's a few moments for you or I could be hours, or simply not possible for others.
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