In college during internships...we work with the earlier types of respirator masks
prior to the N95 respirator being invented in the mid 90's.
In grad school, studying the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis, we worked with the earlier type of N95 respirator. Many years later in 2016, after coming out of an almost 2 month coma / life support / quarantine from a deadly airborne infection (caught in France)...every medical person that enter the infectious disease ward
or my room...
They all wore N95 masks. Not one person became infected. In contrast, when I first became ill and collapsed at a different hospital...three individuals became infected and they wore normal surgical masks.
Nobody will ever be able to convince me that wearing N95 respirator face masks does not prevent Covid-19. In contrast, walking around in public especially indoors during this Pandemic...most of the people I see wearing different types of face mask...they are not wearing the face masks properly and wearing the wrong type of face masks.
Therefore, when I hear people say that face masks don't work...what's being wore in public or so as inferior face masks in stores / online...the face masks I typically see are crap (not N95).
- Unfortunately, at the start of the Pandemic...most N95 were being made out of Asia.
Asia then closed the shipments of the N95 masks to their global customers...it produce a
global shortage.
What about typical surgical masks...they can minimize your germs from reaching others but it doesn't prevent 100% of your germs. Yet, they do minimize the viral load so that those around you have a better fighting chance if they become infected.
- By the way, I've only seen maybe a handful of people during the Pandemic wear medical googles. Those that wear them (I do)...understand that the eyes is a route for airborne infection to enter the body.
Ridiculous that a year later, people still do not understand why they became infected after they've been wearing a face mask that's
not a N95.
wrbtrader