South African Covid-19 News and Discussions 2

[rietrot]

Those pictures don't represent reality at all. The bottom one would be what your breath looks like under a microscope. With a mask on, the majority of those droplets would be absorbed by the mask.

The point of the blowing test is to see how well the mask prevents the directional flow of air/droplets.
Without a mask, if you blow in a certain direction, your breath will travel several meters.
With a mask (if it works as it should, which is the whole purpose of the test) your breath should only travel a few centimeters, since the mask is blocking the flow.
With a good mask on you should be unable to blow out a candle.
And if a mask can block air it sure as hell can block droplets.

No ****. Obviously you don't breath out a bucket load of water at a time. I thought people would be intelligent enough to scale it down by themselves.

 

[ViciousClone]

Putting your hand in front of your face and blowing will give you a pretty good idea of how well your mask is working (as far as blocking the airflow goes).

Feck to be more sure, light a candle and try and blow it out 30cm away.

 

[Paulsie]

Feck to be more sure, light a candle and try and blow it out 30cm away.

And see how much virus gets through the mask and incenerates on the candle..

 

[Polymathic]

Just so everybody knows masks humidify the air around your mouth and nose , making it more likely the viral particles will sink and less likely to be aerosolized.

 

[pinball wizard]

Why wouldn't anyone wear a mask? Not wearing one is like being an anti-vaxxer. It marks you out as a complete and utter dinkbag.

 

[LCBXX]

Just so everybody knows masks humidify the air around your mouth and nose , making it more likely the viral particles will sink and less likely to be aerosolized.

Why wouldn't anyone wear a mask? Not wearing one is like being an anti-vaxxer. It marks you out as a complete and utter dinkbag.

It's all pretend anyway. Many currently walk around with the sniffles behind their masks already. There's no way those people are avoiding catching COVID-19; it's just a matter of time.

 

[pinball wizard]

It's all pretend anyway. Many currently walk around with the sniffles behind their masks already. There's no way those people are avoiding catching COVID-19; it's just a matter of time.

Hong Kong with it's 97% adherence to mask wearing begs to differ.

 

[tetrasect]

Just so everybody knows masks humidify the air around your mouth and nose , making it more likely the viral particles will sink and less likely to be aerosolized.

Close, but not exactly... That humidity is the droplets/particles sticking to the mask instead of remaining in the air.

 

[LCBXX]

Hong Kong with it's 97% adherence to mask wearing begs to differ.

Read my post again. No amount of mask-wearing is going to save you if you still manage to catch a cold because you have poor hand-to-face discipline.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

This "masks are useless because the holes are bigger than the virus" are people misunderstanding the point.

An airborne virus is transported by the tiny aerosols you exhale, these include water, mucus, skin cells, the virus etc and are orders of magnitude larger than the individual virus cells. We don't even know if COVID is airborne yet, it likely is but the masks were introduced to stop the droplets people spew when coughing or sneezing which it is definitely spread by.

A mask with holes small enough to block an actual virus cell would be physically impossible to breathe through. Even surgical and N95 masks could not stop individual viruses, they have no need to however as this does not happen.

 

[tetrasect]

It's all pretend anyway. Many currently walk around with the sniffles behind their masks already. There's no way those people are avoiding catching COVID-19; it's just a matter of time.

Lol if that's the case then the problem is them spreading it, not catching it...

 

[LCBXX]

Are there still people who believe that wearing a mask will prevent them from catching SARS-COV-2?

 

[tetrasect]

This "masks are useless because the holes are bigger than the virus" are people misunderstanding the point.

An airborne virus is transported by the tiny aerosols you exhale, these include water, mucus, skin cells, the virus etc and are orders of magnitude larger than the individual virus cells. We don't even know if COVID is airborne yet, it likely is but the masks were introduced to stop the droplets people spew when coughing or sneezing which it is definitely spread by.

A mask with holes small enough to block an actual virus cell would be physically impossible to breathe through. Even surgical and N95 masks could not stop individual viruses, they have no need to however as this does not happen.

Agreed, except that we do know that it is airborne. Multiple studies have shown that even just breathing releases tens (or hundreds, can't remember) of thousands of virus particles every minute which can stay in the air for up to 20 minutes. We also know that the virus survives for an extraordinarily long time outside the human body. We really don't need more evidence.

Influenza is airborne and it survives for only a fraction of time outside the human body compared to Corona.

 

[LCBXX]

Lol if that's the case then the problem is them spreading it, not catching it...

Are there still people who believe that wearing a mask will prevent them from catching SARS-COV-2?

 

[tetrasect]

Are there still people who believe that wearing a mask will prevent them from catching SARS-COV-2?

Yes, as they should. Obviously it depends on the situation. It's not a fail-safe.

EDIT: I'm talking if other people also wear masks. Obviously if you are surrounded by people who aren't wearing masks you are pretty screwed. It's still better than nothing though.

 

[noxibox]

Those pictures don't represent reality at all. The bottom one would be what your breath looks like under a microscope. With a mask on, the majority of those droplets would be absorbed by the mask.

Some percentage of vapour is going to be stopped. It's not going to be the majority.

With a good mask on you should be unable to blow out a candle.

That would indicate a significant impairment of airflow. That'll certainly cause problems for breathing.

And if a mask can block air it sure as hell can block droplets.

Blocking air is one of the things they find drastically reduces tolerability. Airflow is a poor test, because it is not linearly correlated with droplet blocking. Blocking airflow goes up much faster.

Read my post again. No amount of mask-wearing is going to save you if you still manage to catch a cold because you have poor hand-to-face discipline.

And masks increase the likelihood of touching the face for the majority of people. Easily observed in any inddor public area. And tallies with what research finds regarding mask comfort issues.

 

[noxibox]

Agreed, except that we do know that it is airborne. Multiple studies have shown that even just breathing releases tens (or hundreds, can't remember) of thousands of virus particles every minute which can stay in the air for up to 20 minutes. We also know that the virus survives for an extraordinarily long time outside the human body. We really don't need more evidence.

Influenza is airborne and it survives for only a fraction of time outside the human body compared to Corona.

Studies have also shown that moving air mitigates this. But just having virus particles floating around doesn't mean they can cause an infection. Influenza is a good example of being similarly infectious, but still mostly through droplets except in cases where you concentrate the smaller droplets in an area.

The virus doesn't survive an extraordinarily long time. It's survival time is quite ordinary.

 

[Geoff.D]

Close, but not exactly... That humidity is the droplets/particles sticking to the mask instead of remaining in the air.

So with the cloth masks, it means that after a trip to the shops, or out in public, you get home and wash the mask straight away, helping to remove whatever might have been on the mask. And just to re-iterate for those still talking crap on the forum, wearing a mask is NOT about protecting YOU from getting it, but it is about YOU keeping lots of YOUR bugs to yourself as much as possible. So it does not matter then whether you have the "sniffles" or not, wearing a mask reduces the probability the YOU will infect someone else when you are in an infectious stage for Covid AND any other airborne virus such as the "flu" or a "cold".

 

[noxibox]

?? Does next to nothing to stop any particles coming in or out, might as well not wear it.

The point is to comply with the rules in a manner that is tolerable to the wearer.

Well it wouldn't surprise me at this point to see people not understand the effectiveness of a condom with holes in it as a barrier to infection and transmission.

Well masks already have holes in them. Typical cloth masks are going to let through a good deal of vapour and there is no standard.

Maybe, but there have been enough studies to show the effectiveness of different materials. Doesn't take much to see that any number of layers is better than that, whatever reduces the amount of droplets you transmit and inhale.

And who is wearing the masks used in those studies? 12-16 layers of cloth?

If you believe a mask provides you with protection you should not be worrying about what other people are wearing.

Even an FFP2/N95 mask lets out a huge amount of vapour when worn loosely. And for those who go on about vapour floating around for 20 minutes a mask that allows vapour out, no matter whether straight forward or around the sides, the result is the same, a room full of floating viruses.

I know masks actually increase the risk of infection to my children and other family members, because having an itchy, hot, uncomfortable thing on their face encourages them to fiddle with the mask and touch their face. From observation I can see many other people have the same problem.

 

[noxibox]

Feck to be more sure, light a candle and try and blow it out 30cm away.

If I can then I'll consider my mask to be working as I intend it to.