Originally posted by Hammer31
Real science tells me a cloth mask for a Virus is like throwing sand at a chainlink fence.
If you think a closth mask will save you from a virus that escaped a level 4 containment and crossed oceans immediately your something special hahahaha
Once again -- you're missing the point of why you wear a mask.
The point of wearing a mask isn't to protect you -- it's to protect everyone around you in case you happen to be an asymptomatic carrier. When you exhale, tiny droplets of moisture from your respiratory system spray out from your nose and mouth, and because of how small they are, they can travel as far as ten feet away from your face. Put on a mask, and that "spray radius" is reduced from ten feet to less than three inches. And if you're infected and contagious but aren't showing any symptoms yet, and you go to work just like any other day because you "feel fine," you wearing a mask anyway could be the only thing that keeps your co-workers from getting infected too.
Want to see this in action? Light a candle, and then blow it out. Easy, right? Now, put on a mask, re-light the candle, and try to blow it out. You can't, because the mask inhibits and redirects the flow of air coming out of your mouth.
There are some studies that show that wearing a mask offers a little bit of protection to the mask-wearer too, but only a little -- it might buy you a smaller chance of getting infected, but if you spend an hour standing next to an infected patient, you're right, that mask isn't going to save you. But again -- that's not the main reason to wear a mask.
Remember, you can be infected and contagious for several days without showing any symptoms, and you'll have no idea that you are. Just ask my co-worker, who is the direct reason I started this thread in the first place. He had no idea he was infected until his mother fell ill and tested positive. He didn't wear a mask, and neither did his mother, and because he felt fine, he came to work even though he was infected and contagious. The only thing that saved me and the rest of my office-mates from catching it too is because he was only at work for two hours that day before leaving early to help his mother. If he'd worked an entire 8-hour shift with us that day, we would have caught it too -- even me, despite the fact that I wear a mask. In the end, he got sick enough that he ended up missing 3 weeks of work before he was finally able to return, and I missed nearly a week of work and a painful chunk of money because of my positive test and precautionary quarantine.
Wear a mask.
