In an interview for 60 Minutes, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook posed that question to Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech University professor specializing in aerosol science.

“They are very helpful in reducing the chances that the person will get COVID because it’s reducing the amount of virus that you would inhale from the air around you,” Marr said about masks.

No mask is 100% effective. An N95, for example, is named as such because it is at least 95 percent efficient at blocking airborne particles when used properly. But even if a mask has an 80% efficiency, Marr said, it still offers meaningful protection.

“That greatly reduces the chance that I’m going to become infected,” Marr said.

Marr said research shows that high-quality masks can block particles that are the same size as those carrying the coronavirus. Masks work, Marr explained, as a filter, not as a sieve. Virus particles must weave around the layers of fibers, and as they do so, they may crash into those fibers and become trapped.

Marr likened it to running through a forest of trees. Walk slowly, and the surrounding is easy to navigate. But being forced through a forest at a high speed increases the likelihood of running into a tree.

“Masks, even cloth masks, do something,” she said.

Not that I expect most people to believe it at this point…

  • @TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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    111 year ago

    He could have made a MAGA mask and told his cultists that it was more effective and blessed with holy water or something, and then go on to make piles of cash. At the time, that’s what I was expecting to happen, but sadly I was wrong.

    • @CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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      81 year ago

      There was so much happening around this time. There was a story that didn’t get a lot of runtime about some company that he or someone who was connected to him set up where the federal government purchased masks bought a bunch of boxes from them but never got delivered.

      The internal audit found that they basically the funds were misappropriated. The whole management of funds were so…shady to say the least.