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…

  • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The lock downs were always going to be a failure. Stay-at-home measures should have been last resort due to harmful effects (the economic harms, the educational harms, the harms to access to healthcare, the harms to societal wellbeing … just the way we all function … and especially mental health).

    We destroyed and entire generation with lockdowns. Gen Z will never recover from that.

    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lol. Meanwhile, in places with functional, proper lockdowns, you know what happened? No-one died of covid. (Well, 7 out of 2 million).

      And then you know what they did? Because there was no covid anywhere around, there were (almost) no restrictions. And no-one died of covid for all of 2021 (actually zero).

      People could walk around, free of worry, fear and disease. Because the lockdowns worked, and worked well - when they were actually done.

      Now, half-assing things… That was basically the worst of both worlds. And if there is one thing the USA excels at, it’s half-assing things.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Wide spread lockdowns were an anti-science position that politicians went with to appear to be acting.

      • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Lol. “Anti-science”

        The science is super simple.

        Virus is transmitted person to person.

        If person is not near other person, virus doesn’t get transmitted.

        What about that is “anti-science”?

        Or, is your complaint actually “my local government leaders did things badly but because I worship team red, I have to blame evil science”?

        • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          The science for responding to something like covid wasn’t complete lockdown. It was isolating those at risk, quarantine the infected, do contact tracing, and limit large crowds of people.

          • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Think Mcfly, think.

            How do you quarantine the infected if you can’t identify the infected until they show symptoms?

            You can’t science good.

      • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It was the worst public safety decision I have witnessed in the United States. It made a bad situation worse.