You Ask, I Answer: Wearing a Mask When No One Else Does?

In today's episode, a question from my third newsletter, the one that I wish would go away. Hasn't, my uh lunchtime pandemic newsletter. Uh Joe wrote in. What's the benefit of wearing a mask when no one else around you is. What's the benefit of wearing a coat if you're cold?

Whether or not anyone else is wearing a coat. Right. Airborne pathogens, not just COVID, but flu, the common cold, monkeypox, mold, spores, smoke, you name it, are by definition in the environment around you. Wearing a mask helps to isolate you somewhat from that environment. And the better a mask you wear, the more isolated you are, the more protected you are from that environment.

So if you put on a cloth mask, you know, it has about like 30-ish percent efficiency. That reduces the amount of particles you take in by about 30%. We know with the Omicron variants that that's not good enough anymore. Surgical mask does about 55%, 55 to 70%. Um95 masks uh reduce the and if you're not familiar with them.

Look like these, you know, you got the straps, the nose piece, you fit it over like this, and you wear it like this. These will get you 95% of the way there. What an N95 mask does is it reduces 95% of the particles that you're breathing in that are 0.3 microns or better. So if you're breathing in 95% less stuff, including living viral fragments, you are reducing the probability that you catch any airborne disease. It doesn't matter whether or not everyone else is around you is is um wearing a mask.

Obviously, if everyone around you is wearing a mask, they are filtering their own air to some degree, and they're reducing the total amount of pathogens in the air. So what you have to do is where the the fewer and fewer masks are being worn around you, the more the the better your mask has to be to counter that. So that was an N95. This is an N99. So this reduces 99% of the particles that you're breathing in.

And then I think my other ones upstairs. Um a P100 mask reduces 99.97% of the particles in the air around you that you breathe in. That's really good. That's really, really good. That is, you know, um that will handle pretty much anything.

So I was uh in Montenegro recently, and the I was I spent 21 hours door to door traveling in cars, planes, uh all sorts of stuff, you know, hanging out in airports, surrounded by people. 99% of them did not have masks on. I did. After I tested every other day after I got home, four tests in a row, negative on for COVID. I didn't catch any other conference crud, any of the other cop, you know, colds and coughs and things.

Why? Because the mask I was wearing was good enough to filter out everything, you know, substantially harmful to me. That's the value. It doesn't matter what the people around you are doing. It's better if they're wearing masks, but if your mask is good enough, it doesn't matter, right?

You're screening out 99.97% of the junk that could be infecting you or causing you physical harm. About the only thing those masks really don't filter out are gases, right? So if you are breathing in like radon gas, that's still gonna hurt you no matter what. Um there's there's no fixing that. Um if you're breathing in like cyanide gas, yeah, that's still gonna kill you.

But anything that is a particle, which includes viruses, includes stuff people are coughing uh out and and sneezing out all the time, you're gonna get that filtered out. So should you still wear a mask? Yeah, if you don't want to be breathing that crap in, and again, it's not just COVID. That's the thing, the part that I think drives me up a wall, is that people think it's you know, you're you know, the the pandemic is is somewhat receding for the moment. So we don't have to wear masks.

Well, I mean, that's fine, that's your personal choice. But the reality is you have mold, you have spores, you have pollen. This time of year is, you know, it's it's summer as I record this. You know, this the atmosphere is green outside, yellowish green from all the pollen. Um, you have what five, no, twenty-five strains of influenza.

You have four other types of coronaviruses, which are common colds. You have still have COVID and stuff. When you wear a mask, particularly in like a grocery store or any other crowded indoor place, you ain't getting any of that. You're not bringing in any of those harmful things. Whether or not there's a vaccine for it, whether or not uh it is life-threatening, it's a convenience thing, right?

And the uh the irony is the better the mask is, a, the more expensive it is, but B, the more comfortable it is. My P100 masks are much, much more comfortable than N95s. They don't sit on or near my nose. There's a lot of room to breathe. If you want to go crazy, you could have like a powered air purifying respiratory, have like the full faceplate and stuff.

Um there might come a day when we need that. Um, but for right now, you don't need that. Uh if you want to wear the the safest mask possible, particularly if you you or someone you live with is immune compromised, wear a P100 mask. And you'll be surprised at just how comfortable it is, how long you can wear them. I had my P100 on on the plane, and I was able to sleep in it.

Right? It was that comfortable. So that's the answer to that question. Uh yes, there is benefit to wearing a mask, regardless of what the other people are doing around you, right? There's benefit to wearing something that filters out the surrounding air.

If it's cigarette smoke or weed or you know, whatever, wildfires. I mean, I've been carrying a mask with me like eight years. Um every time I go to the west coast in America, it's something's on fire. So they and I remember as at this one conference, went out for about an hour outside of my hotel. I came back in, and my normally white mask had just started to turn a little bit gray from the wildfire smoke.

These masks are super handy. In fact, now is the best time to stock up on like N95 masks because there's a ton of supply and a whole bunch of people are like, well, we're done wearing masks. Like now you actually get them at a at a pretty decent bargain, so stock up. Anyway, good question. Thanks for asking.

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