Imagine this. You're standing outside of a closed door. Inside is a large room teeming with around 100 people, all with full-blown Covid. They are coughing, wheezing, running high fevers, in visibly bad condition. You have to enter and criss-cross the room, zig-zagging from one side to the other, in a slow, measured pace. At each turn, you have to stop and answer a few questions on a notepad, set it down, then cross back the other way. The entire process will take roughly 15-20 minutes. Once you've completed all the tasks and reach the far end of the room, there is another door that you can exit through.
In front of you on a table is a single, unused medical mask.
You have the option to put this on and wear the mask the entire time. Or, you can choose to ignore it, leave it on the table and enter the room without a mask.
Which do you choose?
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I don't enter the room. If I do, I'm equally as protected putting a handkerchief over my face.
Given what Stanford and others have found, walking through that room with that surgical mask on gives me 3% to 0% protection. It will protect me if someone sneezes. That's it. All of their exhalation (the aerosols) I will still breathe in and all of it likewise will escape through their masks.