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…
Yes, that’s literally what I’m saying. The mask prevented me from getting any disease and then got my immune system weakened because of that
But that isn’t what they said though. They’re saying that your immune system likely wasn’t weakened, you’re just noticing the same level of sickness you’d have gotten pre-covid more now since you were used to the years of not getting sick at all.
Not really, I barely got sick and usually only for about a day. Then I got sick more frequently and for like 3
It’s just as easy as the immune system not being able to update itself to evolved pathogens due to underexposure
I mean, maybe?
Wouldn’t put any stock into that without a doctor’s opinion though.