Welcome again to everybody! This is your friendly reminder, growling at the United States from Orbit is praxis Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
We have a Matrix homeserver at genzedong.xyz. See this thread for information about our Matrix space.
Short reading list for new MLs here. To find theory, try marxists.org, Anna’s Archive, libgen, or Sci-Hub (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try the Wayback Machine.
Mostly the blue standard ones or the medical mask. Only got Covid a couple of months ago when it was largely deemed ‘gone’ over here (it never left, of course).
I’m sure you’re probably aware that the surgical ones don’t protect you much, they’re mostly a cheap and easy way to keep asymptomatic infected people from spreading the disease to others. If everyone was doing surgicals, it’d be great. But if you’re the only one who masks, they don’t filter for your too well.
N95s and FFP2s have a long history of development, they’ve been protecting workers from dangerous dusts for decades, and the science of how they work is really solid. Again, please ask for my sources if you’re interested.
deleted by creator
Just wear one properly fitted N95 or equivalent mask. It’ll cut your infection risk down to nearly nil if it fits and is worn properly.
NGL the data is really confusing, since there’s no much research out there and it’s really hard to structure a perfect study during a deadly pandemic. But generally N95s will reduce your risk by 70% or more, while surgicals will reduce it by less than 30%. If you make sure to do a fit test, a N95 is going to protect well above 90%. The main issue with N95 failure is with leakage, if your mask leaks then it will be much less effective.
deleted by creator
Neither of those work. You need a rated mask. The US standard is N95 - Filters 99.95% of particles of I think 2.5 microns, and considerably more above and below that number. The KN95 standard I believe is Korean and has a similar filtration level. I don’t know what the equivalent EU standard is.
But medical masks only filter about 40% of the material we’re worried about, and only if they fit right which they mostly don’t.