Covid: the importance of masks, and ventilation
An article came out pretty recently documenting the importance of mask wearing in decreasing Covid for mask-wearers and those around them ( see covid mask importance jama2021 in dropbox, or doi: 10.1001/jama.2021.1505 ) Details: -- it is clear that SARS-CoV-2 spreads largely through exhaled respiratory droplets smaller than 10 µm in diameter; these increase with the force of expiration (e.g. coughing, sneezing, singing, exercising, talking loudly), and that exposure increases with proximity to the respiratory droplet exhaler. And that these droplets linger with poor ventilation (leading to recommendations for mask wearing indoors) -- 10 studies were reviewed for this article, documenting important large-scale benefit of mask wearing, without distinguishing the specifics of the type of masks used in the community -- they note that in many of these studies mask wearing occurred when other mitigation strategies ...