I posted this a while back in the facemask thread and I think it's relevant here. This is whiy it's pointless to wear facemasks with references included...
With surgical masks there are 3 levels of protection (see chart for details). The single use disposable masks that most people are using are not rated and are not surgical masks. Neither are the fabric cloth masks. Even if they were rated, they would be rated by efficiency at 3 microns for bacteria. The average bacterial cell is 1-2 microns in diameter. Streptococcus pneumoniae; a common BP is 0.5 - 1.25 microns in diameter, for which none of the surgical masks are rated. Taken a step further a virus is even smaller than bacterial cells at an average of 500 nm; therefore, surgical masks are not rated for the size of viruses. It should also be noted that surgical masks do not provide protection against airborne diseases.
You may have noticed in the chart that surgical masks are rated for efficiency at 0.1 microns in relation to particulate matter. Before you go saying bacteria is larger than 0.1 microns; particulate matter is not the same as bacteria and viruses. Particulate matter is defined as aerosols - a solid or liquid suspended in a gas.
So yes, surgical masks will block the aerosol particles; for instance he droplets formed when someone sneezes, but it won't necessarily block pathogens contained within those droplets once they've made contact with the mask. Remember, surgical masks are rated at 3 microns for bacterial/pathogen filtration. Also remember that what people are typically wearing are not surgical masks. What this translates to is that once any particulate matter comes into contact with the mask, a number of pathogens can still be inhaled through the mask and infect the mask wearer
In everyday life; and I don't mean to be crass, but I have literally seen people doing what appear to be digging in their butthole then directly after touch all over their face and mask. People come into contact with any number of contaminated surfaces giving multiple chances to be infected with a disease or pathogen. And as I've briefly explained, the surgical masks are not going to protect a person from infection if a pathogen makes contact with their mask; i.e. block it from entering the body.
So you then may ask why do doctors wear the surgical masks during surgery? It is because of the job they were designed to do. As in the beginning of COVID it was promoted that wearing a mask would protect others from you if you were unknowingly infected. This is indeed the case and exactly what surgical masks were designed for in use during surgery. The mask will provide a physical barrier against the aerosols produced when breathing, but not necessarily any pathogens contained within. It protects the any exposed wounds on the patient and the doctor's mouth/nose from direct contact with an aerosol and lessens the chance of spreading an infectious disease. Again that is not to say the pathogen will not escape the mask; it still could through the force of breathing. What would you surmise would be the most likely outcome once that aerosol comes into contact with the mask. Any pathogens contained within being breathed in by the mask wearer or being forced out to come in contact with someone else? In a surgical setting, by blocking aerosols it's less likely for the surgeon to infect the patient when wearing a mask. Hence the practice, to protect the patient.
In plain English what this says is that surgical masks do not protect the wearer from infection.
And not to make too much of an assumption, but I have asked some who are still masking why. The answer from them has been so they do not get sick. I can somewhat extrapolate from this that others who are still masking are doing so for the same reason.
References:
CFR 42 Chapter I Subchapter G
ASTM Method F2299
ASTM Method F2101
ASTM Method F1862
NIOSH-Approved Particulate Filtering Facepiece Respirators
CDC.gov
To also add to this discussion I want to note that the masks that have been used by the general public don't really protect people from you as much as you would think. Once a person breathed a virus into the mask it will still survive long enough to become dislodged, airborne and come into contact with someone else.
Another thing I want to add is when mask mandated were first put into effect I said it would make things worse. I predicted that this would facilitate a new, more infectious strand becoming predominant. My reasoning was that the more infectious mutations would be the ones that would survive to make it past the mask barrier to infect people. Then shortly after we had Omicron.
The last piece that I want to add is that I thought all the "precautions" such as mask mandates were going to prolong the pandemic. Everything that was instated from lockdowns to masks prolonged the pandemic. And really anything they did to "slow" the spread was a fruitless effort. COVID is basically a cousin to the common cold virus. Nothing that was done was going to stop to spread. All it accomplished was allow more time for the virus to mutate again & again to avoid the barriers the mandates tried to put in place. It may be a cold hearted thing to say, but the best course of action would have been to let the initial strand spread and let it burn itself out. That may or may not have caused more deaths, but it would have been over sooner. Kind of like ripping the band-aid off. Eventually is did burn itself out, but it took longer because of all the mandates.
One final thought that is beyond the facemask thing; I want to pose this about the vaccine. The common cold is a coronavirus, has been around forever and is in the same family as COVID19. In all this time there has never been a vaccine/cure for the common cold which they have been working with for decades. But a COVID19 vaccine was pumped out in less than a year. If they couldn't cure the common cold (as the saying goes) how could they create a a COVID19 vaccine so quickly. That suggests one of two things... 1. The vaccine is total BS or 2. A vaccine for the common cold could/has been produced but is being withheld from the public. *I've seen this in the cure for cancer; there's many potential true cures for cancer that could virtually eradicate a particular form. But it's buried because there's more money in the treatment than the cure.* Anyway, whichever the case of the COVID vaccine; not that I had much to begin with because of what I've seen from the inside, it gives me ZERO faith in the so called "experts" of the medical community. There's always an agenda that doesn't involve what best for the populist.