Does wearing a face mask help to prevent COVID? Three and a half years after the pandemic began, here's what scientists have learned.

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…

    • Tarquinn2049
      1•8 months ago

      It literally says “does not recommend for the general public” implying it is recommended for people that are actually in need if it, yes that is indeed the post everyone cherry picked from and never read the whole thing. Good find and good job reminding me of those idiots from years ago.

      The video in that link even says they are recommended for medical professionals and other people in close contact with the infected. Literally saying, yes masks do work, but the general public shouldn’t be hoarding them yet, save them for people that need them.

      Opens with “at this time” not recommended for public, yet. Like they will be at some point.

      Nowhere at all does it say masks don’t help. In fact it says the opposite several times… but if you cherry pick parts of individual sentences, not even any one full sentence, you can misconstrue the message, I guess.