From factcheck. I'll link to the article which you can read at your leisure. In the meantime I'll highlight certain passages in bold and comment on them.
A YouTube video and social media posts claim a man blowing vape smoke through various face masks shows that they do not help prevent the spread of coronavirus. This is false; experts agree that while the virus itself is small enough to fit through mask fibers -- as is vape smoke -- masks do help...
factcheck.afp.com
Dr John O’Horo, associate professor of medicine and an infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic, said the conclusions the man in the video draws are “very, very questionable,” and “what’s being shown there isn’t really representative of the way that masks offer protection for the wearer or for those around the wearer.”
In a phone interview, O’Horo explained: “The idea that just seeing some particulates going through a mask negates their effectiveness is just a misunderstanding of how masks work. The masks do allow air and small particles to pass through. That’s how we can still breathe with them on, but what they do is they take a lot of the energy out so it doesn’t travel as far.”
Now that makes sense doesn't it? Nobody's claiming that masks stop air and smaller particles altogether, they don't. After the first lockdown was eased over here in the UK then most places were allowed to reopen but with safeguards. One of those was no raucous get togethers, no karaokes or singing in pubs. The reason? The amount of particles released when singing/shouting is far more than when people talk normally. Again, makes sense doesn't it? Sneezing also although obviously there's nothing anyone can do to stop that.
Christopher Sulmonte, project administrator at the Johns Hopkins Biocontainment Unit, made a similar point.
“You’ll notice that those vapors… are being hindered -- when he breathes out, they’re not going out as far, but also they’re going backwards, which is exactly conceptually what we’re trying to do with the masks,” he said by telephone.
Sulmonte criticized the video for its attempt “to create an equivalency between how SARS-CoV-2 is spread through respiratory droplets to the movement of gaseous particles.”
Respiratory droplets are much larger, and that is the main way Covid-19 is spread, he said, adding that while “there is still some concern with aerosol spread of the virus,” masks still help, as demonstrated by the smoke moving sideways and backwards in the video, rather than forward.
Now, don't really have much to add to this. Sure, where it comes to smaller particles masks aren't going to stop them but the reduction of distance in which they spread seems again, fairly obvious. Also, they are effective in curbing larger droplets as described. Using gaseous particles doesn't encapsulate anything akin to the whole picture.
Dr Shelley Payne, a molecular biosciences professor and head of the University of Texas at Austin’s center for infectious disease, agreed via email that masks also help prevent aerosol transmission. “Much of the leakage of aerosols shown in the video is at the edges of the mask. There is less from the front of the mask, reducing exposure to a person you are facing and talking to.”
So again, what doesn't make sense about this? Seems perfectly reasonable doesn't it?
Dr Sam Hogue, the interim head of the Texas A&M UniversityDepartment of Primary Care and Population Health, said in an email: “Viruses are tiny and could easily pass through masks. However, the mucous environment in which they are embedded, not so much.
“I am disappointed that a licensed physician would use smoke as an equivalent comparison,” said Hogue, although as noted above, Noel’s license has expired.
So, what's to differ with here? Again, nobody is saying that masks stop smaller particles altogether, they don't, but once again, the use of smoke in that test was an invalid comparison to respiratory droplets anyway.
There's more but that should be enough to be going on with for now. There's also this:
In a video clip being shared on Facebook, a retired anesthesiologist who rails against mask wearing to protect against C
www.politifact.com
So, I'm going with the experts on this because they make absolute sense and have dismantled Noel's experiment all ends up as far as I'm concerned.
Now, not sure how I've been insulting people left, right and center on here, it's not like I go around calling people 'tards' and whatnot with free abandon so that's rather an exaggeration on your part I would say.
