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It always baffled me that the US government had a program to send everyone free COVID tests, but they didn’t have a program to send everyone free N95 masks, so we ended up wearing random materials that were far less effective.

With all of the mandates to wear a mask everywhere I at least would have liked to wear one that worked well. You would have thought if they could produce 6 free tests per household per month, they could produce 6 free N95 masks per household per month.

They did have that program:

https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1483831305448173578

I personally received free masks. However, it was too late.

It was mostly early COVID when the masks were most needed and not available. Even the strategic stockpile essentially ran out after distributing them to vital areas. By the time they had enough to give them away, everyone had multiple masks of various qualities.

I didn't even realize they did that, interesting. Sadly, two years late and not even nearly enough if it was on time.

Kinda telling and depressing that everyone was ordering random knockoffs of varying quality from overseas, because we couldn't seem to produce enough domestically.

How would one even work toward positive results with leadership doing things like this? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-white-house-...
That’s because the U.S. population was strongly against masks. In the beginning the US public was strongly in favor of the vaccines. In fact the complaints were around the delay in vaccine availability and the way the rich and powerful could access them earlier.

It was only in late 2021 where certain people realized vaccine skepticism was lucrative and the Republicans needed something to rile up their base for the upcoming elections did vaccine skepticism become a thing.

You mixed up parties a bit.

Democrats were criticising Trump for rushing the vaccine, and flaming vaccine scepticism, helped by mainstream media.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2671R8/ September 17, 20201

Democrat Biden warns against rushing out coronavirus vaccine, says Trump cannot be trusted

It’s truly insane that vaccine deniers are now voting for Trump, when he was the one to take credit for them in the first place (and perhaps with some small justification!)
You know what else happened in late 2021? Vaccine mandates in the US (and Canada).

In the US, there were two - the first, via OSHA, affected all employers with > 100 employees. Employees would need to be vaccinated or tested weekly and required to wear a mask. This was overturned by the Supreme Court.

The second, via CMMS required vaccinations for all health care employees if Medicare or Medicaid money is involved. SCOTUS allowed that one.

On any issue some percent of the population will be contrarian. This is why there's much less resistance if policies are heavily encouraged instead of trying to punish dissenters. At the point where x issue becomes part of the culture war concensus becomes impossible.
> It was only in late 2021 where certain people realized vaccine skepticism was lucrative and the Republicans needed something to rile up their base for the upcoming elections did vaccine skepticism become a thing.

This is revisionist history. I remember many Democrats being staunchly anti-"Trump's rushed vaccine" and it was only when their party came into power did they turn into human pincushions nearly overnight, "believing in science" and not being able to get enough jabs into them.

The vaccines, of course, were one and the same.

Maybe it has something to do with the the medical factors in government, like Dr Fauci telling us not to wear masks. It maybe it was all if the prior research that shows that masks fit the last person were mostly ineffective.
A) they did have that program eventually

B) money doesn’t magically turn into materials and finished goods. Someone had to make masks to distribute and they had to get their raw materials from somewhere right when the supply chain was disrupted.

N95s were in short supply for quite a while, and a result from this work is that cloth masks outperformed surgical and KN95s. People made pretty good cloth masks, so unless real N95s were distributed, distributing masks could have been a wash I think.

I’m not surprised that cloth beat surgical, but beating KN95 is kind of a shock. Of course, I’m sure there was quite a bit of variance in cloth mask quality. I wonder if anyone has done specifically a study on the home made cloth masks.

Because there was a massive shortage and they were being rationed for healthcare workers? Am I the only one that remembers collection drives for masks for doctors and nurses?
Problem is probably that the masks are supposed to be single-use when used as protection and you're meant to replace them even when moving between different places. You're also not meant to wear them for extended periods of time because they supposedly get less effective when they get wet from the moisture of the air you exhale. They also aren't washable so you would need to dispose of them after use.
The other baffling thing was how long it took cheap Covid antigen tests to reach the US market. In Europe, 1 Euro antigen tests were widely available, while in the US, they could easily cost more than $10 and were difficult to find.

At 1 Euro a test, you could easily test yourself every morning before heading to work or school.

There weren’t nearly enough of those to go around. Even medical staff had trouble procuring these.
I guess Big Pharma was better at using lobbying dollars than Big Mask.
> the inexpensive “duckbill” N95 came out on top,

Inexpensive is not a word I'd use to describe a mask you need multiple of in a week and monthly replacements of thereafter. For a virus that affects the entire world, "developing" and "developed", it's not an easy sell.

But this rather harmless inference could've been promoted instead of the fake initial narrative of "masks are not that useful, save them for medical staff" that happened early on in the pandemic. Policymakers should never be gatekeeping information and acting like the public is too dumb to solve resulting supply-side issues.

I've been wearing the same N95 duckbill for about 3 years now. It is getting a bit dirty but structurally it's fine. I don't wear it every day though, only in what I deem high-risk situations. Its construction is much more robust than the around-the-ears N95s.

I think one could reasonably stretch out a box of 20 duckbills for a whole year even if worn daily. They are about $1 each. While I could see that there would be places that $20/year would be too much, I don't think money is the barrier here. People just don't like wearing masks (especially respirators, which are bulkier) for many reasons.

You really should be replacing them as directed by the manufacturer. They're not effective after prolonged use.
[flagged]
Discussed recently (93 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40565561
Thanks for that. Seems that I've missed it. I suppose this one can be removed.
@Dang the thread linked seems to be wrongly [Flagged]?
Articles sometimes are flagged for poor or inflammatory content, but often it’s the uncivil squabbles that erupt in the comments for completely reasonable but somehow polarizing articles that triggers flagging. I think it’s seen as a regrettable cost of elevating civil discourse. Dang often appears early in such threads “don’t make me turn this car around”-ing, but his warnings are seldom heeded.
This is more and more being abused to kill discussions people don't like.

Seems like a vulnerability in the system.

This is an interesting comparison, as there was a NIOSH study in late 2020 (released in 2021)[1] that used equipment to measure procedure masks, surgical masks, proper disposable respirators (with exhalation valves, since that was the main focus of the study) and cloth face coverings and T-shirt fabric (latter two more representative of common DIY masks).

These were sealed shut onto the test equipment using wax (ie: perfect fitment, so best case scenario). They found a much higher penetration through the materials per se for cloth coverings and procedure masks.

> Particle penetration through the surgical mask ranged from 2% to 17%. Procedure masks were most variable and ranged from 1% to 85%

> For the six cloth face coverings, the submicron particle penetration ranged from 24% to 92%. For the two types of fabric from cotton t-shirts, submicron particle penetration ranged from 45% to 91%. Although this sample size was small, these penetration percentages for the cloth face coverings and fabric from cotton t-shirts are comparable to the 40% to 90% penetration found by previous NIOSH testing of cloth face coverings and fabrics.

For the respirators with exhalation valves their finding was the particle penetration was <1% to 55% without any additional mitigation and under 5% when using the ECG pad mitigation strategy tested. Relevant since a common earlier critique (perhaps assumption) of valved respirators was they weren't as decent as even common masks for non-wearers.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2021-107/pdfs/2021-107.pdf

Studies with different conclusions:

Wearing face masks as a potential source for inhalation and oral uptake of inanimate toxins – A scoping review https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014765132...

Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

Possible toxicity of chronic carbon dioxide exposure associated with face mask use, particularly in pregnant women, children and adolescents – A scoping review https://www.cell.com/heliyon/pdf/S2405-8440(23)01324-5.pdf

More importantly, how’s it block the inhalation of covid?
Why more importantly? For an airborne pandemic with very a long incubation period (if memory serves me right up to 2-3 weeks), lack of symptoms in many cases, preventing the spread is the number one priority on the level of a city/local/central government.

Quarantines and lockdowns are good old tested ways, but infeasible for prolonged periods of time. Having everyone wear a mask and drastically reduce the spread was such a no brainer I never understood all the panic around it.

It's not the sort of membrane that only works when air is flowing in one direction. It won't protect you from getting goober in your eyes, but when it comes to inhalation, N95 material is great.

It also helps that N95 masks tend to have better nosewires for fit, and specify real head straps, which makes them practically more dependable than some masks like most KF94s.

LOL did you mean, "more selfishly"?

Not trying to be snarky, tbh that is more important to me personally, too... but probably not in the broader sense...

FWIW, now that N95 masks aren't hard to get, I bought some a few months ago and holy crap they're so much better than the KN95s I had to use during COVID. I basically went maskless at times because the KN95 mask just leaked so much that I couldn't wear them. No matter how well I adjusted the metal nose bar, air leaked up when I breathed and it "tickled" my eyes so much I just stopped wearing them. I have since stockpiled a few hundred 3M N95s just in case.
Most masks I used, my glasses would steam up from the amount of leakage.

Edit: With all the statistics that were bandied around in that time, I wonder how many accidents were caused by steamed-up glasses due to leaky masks.

The 3M "Aura" masks with their origami-like folds are really good in terms of fit and comfort. I switched to them also when sanding wood.
About 3 to 4 years too late but cool to read nonetheless.
The people who weren't convinced of "a good mask reduces spread of a respiratory illness" 3-4 years ago won't be convinced by this either.

It's like when Bill Nye debated creationist Ken Ham; when asked what would convince them they're wrong, Nye said "evidence" and Ham said "nothing".

Before you go drinking the kool-aid here, read the sponsoring list. Then go back and read peer reviewed studies on masks that occurred before the COVID pandemic. Or read the disclaimers on the masks. Bottom line, masks, even N95, offer limited mitigation. Numerous studies have demonstrated that. As for the vaccine, personally I know more people that died of vaccine side effects than died of COVID. In fact, I know exactly one person that was deemed a COVID death, despite dying of a hospital acquired staph infection. The government paid more for COVID deaths than dying with COVID. If you spent any time dealing with hospitals during the pandemic, the abuse was obvious. And since it's an election year, it's time to round the sheep up and scare them to death once again. Having lived through numerous pandemics down through the year and seeing how the sheep behavior was stimulated during COVID, my suggestion is that Fauci and the rest of his fascist cabal spend the rest of their lives rotting in jail, especially now that he has essentially admitted that he was making it up as he went along AND that the lab leak theory has gained more traction. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Never again.
In females :D (check study)
The study says it had 44 volunteers, 43% of whom were female.
Yes because men breath differently then women. {eye roll}
Here's how the headline should read:

"The right mask, worn properly, can do a nearly perfect job of blocking COVID-19"

It's incredible to me that after all this, we still write and publish declarative headlines and articles like this.

The article addresses fit.

> Even without giving participants fit tests or training on how to wear masks correctly, all masks significantly reduced the amount of virus escaping into the air.

Including interesting results around cloth masks fitting better than surgical/KN95 masks:

> Cloth masks also outperformed both KN95 and surgical masks. Milton theorizes that cloth masks with greater coverage, wrap around the face and give a better seal than either KN95 or surgical masks. With cloth mask filters, flow resistance is also lower, allowing breath to pass through the filter and not leak out the sides of the mask.