It sort of says itself: if you put a filter in the stream of air entering your mouth and nose, you get fewer “things” entering your respiratory system. And respirators are very good at catching viruses.
Tag: kn95
It is kind of obvious that mask should make a difference. especially if we are talking respirator masks (N95/Ffp2/Kn95 etc) that are designed to protect the bearer from patogens like viruses. What we have sort of lacked is a real world comparison between a larger number of schools that keeps mask requirements and schools that remove mask requirements. And the result is clear: it makes a big difference. The first link is to the Time article about the NEJM published study.
https://time.com/6231516/universal-masking-in-school-works-new-data-shows-how-well/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2211029?query=featured_home
Air-Cleaners & Ventilation Matters!
This important study shows the importance of excellent ventilation! This pretty much confirms the results of a number of smaller studies including those with Corsi – Rosenthal boxes.
This is of course applicable to offices and other indoor settings as well. Ideal is of course to improve ventilation, but air-cleaners can be a viable solution as long as you get the air filtered at least 6x per hour, as shown in other studies (link coming soon).
Combining the air cleaners with FFP2/N95/KN95 masks would likely stop spread of the virus in the setting pretty much 100%. Even with super-spreading variants of Omicron BA.5 and later dominating.
This overturns all the desinformation from big players like the Swedish Public Health Authority Folkhälsomyndigheten and Koch sponsored desinformation machine Brownstone Institute.
First the link to the Reuters article, second lik is to the study itself.