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When some sanity returns to the market and masks are reasonable prices, and maybe not surgical masks from China, I will buy some more. This kind of caught me flat footed. I had about twenty 3M N95 vented masks. I was not thinking about biologicals and I wasn't thinking about prolonged wearing (i.e., for weeks or more).
I was thinking more along the lines of dust from volcanoes, wind storms, building collapsing, that kind of thing - and only enough to get home.
As others have pointed out, the vented masks do little (or nothing) to protect others from the wearer (assuming it is the wearer that is infected) - they are to protect the wearer from others. It would be better to have the wearer use the surgical or non-vented masks, and the person who was not infected wear the vented or a surgical mask also.
The surgical masks (like below) are supposed to be changed every 4 hours. So you need them in bulk (as in hundreds) if someone going to be in quarantine or isolation.
Plus you maybe want everybody, infected or not to wear them.
OTOH, you could have the opposite situation; someone is sick, but not infections, while at the same time they may be immuno-suppressed or otherwise susceptible to infection (e.g., open wounds), etc. - so anybody caring for them would preferably be wearing these surgical masks, or at least the non-vented N95 masks.
In short, this caught me off-balance. I don't have enough masks, and I have none of the kind of masks I would want to give an infected person.
I was thinking more along the lines of dust from volcanoes, wind storms, building collapsing, that kind of thing - and only enough to get home.
As others have pointed out, the vented masks do little (or nothing) to protect others from the wearer (assuming it is the wearer that is infected) - they are to protect the wearer from others. It would be better to have the wearer use the surgical or non-vented masks, and the person who was not infected wear the vented or a surgical mask also.
The surgical masks (like below) are supposed to be changed every 4 hours. So you need them in bulk (as in hundreds) if someone going to be in quarantine or isolation.
Plus you maybe want everybody, infected or not to wear them.
OTOH, you could have the opposite situation; someone is sick, but not infections, while at the same time they may be immuno-suppressed or otherwise susceptible to infection (e.g., open wounds), etc. - so anybody caring for them would preferably be wearing these surgical masks, or at least the non-vented N95 masks.
In short, this caught me off-balance. I don't have enough masks, and I have none of the kind of masks I would want to give an infected person.