I can see someone being lockdown averse. Having to stay home all the time is a real drag. IMO it was (and is in many places) necessary, but what's the big deal with wearing a mask? Suppose COVID turns out to be nothing, what have you really lost by wearing a mask for a few months? Heck, if you have some phobia, wear a face shield.
An N95 mask doesn't meet OSHA's deadspace oxygen and carbon dioxide level requirements:
"The FFR dead-space oxygen and carbon dioxide levels did not meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ambient workplace standards. CONCLUSIONS: In healthy
healthcare workers, FFR did not impose any important physiological burden during 1 hour of use, at
realistic clinical work rates, but the FFR dead-space carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were significantly
above and below, respectively, the ambient workplace standards, and elevated PCO2 is a possibility." [1]
Yes, the mask's dead space has CO2 above OSHA ambient workplace standards. To wit, they were about 3000 ppm. That's because the mask dead space contains your exhaled breath.
However, an N95 mask's dead space is 100-150ml. The tidal volumes they measured were about 1000ml. That means that only 10-15% of the air you're breathing in is from inside the mask. So, for example, if you're outside at 400ppm, you'd see an increase of net CO2 to 660ppm. If you're indoors at say 800ppm, you'd see an increase to 1020ppm.
This is well within OSHA limits and is very unlikely to be noticeable. Crucially, the study did not see a significant increase in blood CO2.
i'm not worried about suffocating, that doesn't mean it doesn't suck-- which is all i was pointing out. mow your lawn in a mask, it sucks. when something sucks you don't want to do it, you resent having to do it.
but i'm not against wearing masks in principal. i do my civic duty. but my civil society isn't doing shit. in washington you now have to wear a mask in public, (well, not really, cops don't want to enforce that, but nonetheless...) this was done by the governor, which is possible because he has special powers because of the state of emergency. what prompted the mask requirement is a hospital in eastern washington was running low on beds. so why not use those special powers to make more beds in yakima? why am i not being pestered to get tested on an ongoing basis? why aren't people being put to work helping those who can't leave the house because they're infected or at higher risk of complications? why aren't masks being mailed out to people and handed out to homeless people?
because that sort of thing requires a government that can do something useful for people, and that's not what we have. it can impose upon people, but it can't do anything good. so we'll all wear masks and it will help with the plague as much as banning plastic straws will help the ocean.
(yes, i know your comment is about n95 masks and osha requirements and maybe i should put this somewhere else, but here we are.)
You're not going to get me to defend the government response to COVID in the U.S. All of those measures sound very reasonable. You're not getting pestered to be tested on an ongoing basis because the U.S. lacks the testing capacity. Even if we did, we're not turning samples around fast enough for them to be as useful as they should be in tracing cases.
I have no idea why the government isn't handing out masks to everyone. That's essentially what Taiwan did and they have approximately zero cases.
That said, wearing masks is a lot more useful than banning plastic straws. If you could get a large fraction of the population to consistently wear masks, and impose comparatively light restrictions (no big gatherings, no bars, no indoor restaurants), I think you could eradicate the virus.
> This is well within OSHA limits and is very unlikely to be noticeable.
Why does the study state, "The FFR dead-space oxygen and carbon dioxide levels did not meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ambient workplace standards."
Do you have a source that counters this study, or are you just throwing some armchair mathematics out there?
