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Dr. Lucky Tran :verified:

PSA Neck gaiters are not masks. Neck gaiters are not effective at stopping the spread of airborne viruses. Masks, especially well-fitting ones are effective at preventing infection. Conflating the two is bad because it can encourage politicians to ban masks for the general public.

@luckytran plus if you wear a neck gaiter you look like an ICE agent and nobody wants that

@luckytran especially ones in camo color...

@luckytran If I wear a neck gaiter below a mask to help with beard hair interference with a seal… how bad is that, is my question? I know it is worse than no beard

@luckytran

I did appreciate that the proposed ban on law enforcement in California concealing their faces explicitly differentiates that from medical masks to prevent infectious disease and to avoid inhaling wildfire smoke.

@luckytran Well, if we are going to get pedantic, I think the word you are looking for is respirator. A “mask” is a word for a piece of clothing that conceals one’s identity. The Lone Ranger wore a mask. If you pull a neck gaiter over your face to conceal your identity, that’s a mask. If you tie a bandana around your face to hide who you are, it’s a mask. If you go to a Masque Ball you wear, of course, a mask.
If you want to reduce particulate matter and potentially infectious droplets and aerosols from entering your respiratory tract, you need a respirator, such as an N95 or KN95.
In general, most states already ban masks intended to conceal one’s identity. Respirators are usually allowed.

@RowanH @luckytran yes, this has been bothering me as well. ‘Mask’ is just a colloquial term we have been using, because ‘respirator’ is simply a clunkier word, less familiar, and more technical. N95 respirators *are* masks, but so is a child’s Halloween mask, or Zorro’s eye mask.

@luckytran if it’s that easy to breath with no getting used to then it’s not a useful mask.

@WheresMyWater @luckytran Honestly that was mostly true in the days when officials told us to wear cloth, so our choices were mostly those or elastomerics with un-pleated "pancake" filters. I don't notice breathing resistance with a trifold N95, or my old (now discontinued) Airgami masks at all, and even an unvalved elastomeric is NBD as long as the filters have dense pleats for more surface area. It's good to prepare people for a small hurdle, but high comfort options are plentiful nowadays!

@cwicseolfor @luckytran I agree with you but I tend to think those who use masks as a tool regularly and have no aversion to using masks have conditioned themselves to use them correctly so we no longer have issues breathing even though basically zero issues with blood oxidation even if you wore 3 masks it does almost nothing to blood oxygen.

@WheresMyWater @luckytran True for many, though I'm enough of a hermit I can sometimes go four weeks between occasions to mask, so if it were a matter of muscular conditioning in the ribs or diaphragm I'd probably get caught with that. The style makes a big difference though - it's all down to surface area of the filters. So K/N95 bifolds are often harder to breathe through than duckbill or trifold ("boat" shape) N95s.

And yeah, none of them impact blood oxygen, as surgeons have always known.