You have probably especially
lately been seeing a lot of
headlines about which mask is best.
Our cloth masks better?
Or should we be looking for those N 95 masks?
Like a lot of doctors are wearing.
That is, if we can find those these days,
doctor Kimberly, Kimberly Prather is
the director at the National Science
Foundation's Center for Aerosol Impacts
on Chemistry of the Environment,
and she is a professor at the
University of California, San Diego,
and she is back with us once again to talk
about masks this time around because.
We've been hearing so much about
this as far as you've been able to
see with your expert training here,
which masks work.
So this has evolved over
the course of the pandemic.
You know, I myself was wearing.
I was wearing surgical masks.
Those little blue ones at the beginning
and they seemed OK, but now they're not,
and so our mask game has been
upped and we have to think about
better masks and so in a nutshell,
it's things like what we call KF90 fours,
KN, 90 fives and and N 90 fives.
And and you know, there's a lot of
misinformation out there, I would say.
I'm, you know, propagated.
Even from the top.
This this mask that's
like the hard shell in 95.
Those are uncomfortable,
but there are really comfortable.
I wear a very comfortable in 95
now as do all the experts and that
is your number one line of defense
is the mask you wear and so when
people worry about ventilation,
filtration,
whatever you're going to breathe
with other people.
If you're wearing a good mask,
you are pretty darn protected and
you're protecting others at the same time.
So it's really really good.
But we've now got to move.
Cloth masks,
you know there are ones that are
like multiple layers with filters
added and all this stuff but.
If you try these other masks
which are out there,
you will start to like them a lot more.
I will I will tell you everybody I
know his like wow once I tried it,
it's just there's a lot of
misinformation about this topic.
So just so we're clear here,
if we've been relying on a cloth
mask for the past several months,
or especially those blue surgical masks,
those really don't cut it when
we get to this Omicron variant.
That's exactly right.
I I cringe when I see people even in
hospitals still wearing the surgical masks.
Those were designed.
They're surgical masks, by definition.
They're designed to stop spray.
That's it. They come out in,
you know, when you speak and people
who are doing surgery speak,
and so they block drops, which is great.
But aerosols are like smoke.
Think about smoke,
smoke just bends right out that there's
these little cracks right here.
You can put.
There is actually really nice
videos on how you can put a brace.
And close that down.
Or you can double mask.
There are ways you can make them better,
but alone they are problematic
and people are getting infected
with them more and more with
especially with this variant.
So we've been through times
in this pandemic where we've
seen big runs on masks.
Is there a good place to find
1 right now that you know of?
Yeah, there's some really good resources
where people have tested them out.
Honestly, it's only gotten better,
and so yeah, there's.
I mean, I think I gave.
I gave you some links which I hope
you can share with your listeners.
You know there's project in 95.
One of the challenges is that's
why you heard me say, KF 94.
Those are Korean made and those
tend to like a lot of people really,
especially for kids.
Think they're really comfortable.
KN 95 there is some counterfeits out there,
so you have to be careful.
Of what's been actually tested,
and so there are places you can
go to find out if I'm an active
Twitter person and so we're out
there putting out the information
there is really useful information
and your options honestly have
grown and they've grown well
beyond that uncomfortable in 95.
That cuts into your face.