If you read the book "The Design of Everyday Things" you'll find a chapter on error. Human error is a thing and if it's a common error it's a design error.
N95 masks need to be worn correctly. If we wear them improperly they loose their ability to do their jobs. Nurses I know have had training classes on wearing them properly. It's not obvious or just works.
I was in a school board virtual meeting earlier this year. When it came to the open comment period in the meeting a nurse go on and politely shared the number of times the school board members and errored in their use of the masks.
So often the mask guidelines and expectations of their effectiveness are based on the assumptions people will wear them properly. Sadly, that's just not the case.
> If we wear them improperly they loose their ability to do their jobs
That's not true. They will just have lower efficiency. This study itself tested the effect of not fitting the mask (not even adjusting the metal nose bridge), and the effect was not dramatic.
It's like saying "if you don't wear your mask 100% of the time, you might as well not wear it at all, since you could be infected in the 1% of the time you don't wear it.
> "if you don't wear your mask 100% of the time, you might as well not wear it at all, since you could be infected in the 1% of the time you don't wear it.
This all depends on what the goal is. If your goal is to mitigate individual risk then 99% is better then 0%. If your goal is to never be exposed to the virus (immunocompromised, can't be vaxxed, comorbidity, etc...) then you arguably should not participate in something that requires you to remove your mask in public even 1% of the time. If you're a government trying to limit spread/hospital load then even something 20% effective will have an impact across an entire population.
If the virus you're dealing with is so incompetent at spreading as those strains from early 2020 were that almost failed to reach R=1 despite being fully airborne (which we now know, but back then even experts fell for "airborne spread could not possibly be as slow as we observe!"), even something like 5% effective can be a swim or sink difference for the virus.
That said, we are now in the omicron era and things are very different now (masks are a weak but nonetheless important tool for the project of "please take turns with sick leave, thank you very much", and nothing more, nothing less)
Plenty of people are wearing masks because the sign says you have to or “no groceries for you”. That category of mask wearer is not going to carefully read a manual plus the CDC supplemental information on how to properly overcome the hurdle standing between them and their family’s groceries. I count it as a win if that person’s nostrils are not visible around their cloth mask.
I was in the Knoxville airport this summer and after five minutes of seeing a litany of pointless choices people had made with masks, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to see someone wearing a mask that was partially covering their eye.
Well when I was in Houston I saw several men in the airport wearing ski masks. I don’t know, I guess they feel regular masks make them look sickly or effeminate or something.
N95 masks need to be worn correctly. If we wear them improperly they loose their ability to do their jobs. Nurses I know have had training classes on wearing them properly. It's not obvious or just works.
I was in a school board virtual meeting earlier this year. When it came to the open comment period in the meeting a nurse go on and politely shared the number of times the school board members and errored in their use of the masks.
So often the mask guidelines and expectations of their effectiveness are based on the assumptions people will wear them properly. Sadly, that's just not the case.