Hospitals and clinics are full of sick people, which is why I wear a mask when I go for an appointment. The masks do stop most droplets of sputum coughed up by others.
From US HHS: “ At any given time, about 1 in 31 inpatients have an infection related to hospital care. These infections lead to tens of thousands of deaths and cost the U.S. health care system billions of dollars each year.”
‘The masks do stop most droplets of sputum coughed up by others.’
except sputum droplets, being moisture laden and thus heavier than air, drop to the ground at a certain distance; if you’re not within that distance of someone, these droplets become irrelevant...
it is acknowledged that virii, being microscopically small and nearly weightless, travel via aerosolization, and remain in the air much longer; if you can actually breathe through your mask, and you are infectious, you are contributing infection to your environs, and your mask is little more than a socially accepted talisman at that point...