Stylish maybe, effective, not so much.
Effective in helping you not pick your nose or touch most of your face. Maybe helps the self-perception of pritection. But worth nothing much for the “airborne virus”
Diaphragm moves in chest cavity, creates negative pressure in the thorax relative to the outside, air rushes in.
Add a mask (no semi-rigid seal to the face), air goes through past of least obstruction, around and through any gap, however small it is.
If you think the surface of the filter media is going to catch the sub-micron sized virus, not very likely. The mask media might catch the virus on a droplet like someone sneezed in your face, but only because of that mist-like droplet is many orders of magnitude bigger and heavier than the virus.
Hey, why don’t we go out to our local nuclear power plant, who on occasion has to control against airborne particulate radioactive material, and commandeer all of their “masks”?
To answer my own question, Rad Control professionals don’t have N95 or any other type of half-face elastic band mask on hand, they don’t have them because they don’t work!
If you were to send someone wearing a N95 mask into an area with airborne particulate for ~ 10 minutes, they would be sent straight to the body counter when they exit to see if the activity is just on their face and in their nose, or they were breathing heavy enough to make it to their lungs. The radioactive footprint is obvious.
FWIW, nuclear airborne radioactive particulate control is done with, at minimum, a full face respirator, quantitatively fit test on the clean-shaven individual’s face. Or some other respiratory protection maybe more rigorous. The same principles would apply to airborne virus control.
I’m not sure that the filter on any type of mask would actually “catch” a random virus floating in the air, there is a finite limit to a filter pore size that you can actually pull air through while breathing normally. Plus no one has revealed the micron size of a garden-variety corona virus outside body. I think that size is shockingly small, tenths or hundredth’s of a micron.
N95 or surgeon’s masks are better than nothing, but are NOT worth the freakout for the NY Governor or any average citizen to walk around the grocery store. BTW, the shoppers wearing the mask keep trolling the toilet paper aisle longingly looking for more.
The object in regards to SARS-CoV-2 is not to stop one unit of virus from getting in. None of the medical masks will do that, and the medical racket can’t afford to go to MOPP 4 (which I’ve done many times, including running long distances with full loads). The object is to reduce and moderate the viral load going into the body. Homemade masks, if made and used properly, will do that.
There are references and links to research in the following.
Can DIY Masks Protect Us from Coronavirus?
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/diy-homemade-mask-protect-virus-coronavirus/
What Are The Best Materials for Making DIY Masks?
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-face-mask-virus/