Okay, fine. But I would like to see such an animation that included various types of face masks. How much of a difference would they have made?
N95 masks filter 95 percent of all particles above 0.2 microns the typical human sneeze or cough produces a bimodial distribution of particles one peaks in the 5_10 micron range the others peak in the sub micron 0.1_0.5 micron ranges. With any airborne virus the metric to determine infection is called the critical threshold of infection above that viral load infection is unavoidable. The CDC current metric is 15 minutes of unprotected exposure to multi micron particles at 6ft or under concentration. Since an N95 mask gives only a 5% pass through rate the time to critical threshold is increased by up to 19 times. Ruffly 285 minutes to receive the same dose as an unprotected person in 15 minutes. This virus is communicable enough to infect via eye transmission of the same multi micron droplets so mask and goggles or a full face respirator is needed. These are for a single person shedding virus every additional person inside the same area doubles the concentration of airborne particles and halves the protection time of a rated N value of a mask. Science is all about metrics and numbers this bug has a minimum value for infection that scientists are struggling to find so the 2 meters /15minutes is just an educated guess.It’s likely much lower in time and longer in distances. China and Japan have studies up for review that show 4.5 meter confimed airborne transmission distances and timelinestimeline of over half an hour after an infected left an area to positive infection of a daughter case. These were confirmed by video evidence , contact tracing, and genetic sequencing of the host and daughters test cultures.
Short answer N95 masks work for the larger multi micron particles over a hours or more time. They are useless to more than half of the sub micron particles that stay airborne for on average of 3 hours in mild fluid motion more in more turbulent flows.
The N95 mask filters down to 0.3 microns. For the normal flu, half of the particles from a cough are smaller than that. I don’t recall what size particles can hang in the air for the various times and what percentage they are. So a N95 only stops about 50% of the virus particles. But that is way better than nothing, and I wear one when I go shopping.
Although I guess for the smaller ones that hang in the air, those will accumulate as another infected person coughs or even just breathes.
The CV-19 virus goes into the lower lungs, so they are thinking the smaller particles can remain viral for awhile. With flu studies there are debates on how long the very small particles remain viable. The ones in droplets are protected by the droplets and the moisture. The smaller particles some believe they dry out and the virus is destroyed fairly quickly.