One of the doctors I pay attention to tried to show how wearing a mask (unless it’s an N95 which, I believe, only blocks 95%, thus the name) isn’t doing much good - it’s mostly a ‘mental’ thing, makes people feel better wearing them.
The example he gave ... if you scaled a corona virus up to 1inch x 1 inch and scaled the holes in a bandana, T-shirt, some of the other non-N95 masks to an equivalent scale to the virus, the hole would be 83 feet x 83 feet. How many 1” x 1” ‘viruses’ could fit through that hole? More than a few ....
That sounds cool. It would great to get some kind of scientific confirmation of what the numbers actually are.
The problem with this reasoning is two-fold:
1. A viable bare-naked virus particle is almost never floating around in air. It gets dried out and dies rapidly. The virus is in a water (or maybe snot) particle in the air. These particles are large enough for the N95 mask to take them out.
2. The actual size of a viable virus particle is much larger than an electron microscope measures. Electron microscopes only work while the samples being investigated are in a hard vacuum. This is necessary for the electron beam. Electrons traveling through air are commonly called sparks or lightning. This vacuum dries out the water that is usually associated with a virus and shrivels it up. Think about a raisin vs. the grape that it came from. Or even better, take the raisin and dry it out further in your oven, until it is just a tiny hard speck. Then we measure this size and call it the size of the virus. No, it is the size of the shriveled, dried up virus. The live virus is much larger.
That example the doctor gave is so interesting. I love info like that, whether virus related or not.