1. Imagine you’re on a bus and everyone is using a cloth or surgical mask. Your (and everyone else’s) risk of infection is very low, since viral particles can't get out into the air. Everyone protects everyone else.
2. Now imagine one person removes their mask. What happens to your risk of infection? It goes up a little bit, because there is now the possibility of viral particles in the air and your surgical or cloth mask offers little protection to you the wearer.
3. As more people remove their cloth masks, the risk of infection grows, until when everyone has removed their mask, infection risk is at its maximum.
4. Unless *everyone* on the bus is masked, as long as one person is not, the entire strategy of us *all protecting each other* (‘source control’) is compromised. It only takes one.
5. This is why ‘voluntary’ mask-wearing is nonsense. A cloth or surgical mask will not protect you sufficiently unless *everyone else is wearing one too*.
6. If there is no requirement to wear a cloth mask, and people refuse to do so, the 'source control' strategy fails.
7. In these circumstances, you need to abandon the cloth/surgical-type mask and use a filter mask, a respirator, FFP3 or similar. You need to *protect yourself from other people* (‘infection control') instead.
8. Cloth/surgical masks, if few are using them, are not going to protect you. 'Voluntary' masking is simply not a strategy.
ENDS.
ENDS.
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