Experiments prove that face masks will filter out respiratory viruses from the wearer’s breath– preventing them from passing on infections: Nature Medicine

cartoon courtesy of pixabay.com and cdd20

An article published April 3 on the Nature Medicine preprint server and publicized on today’s “Das Coronavirus Update” reports on experiments conducted to determine whether respiratory viruses can be filtered out of the wearer’s breath by surgical masks.  The answer is yes, a mask will filter out viruses from your breath and protect others from being infected when you are sick or carrying a virus like coronavirus (the cause of 1/3 of colds) and influenza virus.

Our results indicate that surgical face masks could prevent transmission of human coronaviruses and influenza viruses from symptomatic individuals.

This doesn’t mean that homemade cloth face masks are equally effective.  It is not hard to generalize from this study, though.  A homemade, tightly-woven cotton mask made up of multiple layers of fabric is much better than nothing.  What’s more, it proves that you care and you are listening to the advice of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).  Even better would be a printed message on the front of the mask: you choose the text.