Face masks have been a matter of intense debate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Early on, several government officials and health authorities were discouraging healthy people from wearing masks—noting that there was little evidence for the practice’s ability to prevent spread among the general public and citing concerns that protective face coverings, which were desperately needed by healthcare workers, were in short supply. Gradually, however, governments began to either require or recommend that their citizens wear face masks in public. In June, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended widespread mask-use as a way to prevent coronavirus transmission. One model estimates that if at least 95 percent of people wear masks in public between June and October, approximately 33,000 deaths could be avoided in the US.
There are three broad categories of face coverings: tight-fitting masks known as N95 respirators that are designed to filter out both aerosols (often defined as particles that are smaller than 5 micrometers in diameter) and larger airborne droplets, loose-fitting surgical masks that are fluid resistant and capable of filtering out the bigger particles, and cloth masks, which vary widely based on how they’re made….
