peg w wrote:
V***ses do not have spores, they hitch hike on droplets exhaled from a person who is infected.They are v***l particles. These small droplets are stoped by a mask.
I agree with most of that comment.
Disclaimer: I don't have any formal education about this matter; I'm just an ordinary person who hears, reads, and thinks.
(I do have some background in mathematics though, which may be helpful in interpreting the news.)
The C***d v***s travels on exhaled air. Exhaled air is slowed down or partially redirected by any cheap mask, if the mask is covering the part of you (nose or mouth) where the exhalation is coming from.
And, of course, generally, the t***smission is completed by the other person inhaling some of what the other person exhaled.
(There's been some thought about it getting into the receiving person's eyes. I read in one place that people who wear eyeglasses were found to catch C***d less often than people who don't wear eyeglasses. Maybe the eyeglasses are a barrier that effectively reduces the amount of infected aerosol that gets into the mucous membranes of the eyes. _Not_ that they totally stop all the aerosol, just that they may _reduce_ the amount that gets into the eyes. I have occasionally worn a face shield for this purpose, but not recently. Recently I rely mainly on just not being around people much and being in airy places or outdoors. And I keep my fingers crossed, figuratively, because occasionally I'm in places where I could catch C***d, like in a bookstore last week that didn't have really great air circulation. I wore a mask in there, but that might not help me much.). (I'm fully v******ted, which probably helps a great lot.)
Masks help protect the wearer a little bit, but they help protect the surrounding people more. Also: People can have the v***s and be contagious and not know it.
Cheap masks _reduce_ the amount of v***s that will travel from the mask wearer to another person. They do this by slowing, or partially redirecting, the medium that the v***s is traveling on.
V***l load (see next paragraph below) builds up according to time and other factors such as the air circulation. Outdoor air in a breeze is usually much, much safer (regarding C***d t***smission) than stagnant air in a room crowded with people.
People get infected according to "v***l load". If a very small number of the v***s particles get into a person, the person's body's defenses will probably be able to fight it off. (That seems to be true about some v***ses, and I think it's true about the C***d v***s.) But if a very large number of the v***s particles get into a person, then the person is much more likely to get sick or to be a carrier passing the v***s on to yet other people.
(Exactly how contagious the Delta variant is is of interest, to me. We know it's "more" contagious than the earlier variants, but some of the statements about how much more contagious it is appear to be sloppy statements so that we don't know how much more contagious it is. The experts probably know, but the correct information hasn't been clearly communicated to the general public yet. And possibly it never will be, since so many people are so sloppy about how they make numerical statements.)
The knowledge about how the v***s is t***smitted changes as more is learned about it. We (ordinary people such as myself, and experts we listen to) used to think that C***d was spread both by air and by touching contaminated surfaces. But several months ago, as more was learned, we stopped thinking it was passed by touch. Current thought is that it's hardly ever passed by touch. It is passed as "an aerosol" (which is in exhaled air from a contagious person). _Some_ v***ses are highly t***smissible by touch, but the C***d v***s doesn't have that characteristic. However, I notice that experts still sometimes tell us to wash our hands frequently, which is usually a good idea anyway, as is not touching your face much, which is also just generally good advice for health in general. I suppose maybe C***d's a little bit t***smissible by touch, like if you touch your nose with it; but we're _sure_ it's dangerously t***smissible by exhaled "aerosol" from infected unmasked people who are gathered with uninfected people for more than several minutes in a small closed room with poor ventilation when the uninfected people in the room haven't been v******ted against C***d. That's no _guarantee_ that those particular individuals will get infected or seriously ill or die, but it certainly increases the chances of it.
Disclaimer: I don't have any formal education about this matter; I'm just an ordinary person who hears, reads, and thinks.
If the infected people were not exhaling then it probably wouldn't t***smit much, but studies have shown that people who don't exhale are dead. So that's not usually very helpful. This last paragraph is a joke but the rest is intended to be serious. If anybody's read this far, congratulations, thanks, and I hope the joke paid you a bit for your attention.