One of the biggest problems with convincing Anti-Maskers that masks are a useful tool in fighting the coronavirus is that of establish...
One of the biggest problems with convincing Anti-Maskers that masks are a useful tool in fighting the coronavirus is that of establishing context. Very few people outside of scientific labs spend much time conceptualizing things on a microscopic scale. The above picture helps with that problem.
It shows the coronavirus at 0.1 microns in size as compared to a single bacteria, a red blood cell, and 3 other particles of various sizes. To put this in every day context, if a particle measuring 0.007 microns was enlarged to the size of a marble, then the coronavirus would be roughly the size of a basketball. So anything that can filter a 0.007 micron particle will have no trouble filtering out the coronavirus.
The following article is a study showing the efficacy of different masks at filtering particles greater than 0.007 microns in size, or in other words particles 14 times smaller than the average coronavirus.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662779/
The results? Surgical masks filtered 80% of all particles 0.007 microns in size or larger, and N95 masks filtered over 98% of particles 0.007 microns in size or larger.
That's hard scientific data showing that masks are effective at filtering particles much smaller in size than the coronavirus.
If I was about to shoot radioactive basketballs at your face, a net capable of blocking anything larger than a marble would be quite useful, don't you think?
What about cloth masks? This study showed that well fitting masks made with multiple layers of tightly woven cotton were just as effective at filtering particles the size of the coronavirus as an N95 mask.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.0c03252
This is real life data. It's not an opinion or "theory" coming from a political talking head. Share it with those around you, and let them see the size comparison for themselves.