[brigandish]

People don't wear N95 masks here, they wear cheap masks you can pick up in any drug store for just a few coins.

How would an entire country obtain N95 masks and training and proper fitting (it's done by trained fitters) and dispose of them properly, and do that daily? (if not more often)

Every time I go out I see the cheapo ones left in the street because there's a vague notion they should be disposed of "properly" so I don't see this idea working at all.

[fspeech]

Public mask wearing prevents the wearer from emitting droplets. You don't need n95 for that. Also please read the article in discussion, this virus is not that easy to transmit, even for hospital workers.

[brigandish]

How does an R0 greater than 1 in every country and population the virus is present in square with "this virus is not that easy to transmit"?

I can't do it.

> read the article

Okay, maybe they can square it:

> Luckily, methods were found that protected all the new health-care workers: none—zero—were infected.

> But those methods were Draconian. As the city was locked down and cut off from outside visitors, health-care workers seeing at-risk patients were housed away from their families. They wore full-body protective gear, including goggles, complete head coverings, N95 particle-filtering masks, and hazmat-style suits.

They failed, it was probably the use of "Draconian" that let them down.

I also read the paper you provided, not just the abstract, and it spends a lot of its time talking about N95 masks. Here is from a part it spends on facemasks:

> whereas for the facemasks the efficiency can vary from 10% to 90% (Guha et al., 2017)

Have you read Guha's paper? I've got it here. I have so many problems with someone relying on that paper beyond its narrow applicable scope. I wonder if they've ever worn a mask. I digress.

Additionally (we're back to the paper you shared), you should count how many times "except the low-filtration adult surgical mask" or some combination of those words following except comes up in that paper.

It's also a model and not a study. Let me know when there's a study that shows masks work (the Guha paper mentioned is a study, in a lab, not using people or even a model of a face), in use by the general public, in the kind of settings they wear them, and it's the kind of masks they usually wear.