[Hulitio]

Just be aware that it might mean for you that you catch COVID and will be sick in your holiday.

I got COVID from one event 3 weeks ago and it threw my plans around.

It wasn't that big of an issue as I have a booster but I planed to visit a close friend who does cancer treatment and I was quite happy that he had no time for a short visit as I learned about my COVID invection two days later and I don't want to put him on unnecessary risk.

Let's see and hope covids route to endemic is getting easier and easier.

[culopatin]

In reality I all a bit of a theatre. If you believe in the mask effectiveness, you’ll get it when everyone takes their mask off at the same time to eat every time they hand off something. Almost no one wears an n95 for long flights and most people will wear the mask as poorly as they can anyway.

Edit: just to clarify, I don’t have anything against anyone who believes in the mask effectiveness and wants to wear it. But I don’t see the point of enforcing the half assed way things are being done.

[involans]

You don't have to eat during the flight, or you can delay eating to be out of phase. I've done that and so far it's been effective over a number of transatlantic flights.

[dustinmoris]

> You don't have to eat during the flight

In theory you don't have to do anything mate. Just lie down in a coffin at home, shut the door and I bet you you won't catch COVID or any other mild respiratory illness. If to you the meaning of life is to get born, not catch COVID under any ridiculous circumstances and then die then this is a dead sure way of achieving your dreams!

I rather live life, take risks, feel my heart beat, go out and spend intimate time with other people, feel the thrill of being close to other human beings, feeling the joy of a person's touch, seeing their beautiful face when they laugh, share food and drinks without being paranoid and indulge myself in everything the world has to offer. Getting a mild cough or feeling a week a bit ill because of a flu every few years is a small price to pay for all the amazing memories I'll collect along the way.

[DiggyJohnson]

Well put.

The conservative (true sense of the word) position on this is so frustrating to communicate, because those who want to keep these sorts of policies and patterns are so often coming from people with a risk tolerance profile that I genuinely can’t understand or relate to.

[Hulitio]

COVID is still very very new.

There was and still are good reasons to be careful.

It would have been just stupid to get COVID out of yolo.

Now doctors have much more experience with it, vaccines exists.

[blub]

Airline food is indeed living the life while feeling the thrill of being close to other human beans.

[throw7576521]

Order vegetarian or ither special option, get it usually first and probability of someone doing the same nearby is low, and then eat like you haven't eaten for days before and put mask on before anyone else takes it off - worked fine for me lol.

Also keep ventilation from above right on you at least a little...

Much more frightening were all the people in queues at the airports, bad ventilation, coming close, not wearing a mask at all.

Why so scared? Same reason, didn't want to get even a single day wasted for the first and quite costly vacation, glad it all worked out!

[andy_ppp]

I was under the impression that masks don't protect you that much, they protect other people from you?

[glenra]

> I was under the impression that masks don't protect you that much, they protect other people from you?

That claim has been made but is questionable. The masks were designed to reduce exposure to the wearer, not so much from the wearer.

It's a matter of physics: When you inhale the suction generated automatically pulls the mask tighter on your face such that the air you breathe in essentially all has to pass through the mask but when you exhale, not so much.

In designing a mask there is a choice between a finer mesh or a looser one. If you pick a very loose mesh - say, cotton gauze - then air is easy to push through when you exhale but so are virus particles. On the other hand if you pick a very tight mesh - say, N95 or better - then air is much harder to push through but exhaling forces the mask slightly away from the face such that moist potentially virus-laden breath puffs out the sides and top. This is why your glasses fog up when wearing an N95 - moist air is escaping out the top of the mask completely unfiltered. (You can find youtube videos demonstrating this process with cigarette smoke). Double- or triple-masking doesn't help either - that makes it even harder for air to pass directly through the masks so even more air pushes out the side and top instead.

If your N95 is VERY well fitted and the strap VERY tight - tight enough to make your ears hurt - you'll get less escape, but wearing a mask that way is sufficiently uncomfortable that almost nobody does it.

In short, an N95 does plausibly filter nearly all the air you breathe IN, but if you want to filter the air you're breathing OUT, you really should be wearing a cleanroom suit.

[throw7576521]

True, tight FFP2/N95 help you also to some degree though. Its all probability and exposure amount and many more factors, not binary at all.

[andybak]

The devils's in detail. How much is "not that much"? I'll take all the cumulative small probability gains I can get. Cost vs benefit.

[nicoburns]

N95 masks do if fitted properly. You can buy one for ~£3, well worth it for a flight in my opinion.

[culopatin]

Agreed, but I’ve taken several flights during covid all over the world and I see 1 n95 every 50 people at most. And it’s very likely that the person wearing it does not have covid anyway. The one that probably had covid is that guy with his nose out and the one snacking a little bit the whole flight to not have to wear it.

[Hulitio]

I'm not what there is to believe in mask effectiveness?

There are studies about it.

You don't get infected with COVID just because it's a mix of your own immune reaction, the amount of particles etc.

A mask is really easy to wear and reduces your risk.

I'm not advocating for mask mandates at this point or let's say I don't care about it but if you want to reduce the risk of having COVID while on holiday, I would suggest trying to wear a mask.

Independently of it, in Germany the hospitalization is currently high and plenty of personal is sick. I still don't want to be in a situation of having something really bad and having to be in a hospital right now.

[culopatin]

There are studies about it and from what I’ve seen the surgical mask does not show enough impact to say that it clearly helps. The tests of how much the material can filter are irrelevant if everyone is wearing with massive gaps around their faces that let the air go out unfiltered anyway.

[Hulitio]

Yeah I do ignore those.

They are nice to wear for this reason.

But when I'm wearing them I do have a proper mask.

[breakfastduck]

Absolute nonsense.

[Hulitio]

Are you not aware of the steep COVID invection s around the globe?

Germany is now at 150000-200000 daily new cases.

We have not had this before. This means that you chance to get it and perhaps you being sick for 1-3 weeks is much much higher than before.

It was just something I wanted to share so that you might plan ahead for this case or weir a mask to reduce the risk and have a great holiday.

And for the last few weeks way more people got COVID around myself than ever before.

This is also, next to intensive care capacity, a big risk if for example too many people from police, medical sector, fireman get sick in parallel.

[ImaCake]

Non-substantive comments aren’t really welcome here. If you disagree with someone, explain why. HN respects a well worded argument.