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by bsilvereagle 1437 days ago
> whether masks with holes orders of magnitude larger than the airborne virus particles they are supposed to stop are effective

N95 masks work due to a dipole charge, not necessarily because of the mechanical filtration size.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7724761/

3 comments

They've also got a substantially better seal around the edges.
Which makes them super comfortable
Errr, the linked study directly contradicts your point:

> In both respirators, large decreases in the dipole charge density were observed after several heat treatments. However, there was no significant drop in filtration efficiency because multiple parameters (i.e., mechanical filtration) were involved in the filtration performance.

minutephysics has a nice video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdanPfQdCA