N95 masks are too expensive and no more effective than cheaper masks

Which Flu Mask Should I buy to protect my family?

A major study found that the expensive N95 masks are no more effective than cheaper medical masks used by doctors in surgery. With N95 masks now in short supply and priced out of the reach of average people it is good to know that if any mask will protect you then the cheaper ones work just as well for a virus.

It appears that neither mask is especially effective with about 30% of medical workers in a New York hospital during the H1N1 Swine Flu scare back in 2009 catching the disease despite using face masks.

The later study compared the inexpensive surgical masks with the less comfortable N95 masks.

It probably wouldn't matter so much if the price on N95 masks hadn't gone through the roof very recently. They used to cost about $1 but where you can find the good 3M masks on Amazon they are more than $100/box, about $10 for each mask.

The only reason any of these masks work at all is because the virus when airborne isn't by itself and therefore thousands of times smaller than the masks can filter out, but they are carried in water droplets from breathing, coughing, or sneezing and the masks can stop those water droplets.

 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190903134732.htm