18 December

There are a lot of cloth masks out there, often quite stylish. They’re pretty hopeless though, for protection from Covid. Like wearing cling wrap instead of a condom, but actually even worse than that. The blue surgical masks are also not great at this stage of the pandemic if you’re sharing a lot of indoor air. Buy P2 masks. N95, KN95, KF94 - all excellent. What’s not advertised much is these masks can also be reused multiple times, to offset the initial cost (they’re about $2-$3 each, for the good ones, but the KN95 and KF94 are often only about $1-$1.50). If you rotate them every 5 days, any virus they carry will be dead. You should get at least 5 re-wears out of these better masks, even if you wear it all day. N95, KN95 and KF94 are all quite similar. KN95 is the Chinese equivalent of N95, and KF94 the same for Korean. Any KF94 labelled ‘Made in Korea’ should be fine. KN95 are sometimes faked, but you can buy them locally now from reputable retailers. The N95/P2 masks you can buy at Bunnings are excellent. The best I’ve used are the 3M N95 masks. But my favourite to wear are probably KF94, fantastic design and comfortable. (P.S. sanitise your hands before and after putting on a mask, and after taking it off. Avoid ever touching the side of the mask that goes against your face.) There are good instructions online for ‘donning and doffing’ masks i.e. putting them on and off safely.