“The N95 mask itself is extremely wonderful. The pores in the mask are three microns wide. The virus is one micron wide. The mask pores are 0.3 microns wide; the virus is 0.12 microns.
“So you get people who say, well, it’s not going to work. But you try having three big, huge football players who are rushing for lunch through a door at lunchtime—they’re not going to get through. In the latest data I saw, the mask provided 5x protection. That’s really good. But we have to keep the hospitals going and we have to keep the health professionals able to come to work and be safe. So masks should go where they’re needed the most: in taking care of patients.”
Source: Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, Wired magazine 19 March 2020