Your questions, answered Do cloth masks provide any protection at all? What are the differences between cloth and N95 masks? There is still so much confusion about what is safe as we move about. – Sara, Virginia I can't fault you for being confused about what mask to wear and when. This summer has arrived on the heels of a "stealth surge" driven by several new omicron subvariants. Meanwhile, local, state and federal governments have dropped most of the pandemic-era restrictions that helped guide our behavior during the past two years. Yet public health experts' advice on masking remains largely the same. "There are essentially two reasons to consider wearing a mask: One is to protect yourself, and the other is to protect those around you," said David Dowdy, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dowdy said anyone who has covid-19 symptoms or has recently been exposed to the virus should wear a mask to protect others. People with compromised immune systems, older adults and anyone at heightened risk of severe infection because of underlying conditions should strongly consider wearing a high-quality mask in crowded indoor environments, he added. But if all you have is a cloth mask, that still provides some protection. "Even partial protection is better than nothing," Dowdy said. "Cloth masks do a little bit, but not a whole lot. KN95s do a lot more, especially if they're well-fitted." Dowdy said wearing a cloth mask is akin to putting on a straw hat to avoid a sunburn. The hat will offer some protection, especially for a short time, but the longer you stay in the sun, the more likely you will get burned. Similarly, the longer you wear a cloth mask in a high-risk environment – such as a crowded indoor gathering where other people are not masked – the more likely you are to be exposed to the coronavirus. "The N95s and KN95s are designed to be respirators, they're designed to keep particles of a certain size out," he added. "Cloth masks are simply made out of the same cloth as the clothes we wear, and they have larger holes in them, so the particles of the virus can get through." What if you're relatively young, healthy, low-risk and want to gather with other low-risk people unmasked? "If you have an otherwise healthy immune system and you're willing to take the risk of getting infected with the virus – recognizing that most people who get infected feel really crummy for a couple of days, but some people get really sick – if you're willing to take that risk, then I think that that's also a reasonable choice," Dowdy said. | 
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