So, which masks ARE considered effective these days?

I notice that France has now officially banned most homemade cloth masks from being used in public on the grounds that they are no longer considered effective enough against the new stains of the coronavirus, as has Germany.

In fact, they have gone so far as to say that they recommend against the use of any homemade masks, although it seems to me that a good homemade mask is surely at least as good as those flimsy pale-blue "surgical" masks, especially given in practice that they often tend to be worn so loosely as to be all but useless (but that's a whole other comversation).

France now only recommnds the use of one of three types of masks: surgical (not described in any detail), FFP2 masks (equivalent to North American N95 masks), and cloth masks made to Category 1 standards (ones that filter out 95% of 3-micrometre particles, not that that helps much, because 99% of masks do not come with this kind of designation).

The World Health Organization has also changed its recommendations recently to a three-layer home made mask for the general public, as well as medical or surgical masks and respirators. But they describe medical masks as being composed of three layers of synthetic non-woven material with filtration layers in between. So, these are clearly not the flimsy blue masks most people think of as medical masks. The US CDC makes it pretty clear that it does not think surgical masks are worth the man-made materials they are made of, as does Healthline.

This is obviously a minefield of known unknowns and unknown unknowns. If even educated and concerned people like us, who read around the subject and strive to do the right thing, are not sure what the deal is, what chance does everyone else have?

I think the best I can do is to continue to use the two-layer reusable cloth masks I have good stocks of (manufactured courtesy of my daughter) in most regular situations, like on a busy street or on a quick visit to a store, and just double them up in more difficult situations, such as when I occasionally ferry a friend to an appointment or have to wait in a waiting room for any extended length of time.

UPDATE

And, guess what, one Anthony Fauci agrees with me, it seems!