Quote Originally Posted by jackal2 View Post
It sounds reasonable to me that if you get a higher dose of something then the effect is likely to be greater. On the other hand, I read that doctors studying the outbreak in Lombardy compared the nasal swabs of people who had symptoms and people who did not, but found no difference in viral load between the two groups.

I'm not sure that the UK authorities will go as far as ordering people to wear masks, but time will tell. I suspect that a lot of the people who already wear masks are doing so on the premise of protecting themselves from breathing in droplets exhaled by others, but I've heard interviews where experts who say that the primary purpose of the mask is to prevent droplets travelling outwards rather than inwards.
About the viral load I don't know about the study in Lombardy to be honest, I'd need to have a flick through it to be able to comment.

I hope all governments enforce mouth and nose coverings. It's cheap, simple and effective. If everyone makes even a simple homemade mask then the outgoing droplets are reduced, the incoming droplets are reduced, so even if you do catch it, you catch it with a low viral load.