I too am 74 with diabetes and asthma so in high risk, I am retired and my wife who is a retired Surgical RN/OR Charge Nurse doesn't want me out (7 times-5 to the doctor since Feb) but when I complained about the cloth masks - they get damp from my breath etc she told me to wear the industrial painter's mask I bought for a remodeling project some years ago. Well it was falling apart from old age so I went on line and ordered a new one made by 3M. Half face coverage (you can get them with builtin eye/face shield) and bayonet mount filter cartridges with filters rated at P100 - 100 vs 95 for the standard medical mask and the P means the filter material in the cartridge is resistant to solvents and corrosives. It is also easier to breath in since it, like a military gas mask, is designed for people who are working hard. The model I got is for industrial or medical lab conditions. My Podiatrist took one look at it last week and said he wished the hospital provided them with that type of mask. You can find them, and the filter cartridges on Amazon and Ebay. But shop around because some people charge like the ones they have are gold plated.
Here is the review site where I learned about masks: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-respirator-mask/
I ended up with the model 7503 which doesn't have the Quick Latch feature - that one I couldn't find in a size large but it uses the same filter cartridges as the model they picked. And since I got mine the prices seem to have settled down a lot. The filters are good for 8 hours in a corrosive atmosphere and up to six months or until clogged with dust for general everyday use.

Oh, the reason it is easier to breath in is it has an exhale valve, which some places don't allow or want - well the valve is in a housing and a piece of filter material can be taped over it to filter outgoing air.

When there is a financial incentive to pay institutions more money if the cause of death is COVID, we will never know the actual numbers related to the virus. What we do know is that with all that money being passed around, we will need to analyse the World Bank Data at the end of the year, and see the true numbers.

I am well aware of the grief death causes. To accurately determine the cause of death, we would need to know all of the relevant data and that information is protected by HIPPA. No one will tell you if the person who died had which particular underlying conditions.

The doctors and institutions label the cause of death as COVID and that institution receives a bigger financial return. As the saying goes... follow the money.

3.3% is of the confirmed cases I believe. The more testing they do the more they are finding that a large %, maybe the majority who have it don't even know they have it. In one article one of the major medical studies groups went into an area and tested as close to 100% of the people as they could get and compared it to a nearby area with the same population but testing at the regular rate for the whole state. They found that 40% plus of the people who tested positive didn't know they had it their symptoms were so mild they thought it was a cold or allergies. And another big % didn't have any symptoms of any kind so didn't even know they had anything, let alone Covid 19.

Another study where they tested everyone in an area they concluded the death rate was more like .2% which is just about the middle of the range for all the types of flu from the last several decades.

Of course we don't do the lockdowns etc for those types of flu because we have been used to "flu season" every year. But Covid 19 is new, exotic and has become a political as well as a medical event. We have had others in the last few decades but they never spread very far - this one got a boost from the Chinese Gvt keeping it more or less a secret and allowing international flights to come and go for a long time and that spread it to many places creating nodes of infection from which it spread. And the fact so many have it without symptoms they take no or few precautions and spread it around more.

You can say this is unbelievable, but to just assume that all masks works gives you the Waco award. People who purchase masks in Lowe's thinking that this will protect them, are kidding themselves. If we are going to do masks, each and every person needs a large supply of N95 medical masks. That is when the masks will work.

As I said previously, the government should provide a supply of N95 medical mask to those people who have pre-existing conditions or are high risk. That way families do not lose a loved one because the virus attacks an already compromised immune system.

Washing your hands properly, not touching your face, and covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze are still the best ways to protect your health.