No Magic Factories
Given the Critical Component of Protective Masks is in Short Supply ramping up production to meet demand is not possible.
Nonwoven polypropylene has never been so popular.
The industrial fabric is a critical component of the sophisticated face masks that protect medical workers from the new coronavirus. As the virus spreads around the world, those face masks are in short supply. Now nonwoven polypropylene is, too.
Monadnock Non-Wovens LLC has been getting more than 100 calls and emails a day asking for huge quantities of nonwoven polypropylene. Some callers have offered luxury vacations to Monadnock employees to fulfill orders.
Some customers are asking the Mt. Pocono, Pa.-based company for up to 200 tons of the material. The single machine on Monadnock’s production line for the mask-filter material makes about 1.5 tons a day. The company recently started a test run of a second machine and will add a third in the coming weeks that will triple output to around 30 tons a week.
“Everyone thinks there is this magic factory somewhere,” HPK’s president, Michael Liberatore, said. “You can’t call up and order a million. It’s not how it works.”
CDC Q&A
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t recommend that people wear face masks unless they are sick and need to be in public.
Q: Why?
A: Because the CDC is covering its ass knowing full well there is insufficient supply.
Schools Shut in Seattle Area
In the Seattle area, Schools Shut Down as Coronavirus Spreads.
A suburban Seattle school district launched the farthest-reaching school closures in the U.S. Thursday in an attempt to contain the coronavirus, directing more than 23,500 students to stay home for up to two weeks in a last-resort step that districts across the country are considering.
The number of deaths in Washington state rose to 11 Thursday and confirmed cases jumped to 70 from 39 a day earlier, prompting companies including Microsoft Corp., Amazon Inc. and Facebook Inc. to encourage employees in the region to work from home. Ten of those fatalities have been in King County, where Seattle is located.
Rush Hour Traffic Jam Vanishes
The above explains what I noted before in Tweets of the Day: Seattle Rush Hour Suddenly Vanishes.
Proposed Takeover of Life Care Center in Kirkland WA
The Wall Street Journal reports Nursing Home at Center of Washington Coronavirus Outbreak Target of Criticism
Washington state officials are considering taking over a nursing home tied to 10 deaths in the Covid-19 outbreak after the facility’s owners drew criticism from local officials and families for spotty and at times chaotic dissemination of information.
At one point, a woman whose mother died at the facility this week of still-unknown causes said she was later contacted by a nursing-home staffer to say her mother was alive and well.
The facility has been trying to get more protective gear, according to the head of a local health-care trade group. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday the state was seeking more gear from federal emergency stockpiles.
No Supplies Thus CDC Recommendation
Once again we can put a spotlight on the CDC’s cover its ass recommendation against wearing face masks.
There are not enough masks to go around.
The CDC’s recommendation is self-serving.
Still No Test Kits Either
More than 100 residents were in the facility when the outbreak was first confirmed a week ago. By Friday, authorities said 69 residents were still inside and 15 residents had been transferred to local hospitals in the prior 24 hours.
Life Care, one of the largest U.S. nursing-home operators, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Life Care said in a statement Wednesday it didn’t know how the virus got into the 190-bed facility, and that it hadn’t been provided test kits.
Meanwhile, There’s a State of Emergency in New York and and four new deaths in the US with 90 new US cases.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
EVERYONE needs to wear masks, IMMEDIATELY! Even if they are super cheap ones.
It’s not because masks are great at blocking viruses from entering your mouth or nose. The reason to wear cheap masks is because they are terrific at vastly reducing the infection radius of infected people. They block all the large particles from coughs and sneezes, and even many of the particles from normal exhalation. Infected people wearing cheap masks shed far less virus than they would with no mask.
Now this is the really important thing… We have no idea who is infected. Most infected people don’t even know they are. Most infected are asymptomatic (in fact, that’s what makes nCoV impossible to stop). This is why EVERYONE must wear a mask. For it is only when EVERYONE is wearing a mask that we can be sure there aren’t infected people walking around inadvertently shedding virus everywhere.
Why not at least ask the public to wear cloth masks or bandannas? We would all be far safer if EVERYONE simply tied a ripped piece of bed linen over their faces when out in public than going with nothing. Even cloth will vastly reduce the infection radius of people who are virus carriers, and since there is no way to know if you are infected EVERYONE needs to wear a mask.
It is utterly unconscionable that authorities aren’t even taking this most basic of actions to make it mandatory to wear a homemade cloth mask. Concerns over conserving supplies for first responders wouldn’t be impacted in the least.
I am also continually astounded by how the epidemic is being managed in the west, to the point where I am questioning if it is purposeful.
In Italy they have just ordered 20 million surgical masks, so maybe they will go that way, but so far there is no wide recommendation to wear masks in the west, often the opposite.
China got to that point, and it reduced their infection spread significantly. We probably will, too, but we will have to figure it out on our own.
Tuberculosis is measured in micrometers, coronavirus in nanometers. Size does matter.
“CDC does advise health care workers working with SARS patients to wear a special mask called an N-95 respirator. But even these masks offer limited protection from coronaviruses. The name of the mask says it all. The “95” means the mask, if properly fitted—and that “fit factor” presents a big if—can filter out particles down to 0.3 microns 95 percent of the time. (A human hair is roughly 100 microns in diameter.) Human coronaviruses measure between 0.1 and 0.2 microns, which is one to two times below the cutoff.”
Among reasons 0.3 microns was chosen as test criteria was that it represents the size hardest to filter. Wiki has a diagram on HEPA if you want to look up the different ways particles are stopped. Most virus will not be dry own size but in larger droplets, as well. Even if slightly less efficient for sub 0.3, it is still probably going to be not far below n95, it might even be higher.
I hear ya Anda, but they do dry sooner or later on a mask in use. Then, they are dry in original form. Just sayin, size does matter.
Note: I am an engineer, and definitely not a doctor, so take the following for what it’s worth. I’d appreciate any comments from doctors who happen to read it:
I have for the last couple of years been reading a lot of medical sources with regards to aging. One thing that happens as you age is that your white blood cell count decreases. Worse, many of those that you have are specifically committed to fighting existing diseases, leaving fewer T Cells which the body can train to fight a new infection. In particular, there are infections that the body can never eliminate, such as herpes and chicken pox, and every time the body encounters them, it trains more white bloods to battle them.
When you engage in fasting, the body runs short of critical amino acids, and so it turns to autophagy, looking around for cells that aren’t needed, and taking them apart. One type of cell that it takes apart are some of the white blood cells that are already trained. Once the fasting is over, the body replaces them with new, untrained white blood cells. In the process you rejuvenate your immune system, and end up more untrained cells, making your body better prepared to fight a new, unknown infection.
I based these conclusions largely on reading the work of Valter Longo at UCLA, who recommends periodic 5-day fast-mimicking diets. His daily diet is about 500 calories, with very low protein, and very low simple carbohydrates. The lack of sugars and simple carbs makes the body think it is fasting, and the lack of proteins forces the body into autophagy. Meanwhile, taking in a small amount of complex carbs and fats makes it easy to do, and eliminates many of the problems of full fledged fasts. He has a company, Prolon that sells pre-packated meal kits, but I’ve always just used normal foods in the same ratio of fats and carbs. For me a daily diet would include 1/2 a walnut, 2 celery sticks with a one oz packet of guac, a can of plain vegetable soup, 1/4 cup of steel cut oats, and a fresh vegetable dish, say 1 cup of butternut squash diced and coated with 1 tbl of olive oil, then baked, with salt/pepper/rosemary, or perhaps a cup of Bok Choy, stir-fried in a tablespoon of olive oil with garlic and ginger.
The only thing I can say for sure is that the five day fast is no big deal, and that I always feel good afterwards. Will it help me have a mild case of the coronavirus? I hope so, but I can’t be sure. I may do another one starting tomorrow, though. I’m also going to be doing aerobic exercise every day until this is over to get my lungs in the best possible shape.
Agree and good advice. Fasting has also shown promise with chemotherapy treatments (or rather, one of the outcomes of fasting, insulin depletion, has been used in chemotherapy).
Certainly worthwhile fasting for 5 or 10 days if you can manage it. t will also sort out (or go some way to sorting out) type 2 diabetes which, for MANY people, is completely curable as demonstrated by scientists from a UK university who noticed that people who had bariatric surgery often lost their diabetes during the recovery.
I saw a story on NHK ( Japanese TV) about how they’ve turned a homeless shelter ( they have them in Japan too) into a mini factory turning out cotton fabric face masks. You don’t need more than scissors a sewing machine and some elastic bands to make them.
This, I think, is the future. I think we will all be required to wear a simple cotton face mask so that if we have the virus, we will be less likely to spread the virus. If everyone has a mask on, every infected person will have a mask on, even when they don’t know they are infected.
True. Happen to know what the efficiency is of a cotton mask in viral spread compared to none? (It’s not a test, just curious. It’s for sure much lower than a P2/N95 mask.
N95 masks would actually not be very good at preventing you from giving the virus to others because they typically have exhaust vents so that when you breathe out, the air can be exhausted without pushing the mask away from your face. Thus, in the event of a cough, I would think that a fair amount of virus would escape through the exhaust port.
In this study the conclusion to my view is that in the relative setting (hospital) surgical vs n95 was of little difference due to main form of transmission probably being by other means there. It is not conclusive but underlines the difficulty in assessing practical advantages. How that translates to general population I do not know.
A part study on mask vs. no mask
EVERYONE needs to wear masks, IMMEDIATELY! Even if they are super cheap ones.
It’s not because masks are great at blocking viruses from entering your mouth or nose. The reason to wear cheap masks is because they are terrific at vastly reducing the infection radius of infected people. They block all the large particles from coughs and sneezes, and even many of the particles from normal exhalation. Infected people wearing cheap masks shed far less virus than they would with no mask.
Now this is the really important thing… We have no idea who is infected. Most infected people don’t even know they are. Most infected are asymptomatic (in fact, that’s what makes nCoV impossible to stop). This is why EVERYONE must wear a mask. For it is only when EVERYONE is wearing a mask that we can be sure there aren’t infected people walking around inadvertently shedding virus everywhere.
Why not at least ask the public to wear cloth masks or bandannas? We would all be far safer if EVERYONE simply tied a ripped piece of bed linen over their faces when out in public than going with nothing. Even cloth will vastly reduce the infection radius of people who are virus carriers, and since there is no way to know if you are infected EVERYONE needs to wear a mask.
It is utterly unconscionable that authorities aren’t even taking this most basic of actions to make it mandatory to wear a homemade cloth mask. Concerns over conserving supplies for first responders wouldn’t be impacted in the least.
I agree that it can come across as condescending and that bears further thought on my part.
I also agree that an infected patient can wear a mask and that will reduce their spewing droplets when they cough. An ironic benefit, not complaining though. However, most people, like tokidoki, and want the mask as a magic amulet, not to protect others. Who cares what the science says. Science is a Caucasian plot.
Nonsense, never thought of them as magic amulets.
Several quotes from Time magazine (read to the end):
“The science, according to the CDC, says that surgical masks won’t stop the wearer from inhaling small airborne particles, which can cause infection.”
“The CDC also does not recommend N95 respirators—the tight-fitting masks designed to filter out 95% of particles from the air that you breathe—for use, except for health care workers.”
It appears that you can’t read, the CDC is saying that surgical masks are useless in protecting you from getting infected (which I agree with), but N95 masks can definitely protect you. And here’s why the CDC does not want you to buy them: “but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!” i.e. there’s a shortage.
Surgical masks are still useful in protecting others if you have a sickness though. After all the recommendation is to wear one if you have a symptom and need to see a doctor. Now why would they ask you to wear one if it’s completely useless. Basically you are accusing our medical professionals as not being scientific.
Note that an N95 mask removes 95% of the particles. That means you still breathe the remaining 5%, and those may be enough to infect you. Thus, the N95 mask is reduces the odds somewhat, and if the odds are already in your favor, the N95 makes your odds even better. Thus, if you are in a negative air pressure room, there aren’t going to be a lot of particles in the air, and if you can reduce them even further with the N95, even better.
On the other hand, if you are in a crowded room, or face to face with an infected person, there are going to be a lot of virus particles in the air, and reducing them will probably not be enough. A mask, even an N95, does not make you invincible. It merely improves your odds a bit. If I have to go into a risky situation, I’d rather have the mask, but even more, I’d rather avoid the situation completely.
I think we’ll just have to disagree on this one. The CDC never said anything about “It merely improves your odds a bit.” N95 masks are effective if you wear them properly and change them frequently if you are in places like the hospital. Medical professionals go through a ton of these masks when it’s really bad. As I said before which the deniers can’t answer. If it’s so useless, why is it being produced? Why is the government hammering 3M to increase production. There’s stories in the Guardian too about nurses complaining about the lack of masks.
And note, my argument was not “masks alone will fix everything”, but more masks can help. At the very least if you are wearing the surgical mask, you’ll stop being a spreader or at least lower your chance of being one. But of course, this is America. Since wearing a mask is so inconvenient, better be a spreader. Convenience trumps everything.
Note the name, N95. It is designed to catch 95% of the viral load. The less you are exposed to, the better your odds, but you can be infected by 1 virus that is able to enter a cell and start replicating.
“If it’s so useless, why is it being produced? Why is the government hammering 3M to increase production. ”
Medical staff put themselves in front of direct exposure to coughed_droplets_. They often have no choice. They can’t run, or often even duck, away from a TB patient coughing in an enclosed room.
It’s a totally different exposure than walking through a half empty (American wide-aisled in particular) supermarket while actively keeping as much distance from others as possible. For airborne aerosols, it is darned near impossible, to maintain a tight enough fit to prevent leakage. Actual droplets, no matter how small, are much less likely to make it through labyrinthine gaps in the seal.
That doesn’t mean there is a guaranteed_no_, hard zero, possible benefit from wearing an N95 mask. But the specific exposure masks are far and away most effective at reducing, is one which is much, much more likely to be experienced by health care workers, than by a concerned, hence careful, “civilian.” So even if there were “no” measurable benefit for “civilians”, it would still be produced for health care use.
I think that if everyone reads all of your words and all of mine they will be able to draw appropriate conclusions. Good talk.
I noted at the local hospital that there was a sign that if you showed any signs of illness, the staff was going to put a surgical mask on you. That’s a very reasonable precaution. As I said, if this reaches a critical point, I can imagine a city not only imposing a quarantine, but requiring everyone to wear some kind of mask (for the protection of others, not for the protection of the wearer).
I agree, that makes sense.
Here’s a question for you, mrdata. Other than negative air pressure, what do you recommend for air cleaning? An air ionizier? UVC in the HVAC system? HEPA filtration? All of the above?
I haven’t really thought about the question in terms of Covid-19, although it comes up in my practice a lot in patients with other biologic contamination (eg mold). I tend to prefer HEPA as the ionizers make ozone and some subset of the population is sensitive.
You have to make sure the airflow engineering makes sense, eg the machine actually has the capacity for the relevant amount of air. I lack expertise in that.
That tells you nothing about Covid-19 though. I found one microbiologist saying that HEPA filters won’t work because they only go down to 3 microns. I found other citations for HEPA that it goes down to .3 microns though and respiratory drops only go down to .6. At this point I’m quoting Googling though (if the source looks reasonable).
As far as UVC, you wouldn’t be asking the question if you didn’t already know something. It appeared in a study to kill H1N1 in 2018. In another to kill SARS coronavirus (in blood products) in 2006. So it seems like it might be effective.
I suppose the devil is in the details, just like it is for N95 masks.
Yes, I know a little about this, but not enough to design a proper system. I already have some HEPA filtration, but my understanding is that probably doesn’t get small enough particles to catch the viruses. I’m iffy on that, though.
As for UVC, UVC kills every living organism, so yes, it will kill all viruses (and also damage your eyes, so never expose yourself to it). However, in an HVAC the air will be going by very fast. Sure, I can buy a bulb for $100 on Amazon, and stick it in the ductwork, but I suspect that the air will be flowing by it too fast, and only a small portion of the viruses will be destroyed as they go by. Furthermore, will the virus even be in the ductwork? A virus that is transferred via aerosol will be, but if it is transferred only in droplets, most will fall out of the air an onto surfaces, so not many will make it to the air ducts.
Meanwhile, the ionizer may well also destroy the virus particles, and the ionized air will go out into the room, and help to precipitate the virus faster (I think). As you say, though, it can also react with oxygen to produce Ozone, and ozone will react with moisture in the lungs to form hydogen peroxide (O3+H20=>O2+H2O2), which is not good to have in your lungs.
Thus, the my opinion at the moment is that HEPA may not help, UVC would, but only if you had a properly designed system, and only against the viruses that are transferred via aerosol, and Ionizers may help the most, but may cause other problems. Then there are other things out there such as electrostatic filtration methods that I know nothing about. Thus, I have more questions than answers, so I was wondering what is standard practice in the medical field. I figure that those systems are designed by people who know far more than i do.
I can look into that but I don’t know what hospitals do for this in these terms. My guess would be depressingly less than you would think.
Thank you for the reply. Given that viruses are always a risk in hospitals, I guess I expected that they have very sophisticated air processing systems to improve the safety for doctors and patients alike. I’ll probably just stick to putting UVC in the duct, and figure that it will cost very little, and might do some good. At the very least it actually improves the efficiency of the unit by killing mold that might otherwise coat your cooling coils.
HEPA (or ULPA) is about as good as we are likely to get in practical terms for the average person.
link to researchgate.net
Any basic HEPA filtration system can be added to in other ways that further increase efficiency – anything that collects or settles or decomposes the virus. However HEPA is the main step that drastically reduces virus loads as far as I understand.
The only benefit of masks for non medical personnel is they might make it a bit less likely you touch your own face. Touching your own face, nose & eyes is one of the more likely means of contracting it.
Let’s just send/mail all used masks back to the CDC..
The CDC intends to survive this. Your survival in the meanwhile is entirely optional. It’s not the meek that will inherit the earth. It’s the ones wearing masks.
Masked men enter a bank.
Everybody panics, then calms down, when it turns out to be just an ordinary robbery.
I’m seeing an ad on this page for a N95 mask, at bestogoods dot com. However, the material they list is Microfiber (MELT-BLOWN).
A fake?
No brand name (“diligently do” ?) , no markings, probably not niosh approved. It might still work or be up to standard…. or not.
I bet, the polypropylene for the filter is not made in the USA, but arrives at the factory in granules, likely from friendly places such as India. So the bottleneck goes deeper. It is unbecoming to have a supply chain in America, when you can just wait at the trough for a new supply of freshly printed fiat.
Mish, there aren’t enough masks to go around, and there’s neither good evidence nor biological plausibly to make us believe that wearing masks in public will actually curtail the spread of this.
If you want to hang it on the CDC that America is not prepared for this, that’s fine and probably correct. But not having excess capacity to put a useless mask on every American is not really the way in which we’re not prepared.
Meanwhile, hospitals like mine are starting to have trouble having enough masks for routine health care. I have a fellow doctor friend who works for a veteran’s hospital in Connecticut where they had a whole pallet of boxes of masks stolen.
I’m a big fan and mostly always agree with you and have no love for our government bureaucratic public health leadership. But I don’t think people should be wearing masks in public, and it’s not because the CDC is self serving.
ASIDE – NOTE ANYONE THE LINK BELOW (IN COMMENTS) HAS STUDIED ADVICE AND LINKS ON CLEANING MASKS FOR RE-USE
On the other hand it is known to be airborne, various authorities are advising a distance of two meters, and study shows suspension in air can be for a long time. I sympathise with doctors and carers, they wear masks for good reason, and not just to avoid infecting patients. These masks store very well, there is no reason there should not have been a stockpile for medical staff.
My point is this though, you cannot say to another not to protect themselves, even with all the good reasoning you have for saying that. Some other countries are requisitioning masks in existence, there is a logic to it even if I disagree, or bluntly they got there first. Yet others are buying out from poorer countries, so Italy received 400 000 from S.A. for example. In Spain there have been thefts, in some countries by staff.
It is chaotic.
In comments at
anyone will find advice on cleaning of masks for reuse , for if circumstance denies other options. Particularly there is advice on how not to clean.
I concur with thankyoumrdata. The masks, even if actually worn properly, are minimally effective for such application. Eye protection would also be required as that is another big vector of infection no one seems to consider. Frankly, even if a mask stopped infection for the wearer, you still have to take it off in the end and it would be a concentration point for the virus in environments of exposure. Your average person has no clue on proper protocol for such. Masks should be provided and worn by the infected to contain their exhaust of viral elements IMHO.
No, I get why everyone wants to wear masks. I’m a libertarian like Mish and I think people should do whatever they want.
The virus can suspend in airborne droplets, yes. There’s still not a good scientific case to be made that wearing masks in public will protect the public. It spreads by touch. I suppose if you were really good about wearing a properly fit N95 mask and had really good touch and hand hygiene and properly cleaned stuff when you took it off in a way that you didn’t infect yourself, maybe you would get through a sub two meter close encounter with an infected patient.
But the vast majority of people won’t be able to do this properly, so it’s irrelevant. Yes, the CDC was not prepared, but even if they were, it still wouldn’t make sense to tell everyone to wear masks.
If you think you are on the OCD end of the bell curve and can protect yourself in some way other than quarantine and social distancing, and so you want to wear a properly fit N95 or respirator everywhere nobody’s stopping you. But you’re probably suffering from the the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you’re special and I’m wrong, then sorry. It’s still not good public health advice.
Definitely people need to educate themselves on this, just donning a mask is more likely to lead to a false sense of security for many people, and even possibly higher likelihood of infection for that. The flip side to that view is that a mask is a permanent reminder to not touch the mouth, nose, and with glasses eyes. Me I’m in a circumstance of near complete isolation already, and I would feel very stupid if the few times I am in wider public I did not protect myself properly, and therefore those in similar circumstance that I might then infect.
Ossqss
Even cheap surgical masks will stop most expirated virus, and because people don’t know if they have virus or not, there is a case to be made that everyone wearing masks will stop the virus being spread that way ?
I would agree that people can wear a mask and accomplish nothing. As a virologist said, putting on an N95 mask and going to a crowded place is like wearing a condom to a bordello; nothing about it is a good idea. Yet, it is condescending when the medical community says “mask will do you no good” and then turns around and says “it is critical that we have masks”. Make no mistake, masks worn properly do provide benefit, which is why they are essential for the medical community. I would find it less hypocritical if I heard the medical community saying “masks will provide you some benefit, but only if you use them properly. nevertheless, we urge you not to buy them because without masks, our healthcare system is in jeopardy, so please allow us to have the masks we critically need”.
FWIW, I do have a few N95 masks, I have worn N95 masks many times, either for allergies, or for maintenance (dust) work. I do know that for virus applications it is essential that I fit the mask, and then not touch or move the mask, and that I should wear disposable gloves when handling it after being worn. I do have the capability to either steam them or to use UVC to sterilize them, if needed. On the other hand, my fiance is a PA, and I also recognize the urgent need that the medical community has for the masks. Also, I have a question, where would I wear these masks? I do not want to be in public anywhere I can avoid it, and having a mask will not change that.
As for the general public wearing masks, I think that one of the reasons why China was successful at bringing down their infection rate was that virtually everyone that went out in public was wearing a mask, not an N95, but a surgical mask. If every person is wearing a mask, that means every infected person is wearing one, and it means they aren’t spewing droplets into the air everywhere they go, and that, in turn, will reduce their chances of infecting people. Thus, once the infection level reaches a critical level, it might be a good idea to require everyone to wear some sort of face mask, not to protect them from other people, but to protect other people from them.
When hospitals are struggling to obtain masks, I can perfectly well understand the CDC advising against depleting what little supply there is, by “maybe, possibly, could be kind of halfway sometimes beneficial if you’re lucky” usages.
Whatever little benefit may be derived from wearing a mask, seems to accrue mostly from of keeping ones hands from ones mouth and nose. An effect which doesn’t require N95 material. (Medical staff benefit from N95 because they often have little choice but to put themselves in the midst of infected people’s coughs. East Asians stuck in the sardine-cans which are public transportation over there, may to a lesser extent be in a similar situation.) For those less directly exposed to direct coughs, a cotton bandana worn bandit style has the added benefit of being reusable and washable on boiling programs….
Anda, considering we know very little on the logistics of this virus, any containment of the sick transmitting it would be a good thing. There are some evaluations that suggest it can be viable on surfaces for up to 9 days. The difficulty is it appears many contagious folks are asymptomatic for a while (weeks potentially), so maybe there is a viable reason for many to wear a mask, but not to avoid the virus, but avoiding transmission of it in most instances from my shoes.
If someone does not have a predisposition or underlying health problems, it appears statistically, they should not fair badly to contraction as current active case rates are 86% mild and 14% serious or critical. That serious or worse rate has moved significantly downward over the last 2 weeks as has the death rate to 6% on closed cases documented. Granted, most of the info is generated primarily from Chinese data FWIW.
What a load of BS. No proof that masks are effective? People here seem to forget that people who live in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and even other major cities in China wear masks all the time and that seems to have played a part in slowing things down.
And of course, if face masks aren’t effective, why do medical professionals wear them? The fact that regular people can’t wear these masks properly is not the fault of the product.
This is another one of those “tell me when a Caucasian has died” BS.
We (I am a pulmonary physician) mostly just wear them so we don’t contaminate our own sterile fields. Rarely we wear them for droplet precautions in small negative pressure rooms with tuberculosis parents.
Correlation does not imply causation. Believe what you want
Exactly, masks are a made for purpose tool. The purpose is to protect the inflicted/involved from any other external impacting factor from those around them, by those around them, using masks. They are not gas masks. FWIW, they are typically one use items and don’t protect eyes, which are just as susceptible as an infection pathway.
Aversion, not masks, if the best way to avoid trouble.
I live in Florida. I built, and extended the resilience time-frame, on the required hurricane kit more than month ago this year.
Thank God you are not my physician. Then again this is the internet, anyone can claim to be anything. According to the CDC:
“Particulate filter respirators certified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that can be used for protection against airborne M. tuberculosis include
Diverting it from the automotive industry, the biggest user, is the least of the problems.