Posted on 02/21/2021 4:19:09 PM PST by delta7
People called them “flu fences” and “chin sails.”........ During the influenza pandemic of 1918, officials often advised Americans to wear face masks in public. Doctors believed that masks could help prevent “spray infections,” according to historian John M. Barry in his book, “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.” Enforced by local health officials, the facial coverings grew routine. Often, Red Cross chapters fashioned and distributed the masks that were “seen everywhere and would become a symbol of the epidemic,” Barry wrote. Americans used the masks as a method of retaining some normalcy during a pandemic that killed at least 675,000 Americans and 50 million people worldwide. If directed to wear a mask, homemade worked. “Take a piece of gauze the size of a sheet of typewriter paper,” said instructions in the Atlanta Constitution. “Fold it twice, so that it will fit an envelope. Then attach strings to the four corners and tie these strings at the back of the neck. The mask covers the nose and mouth, so that the wearer breathes through four thicknesses of gauze. A clean handkerchief is just as good as the gauze.” Now, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is debating whether it should recommend that people wear masks when they go outside. In 1918, with a different virus, it didn’t help. Iowa’s State Board of Health reminded those sewing masks to add some “colored worsted [a type of yarn] or tape” on the part of the mask that would be the outside. The upper margin was to be drawn tightly over the bridge of the nose, right under the eyes. Masks were to be washed after each use, and boiled for five minutes before wearing again.....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Talk to the operating room nurses, they wear masks basically for bacterial spread, breathing exhaling directly over opened wounds. One batch I received specifically stated not for Covid or virus transmission.
I work in an operating room.
The purpose of masks in the OR is not and never has been the reduction of viral transmission. Viruses are too small to be stopped by a mask. The purpose of a surgical mask is to prevent transmission of large droplets greater than 5 microns (like if your surgeon spits while he’s talking) and to prevent surgical staff from being splattered by your blood.
The HVAC system of an operating room is designed to turnover all the air in the room up to 40 times an hour, so viruses & small particles are constant flushed out. This is the reason why surgical instruments can remain open & laid out on the table for hours during the procedure.
We know as OR staff that our masks are essentially worthless after about 20-30 minutes because they become saturated with our own exhaled water vapor and no longer stop anything. Case in point: I sneezed once and reflexively raised my hand to my face. I didn’t touch my hand to my face, just had it out in front. I still felt the wet sneeze in my hand, through my mask.
So OR masks are stupid. In Europe, only those directly over the surgical field (surgeon & scrub tech) wear them. The anesthesia personnel do not.
Any time I leave the OR for a break or whatever, I have to change my mask because we know they stop working after a short while.
COVID has changed all that. People wear masks for hours on end. It’s ridiculous and completely unscientific
LOL! There were distractions in college. (But LOVED Organic. )
It will stop a virus if it’s in a moisture droplet but the droplet will dry.
And from what I’ve read you are more likely to breathe it back in, increasing your viral load than breathe it out but it’s not like a mask traps the virus til it dies.
Did you check out the vape tape? Most of the air comes out the side and top if you are wearing a mask. But it still comes out.
Also have you noticed all these congress-critters talking with their masks on. They keep touching their face, possibly putting more available virus on their mask and breathing it in.
This mask stuff is all BS.
> Could it be surgeons don’t want to possibly infect patients with openings in their bodies to germs? <
That was my first thought, exactly. But are the lungs - with an opening to the outside - that much less vulnerable? I really have no idea. And that’s why I threw it out for discussion.
I don’t wear face diapers, but find it depressing to see the sheeple driving in cars with them on, walking down the street, last week even on the beach with a stiff 30 mph wind. So sad.
That is not true.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is 0.12 microns, influenza 0.14 microns.
The droplets your cough & sneeze are larger than 5 microns. A surgical mask only stops particles larger than 5 microns.
And N95 mask, which has to be fitted, stops 95% of particles larger than 0.3 microns. So even the N95s really don’t “work” against COVID
> There were distractions in college. (But LOVED Organic. ) <
Organic chemistry is like a Three Stooges movie. You will absolutely love it or you will absolutely hate it. There is no in-between. (Like you, I loved it.)
They teach people to shut up and do as they are told.
——————————-
Excellent observation, reminds me of my days in Saudi, every Islamic woman wore a face diaper. Subservient. Made me sick.
How many virus particles have to get through to cause an infection? What is the TCID90 of SARS CoV 2?
What is the particle flux reduction with a cloth mask? A Level 1 procedure mask? A level 3 surgical mask? An N95 mask?
Are you an expert?
Are you an advocate of everyone always wearing a mask to decrease the risk of getting a cold or flu?
Let me ask you:
How effective are these masks when, now during winter time, you can see your breath coming right thru them? Do you think viral particles are just passing right thru?
And if the mask is saturated with water vapor, viral particles exhaled by the magical “asymptomatic carrier” we keep hearing about are then being rebreathed by said carrier, thereby increasing their viral load & leading to them actually getting sick.
All of those BS is impairing otherwise normal immune systems. We know for certain bacterial pneumonia has increased with all this mask-wearing nonsense.
Rebreathing your own filth is unhealthy. I don’t need fancy graphs, numbers, and papers written by overpaid academics to tell me something that is otherwise common sense
LOL
you win the thread
Sky Dancer - we need more freepers like you. You’re not alone. A lot of articles don’t explain clearly why it may be the virus that gets you but it’s the baterium that causes the pneumonia.
Why is expertise required to look at the explosions in cases after mask mandates were implemented? Why is expertise required to look at nations where masks were all but ignored to see a lack of a lack of effect?
This site has absolutely lost the plot. Many FReepers are now censorious, paranoid, pedantic and desirous of unlimited restrictions on their freedoms by unelected bureaucrats or merely by persons informing on their neighbors.
Wear as many masks as you like in as many version as you like.
The debate isn’t about masks and never has been. It’s about free will, choice, the enumerated powers of each branch of government at federal and state level, the bypassing of the legislative process for a so-called emergency that has lasted more than a year, and due process or the lack thereof.
My company (Frontier AL) requested we get that pneumonia shot plus a couple of others. In this case I didn’t read through on the article regarding how the Spanish flu developed into bacterium then on to pneumonia. I’ve been corrected before and don’t hold any animosity when I’m corrected. Thanks!
“Everyone wore mask during the 1918 flu pandemic. They were useless.”
Silly wabbit, that’s cuz China wasn’t exporting face diapers yet...
/s
Oops, you are correct - I meant to say that viruses are much smaller.
“Put on the mask!”
Sorry; No can do.
I enjoy being able to breathe.
It did come in handy so I didn’t faint from the perfume an old woman was wearing in church today.
Proof is in the pudding. Do they reduce infection rate in real life?
No.
All else is BS. They don’t work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.