Replies

I’m amazed at “adults” that have no concept of the size of a virus particle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m part of a circle of family and related friends who ‘discuss and debate’ various issues via emails that get cc’d to all. Most of the group are both well experienced and educated and the topics are usually quite interesting. Several in this group are from the ‘medical field’ and when WuFlu started to become a thing (albeit still highly unknown), a bunch of this subset pontificated about a variety of issues and masks were one of those issues. It seemed like the prevailing view of the subset from the beginning was to promote the masks as a preventive measure. I’m not in the medical field but once they started to talk about ‘filtration’, I figured they had inadvertently swung on to what is at least part of my area of expertise. I promptly sent out a table of the opening sizes (pores) of different filters and approaches to cleaning air that gets breathed… and that was juxtaposed with the sizes of viral particles. I posited that since the pore sizes in masks were many times larger than the viral particles (as well as the face sealing problem), paper masks were totally useless…. and in fact it made matters worse since things that are supposed to work always give a user a false sense of security. No reply came to the information I put out. Then I gathered together all my own gas masks that have accumulated over the years (and that I sometimes have to wear in industrial environments) and took a picture of them…. there were about a dozen of various full and half face gas respirator masks with different filtration cartridges on them (some current and some out of date) that get used mainly when heavy metals and organic vapours metals are involved. I sent the picture out with a note that “if anybody is really concerned about WuFlu viral particles, this is what you need to wear since nothing else essentially works at all…. and as a matter of fact if you do have a concern, I’ll arrange for you to be fit tested for one of these at a local safety supplier and will do so at my cost.” This too landed like a quiet thud with nobody responding. At that point, I sent out a note saying “I see that I’ve made my case… I don’t want to ever hear about anything with masks when there are future occasions when we might get together.” And that was the end of that…. the topic has never come up again.