The Hammer and the Mask - A call to action

The suggestion certainly fits broadly in with my current thinking. We simply cannot keep going as we are now. It is simply not sustainable.

I think wide/universal use of masks would allow more economic activities to resume. I think that needs to start being a focus (and can be without competing with a resources for getting treatments, vaccines and general sars-cov-2 research) I think this is an area where we do have slack that can be applied to the current binding constraint on "normal" economic life.

It doesn't need to be a complete solution right out of the box. For instance, the suggested masks could be used within the effort to increase the supply of the masks and improvements to them We might really want to have full face respirator masks that provide the eye protection as well as respiratory protection. If the first slice still includes some exhaust valves the second round can work on solving that -- mask with exhaust is still better than no mask.

With increased supply all those currently at risk but working in essential industries -- food production and distribution, power/utility/communications and some transportation (gas and oil) services.

As long as we have something that can be reasonable expected to produce the same level of spread as is occurring with the existing shutdown and social distancing we have a good zero start point. We can work on improving that and so allowing increased economic activity to follow. That starts getting us to the "good" spot. We can keep the economy going, keep people working, and getting others back to work. Debts get serviced. Perhaps at some point even larger social gathering can be supported (Think sports events without the beer and food maybe).

That happens while we are improving the the spread, keeping hospitals from being over loaded (and perhaps providing the health workers better tools for protecting themselves).

Now we can have a functioning economy and controlled infection spread so time to work on more difficult solutions (vaccines, treatments to cure/assist the body's efforts).

I think the more important point here is that we need to attack multiple problems here and they are not always competing for the same resources so are on the production possibility frontier. The approach we've been under doesn't quite appear to be doing that it's too virus-centric (and that was the critical starting point so not a bad thing, but we need to move forward).

Said one-way valve makes it mostly ineffective at preventing aerosols from exiting, and in addition coughs or sneezes while wearing a mask will force air out around the seal.

The filter pictured (yellow label) is appropriate for VOCs and acid gases- acceptable for working around untreated sewage, but water droplets will land on the filter media, evaporate, and the virus particles will be pulled through by inhalation.

The large variety in industrial respiration needs has resulted in a moderate variety of masks and a large variety of filters for those masks. The amount of education required to get the public up to speed on what they need to wear will be extensive, and there's still a supply problem.

The use of an exhalation valve means that the filter fails to capture some of the outgoing virus particles from the wearer's breath. Some types of N95 also have valves that cause the same problem. Depending on the positioning of the valve, maybe it's not a big problem? Or it might be easy to mitigate by covering it with cloth or something.

I bought a half-mask and several filters almost two months ago, and it's definitely easier and safer for my once-per-week shopping trip than a single use mask. I don't think that it's a particularly effective general solution though, for the following reasons:

1. All of these are sold out. To make more, you need to manufacture both masks and filters.

2. All the replaceable filters are sold out. The filters need to be sequentially rotated or otherwise disinfected.

3. Wearing one for anything more than 30 minutes is still quite awful.

4. Most of them have exhaust valves which still spread the virus to others.

In reading the comments here I see mention of both N95 and N99. It might not make any difference which is used other than the expected filtration rate (95% versus 99%)

But those filter materials may be something of a bottle neck too (and clearly do compete with providing masks to the medical workers.

We here that X distance between people is the acceptable social distance to be safe from spreading the infection. Current X is 6 feet but I think some have said 10 to 12 feet is still possible for the virus travel.

Anyone know of any studies or models that would allow some form of conversion between X feet and mask rating? The X distances has to be largely about gravity (but these are not parabolic paths but like leaves and feathers). Based on that we should be able to say something like at 6 feet we expect y% of the virus to reach you. At 4 feet y1 and at 10 feet y2%. My expectation would be y2 < y1 < y <<< Origin.

The interpretation I have for the mask is that we say y at any distance = mask rating (95 or 99).

So the mask filtration we could use would be the equivalent of 6 feet (or 8 or 10 or 12 -- whatever the number might be). Or is the potential problem that at X feet the expected exposure is so close to 0 we can call it that so even N99 would not be seen as a good trade off/alternative?

Alternatively, we might find that at X feet the expectation is that we're looking at 80% of the exposure to be reduces so an N80 mask filter would be equivalent. Then any filtration above that would be acceptable.

Is this more (or less) comfortable than cloth masks? I support any/all masks but my inclination is to focus on whatever we can get people to adopt. I doubt I'm doing what I can, including tweeting #Masks4All once per day https://twitter.com/thatMikeBishop/status/1246501797512056834