Best mask / face covering

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dbt1949
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by dbt1949 »

wonderpug wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 11:36 am
dbt1949 wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 10:29 am My body cut open and exposed to the room is different than walking around in Walmart.
The point is that you believe that masks will help prevent viruses going from the surgeon's mouth to you on the operating table. Doesn't it follow that masks would also help prevent viruses going from the mouth of a surgeon shopping at Walmart to you as you shop at Walmart?
Not to anywhere near that degree of susceptibility.

Earlier this year the doctors were saying masks don't help much. Now they're saying just the opposite. What's changed?
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

wonderpug wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 11:36 am
dbt1949 wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 10:29 am My body cut open and exposed to the room is different than walking around in Walmart.
The point is that you believe that masks will help prevent viruses going from the surgeon's mouth to you on the operating table. Doesn't it follow that masks would also help prevent viruses going from the mouth of a surgeon shopping at Walmart to you as you shop at Walmart?
No, scientifically it really does not.

I suspect you may be conflating particulate or bacterial infection and prevention with viral infection and prevention. And speaking in terms of masks, there's a world of difference between the two as pathology professor Dr. John Lee observed in his article for the Spectator:
Dr. John Lee wrote:To think about this in relation to face masks, you first need to have a handle on just how small viruses are. A human hair is about a tenth of a millimetre thick. A typical bacterium (such as the human pathogens E. coli or S. aureus) comes in at about one thousandth of a millimetre, so you could line a hundred up across the width of a hair. A coronavirus particle is about 10 times smaller still, so a thousand would fit across a hair. This extreme smallness was instrumental in the discovery of viruses in the nineteenth century: they were the infective agents, left in solutions that had been passed through ‘ultrafilters’ which had removed all other known pathogens.

So to filter out viruses effectively you need a filter with a very fine mesh indeed, even assuming that all the air goes through the filter. And you need to think about which way the air is going: breathing in (the idea being to protect you) or breathing out (ostensibly to protect others if you have the virus).

A recent study looked microscopically at pore sizes in low-cost facemasks of the types common in developing countries such as Nepal, made from various cloth materials. Here’s a sample they showed in the study.

They found pore sizes of roughly one to five human hair widths – the pore sizes got slightly bigger after washing. So in relation to viruses, these masks are doing little, except possibly reassuring their wearers.

The surgical-type facemasks, more likely to be used in developed countries, are a bit better. They have pores typically three times larger than the virus particles, rather than the one to five thousand times larger for the cloth masks. Better, but still not good enough to filter out viruses. A laboratory study by the Health and Safety Executive looking at influenza virus, which is a similar size to coronavirus, found live virus in the air behind all surgical masks tested. They tested masks on a human volunteer using an ‘inert aerosol challenge’ (a simulated sneeze), and on a breathing dummy head using a live virus aerosol challenge. The numbers of particles were reduced by a factor of two for the human volunteer, and six for the dummy head; probably not very effective in reducing infection when infective aerosols – the droplets emitted from someone’s cough or sneeze, or even during talking – may contain hundreds of thousands, or millions, of tiny particles.

But the thing to understand about this science is that those breathing-in factors represent the very best that could possibly be achieved. The masks were adjusted ‘in order to obtain the best fit possible’ and ‘the test subject was asked to remain still during the test’. Obviously, the dummy head was completely still – in real life this just doesn’t apply. Masks don’t fit snugly, people move all the time, the mask material gets damp and air gets around the side. What if you sneeze, cough, burp, sigh, yawn, or readjust the mask? What if you touch your face to ease an itch caused by the mask? More air gets round the side. The reduction factors in actual use, over a day rather than half a dozen measurements, are likely to be much nearer 1 – no protection at all – than those measured in the lab.

What does this mean in terms of protecting yourself when you breathe in? It seems very much along the lines of wear one if you want to, but don’t expect it to stop you getting the virus from aerosols – which are likely to have an important role in viral transmission, especially in crowded or busy environments. In other tests, masks are better at filtering out large droplets. But of course the real-life caveats of moving and breathing around the side of the mask also apply, and large droplets may settle on your skin, hair, and clothes, as well as the outside of the mask, and may get into the air when you take off your mask and coat at home, rub your face and put your hand through your hair after a hard day’s work. The mask may protect you a bit, but it may well not.

What about protecting others? Surgeons wear masks mainly to protect their patients from particulate and potentially infective matter falling out of their noses, mouths, moustaches and beards into a patient’s open wound. We’re talking about big particles here (human hair width) and bacterial infections, not viruses. Even for this situation, which is universally observed, it is surprisingly difficult to generate watertight scientific data about the effectiveness of surgical masks in preventing bacterial infections. For viral infections there is little data, but again, the pores allow viruses through and much of the air you breathe out goes around the side. When a person is infectious with a virus it is estimated that they may shed one hundred billion virus particles a day – that works out at about ten million per breath. A mask won’t stop you putting these particles into the air around you. In fact, with a damp mask you’ll be blowing aerosols and larger particles sideways, directly at your socially distanced colleagues two metres away. And if wearing a mask tempts you to feel that you’re not going to infect anyone else, you may also be less likely to observe the two-metre rule. So does wearing a mask protect others if you’re infectious? There’s little direct evidence to say that it does, and quite a lot of straightforward reasoning to suggest it doesn’t.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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Anonymous Bosch wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:05 am In terms of face masks that provide protection against COVID-19 for the wearer, the SonoMask from Sonovia Tech may be a useful alternative to N-95 respiratators:
Here's a nurse's review of the mask. She does recommend putting a strip of paper tape on the top of the mask (not just on the mask, but on all masks). There are also a few other videos she did (eg, Q&A, comparing it with a similar mask, making your own nose clip, etc). It does get a fairly positive review, but cost may be an issue (the price is steep for one mask, although the price does drop if you're purchasing several).

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Jaymon
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by Jaymon »

I just ordered masks from Vistaprint . The whole family was excited about designing custom masks. So we are getting one cat, on dog, one pokemon, and one Meh. May take 3 weeks, so I'll report back after they arrive, and let ya'll know.

If it goes well. I'll be getting custom masks for the holidays.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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Jaymon wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:52 pm I just ordered masks from Vistaprint . The whole family was excited about designing custom masks. So we are getting one cat, on dog, one pokemon, and one Meh. May take 3 weeks, so I'll report back after they arrive, and let ya'll know.

If it goes well. I'll be getting custom masks for the holidays.
We’ve ordered from Vistaprint too. Pretty satisfied with them and also bought filters to go with them. (Fiber filter pads that go into a sort of pocket in the mask)
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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I'd be tempted to make a mask out of a photo of my own face.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by Isgrimnur »

Social distancing is easy when you look like you have mumps.

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Last edited by Isgrimnur on Sun Aug 02, 2020 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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Blackhawk wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 4:29 pm I'd be tempted to make a mask out of a photo of my own face.
Enlarge Image
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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I think I'd want one of Groucho Marx.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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I wonder who will be the first to rob a store wearing their own face on a mask?
I think I'd want one of Groucho Marx.
Ive seen some neat face hugger masks.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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Or a Trump yelling mask.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by hitbyambulance »

i have two, purchased from an acquaintance - one with Space Invaders™ and one with algebraic formulas. the fit is kinda sucky so i'll probably make my own - best instructions i've seen are here: https://www.craftpassion.com/face-mask-sewing-pattern/

also looking for something higher end. have my eye on these, once they're back in stock: https://www.tombihn.com/collections/fac ... 3layermask (and it's a local company)
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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Study raises questions about efficacy of gaiters, bandanas, knit masks in stopping spread of virus
BostonGlobe.com wrote:Duke University researchers have developed a simple, inexpensive method to test how well masks stop people from spewing droplets that could spread the coronavirus — and their initial tests have raised questions about the virus-blocking efficacy of neck fleeces and bandanas.

“Some mask alternatives, such as neck fleece or bandanas, offer very little protection,” researchers said in the study, which was published Friday in Science Advances.

One problem in both cases was simply the thinness of the fabric, said Professor Warren Warren, a professor of physics, chemistry, and radiology who was one of the co-authors of the study.

He said a general rule of thumb is: ‘If you have a mask and you can see through it in the light and you can blow through it, it’s probably not a very good mask.” A knitted mask also performed poorly in the study.

The study also said that “speaking through some masks (particularly the neck fleece) seemed to disperse the largest droplets into a multitude of smaller droplets, which explains the apparent increase in droplet count relative to no mask in that case. Considering that smaller particles are airborne longer than large droplets (larger droplets sink faster), the use of such a mask might be counterproductive.”

The researchers were trying to determine whether masks blocked droplets from being released into the air, not whether they blocked the virus from coming in. Public health officials say people should wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus, and mask orders are in force in dozens of states.

“I think most people really want to do the right thing” and prevent the spread of the virus, Warren said. “If you’re really going to be trying to do that … you have to think a little bit more about what sort of style of mask you’re wearing.”

The study also offered some good news, finding that a paper surgical mask that was tested worked almost as well as a N95 mask in blocking the outflow of droplets, and a number of homemade cloth masks also did a good job.

“What we’re really seeing is that most of the homemade solutions, if you fit them right so there aren’t big gaps, they do a pretty decent job, working just about as well as the disposable medical masks,” Warren said.
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Jaymon
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Re: Best mask / face covering

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Jaymon wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:52 pm I just ordered masks from Vistaprint . The whole family was excited about designing custom masks. So we are getting one cat, on dog, one pokemon, and one Meh. May take 3 weeks, so I'll report back after they arrive, and let ya'll know.

If it goes well. I'll be getting custom masks for the holidays.
Arrived, quicker than I expected. They are comfy, for me. The Mrs was wearing adult small from another shop, but the adult small from vistaprint was too small for her. Its just about right for the teenager though. The child size is fitting the child passably well, he wears size 10 boys clothes, as an example.

The masks come with an adjustable thingy on the earloop, which is nice. The cloth is thin, and includes a filter pouch, but no filters. We tried blowing through the cloth without filter, and could not feel any air escaping. The mask has a sizable space between lips and mask, so its not touching my lips, which I really like.

There is a metal strip for bending over the nose, its a little thin, and I had trouble getting a tight seal. But thats a common complaint for every mask I have tried. If I blow in and out, the fabric of the mask sucks in and out, sort of like if I was puffing my cheeks, and it looks a little creepy.


Overall they are comfy, not too hot. 20 bucks for the customized version, but seem to be good quality. 7/8 tentacles, will be buying more.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by Blackhawk »

Xmann wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:31 am I have a friend that bought a couple from the Purple Mattress he says are very comfortable and breathable. They are sold out our I would try them out.

I bought a couple from Thompson Tee. They are a moderate priced t-shirt company, who I previously hadn't heard of. So far they are comfortable and easy on my ears. I might grab a couple more to have as spares.
I bought a few of these and liked them enough that I bought an eight-pack for the family. My youngest especially needs them at school, as they're long enough to wear his glasses on top of the mask to prevent fogging.
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by em2nought »

You mask-debaters are gonna keep it up until you can wrap your hands around the perfect specimen aren't you? :mrgreen:
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by Sudy »

I found a large size on Etsy with a wire nose insert that I like a lot. Only problem is it's a little loose, but I'm not sure I'm going to do much better without custom sizing. I also got some with around-the-head elastics, but these aren't too practical with longer hair and make for a fit that's too tight.

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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by Defiant »

Defiant wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 11:16 pm
Anonymous Bosch wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:05 am In terms of face masks that provide protection against COVID-19 for the wearer, the SonoMask from Sonovia Tech may be a useful alternative to N-95 respiratators:
So I got the mask some time ago (and like it). In case anyone else is interested, and has Amazon Prime, I noticed that there's a few Prime Day specials for the mask. (There's one version that's 30$ after coupon).
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Re: Best mask / face covering

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

I got a mask with horseshoe crabs on it yesterday, so I'm going to say that's the best one.
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