Comment: PPE looks cool. Be cool, wear a respirator, stay well.



There are people out there who say PPE does not work. Yup. Morons. Doctors and nurses wore masks all your lives to protect you from the disease of their other patients. That started when they delivered you. Now you too can also wear a good mask to stop the Delta variant from chewing out your guts, cell by cell.

Editor’s note: Meanwhile, former California governor and legendary film star, Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken exception to people who feel they can run red lights, and people who feel they can ignore mask-wearing rules in public places.
Most of the staff on this publication are medical professionals. It just worked out that way. We tell people in our other lives to do what is best for their health. Why? Keep them healthy. We also know viruses. We need viruses. They clean the really warped and shitty worst of bacteria and dangerous life forms from Earth’s biosphere. Let viruses do their work and you do yours. Ignore the anti-masker mentally-ill crowd including psychotic governors who drool when they speak, especially those killing hundreds of their constituents daily. Wear the best possible mask that you can obtain while staying up-to-date with your vaccinations and stay away from this renegade mutt of a coronavirus, while keeping SARS2 away from yourself. – Editor, Micheal


Humans, two-years-old and older can safely wear and should be wearing filtering face piece respirators. They protect the wearer and also protect people around them. How? They filter the virus from the air we breathe and they filter the virus from the air we exhale should there be any from a time before wearing an N95. If all you can afford is a home-made cloth mask, make a good one. Sharon Santiago explains how they are made.


 

Medical workers. File Photo. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine


Comment by Sharon Santiago


Some masks are much better than others. Use the best one. Wear an N95 or its equivalent for self protection as well as protection of others.

Filtering face respirators versus spit barriers.

Properly fitted FFR like the 3m N-95 or the Kimberly-Clark Corp. duck-bill N95  surgery mask protect the wearer from 95% of the  microscopic pathogenic particles one might encounter. Spit barriers do not achieve this result. But there are other cloth masks that work very well, not as good as an N99/N95/N94, but very well.

Professionals who meet patients or who meet many health care workers must dress like this below because they are responsible for working with people in contact with the COVID-19 disease and bear the greatest burden of responsibility to stop the transfer of infection. Why? because masks work. The face shield and goggles, according to several studies, bring from 95% to 100% the safety levels for the wearer if the equipment is warn correctly.

Face shields, goggles and the best possible FFR have protected the wearer and the public for over 100 years. Masks work. Today the FFR is the best it has ever been.

Now the public needs to wear them.

 


The really good cloth masks are reusable 3-4 layered unique fabric ‘inventions’

Cottage industry or home made masks with 3 or four layers of different weave cloth materials have a very good chance of blocking not only large amounts of toxic pollutants but also SARS2. Many artistic local businesses hand sew or machine sew these masks with very cool outer covers with cool prints, embroideries or custom logos or sayings.

These devices arguably fall into the category of filtering face pieces, although the crudest form. Highly effective FFPs tend to use five or more layers of material with an electrostatic capture region in the middle of the layers. These electrostatic layers are usually patented processes of manufacturing and differ from company to company. Getting back to the home-made multi-layered mask, your mask has captured and stored a fully active SARS-CoV-2 particle among other biological junk and antagonists. What are you going to do with that?

“There’s nothing super-scientific about this. The criss-cross of the slightly shifting layers of unique material never line up, hence they create a narrow passageway and trap particles that are very small. Not 1 micron particles, but larger particles are grabbed by this type of mask on inhalation and exhalation.  Clean them often but only touch the strings. Hand washing is required before and after touching one’s mask,” explains nurse Gracie Edwards who is a regional PPE instructor.

“These masks are great but must be managed carefully like any filtering face piece, because after one day of wearing they contain a plethora of bacteria types, parasites, viruses and toxic chemical particles. Once donned, never touch the mask, only the strings should be touched for adjustment or removal, once home. If we need to make an adjustment we must scrub-in again,” explains nurse administrator Michele Francis from Venezuela. “It’s a big deal to break sterility,” she added.

What that means is that sterility has been breached—pathogens have likely been transferred to the hands by direct contact with the filtering part of the face mask and are at risk of being transported to whatever those hands touch next.


There is only one solution in a sterile environment; leave; doff the mask and head gear (goggles, face screens etc.); wash the hands; sterilize the gear or replace with new pieces and do the full, unit-prescribed scrub-in procedure.

For lay people in social settings, carry a good hand sanitizer and immediately clean hands. Be careful not to transfer pathogenic particles to the bottle and then back to your hands. Put the cleaner on hand, pass the bottle to that hand, then administer to the other hand. In this way the bottle is cleaned as well.


So that is the story of filtering face pieces. Those are the best ‘masks’ against the delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The Spit and Spittle Barrier

Here’s another regime, the spit blocker or procedure mask. If every person on the planet wore a simple piece of cloth or an ear-loop procedure/surgery mask that stopped their exhaled droplets containing pathogens like the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the pandemic would be done by now. That’s a good theory.

These spit blockers protect other people. They may stop droplets and very large particles from entering the wearer’s lungs if they are worn properly to cover mouth and nose with the best possible seal. (Remember that most ear-loop masks do not seal well according to the US Centers for Disease Control.) They do not filter small particles down in  the 1 to 3 micron range or anything like that. That’s where social distancing comes in. They are spit barriers originally intended to keep the spittle from the wearer’s mouth, off the patient in the procedure room or the operating room.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, particles, these masks do not fit tightly enough and do not stop small aerosolized, micron-sized particles. The do stop the larger droplets.

What spit barriers can do may be worth their weight in gold. They can block droplets of fluid containing the coronavirus and theoretically stop transmission. But an N-95 can do that and more. The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is very much in the air as a deadly attacker. That can only be stopped with a high probability by an N-95 mask.

The NIOSH N-95 is an American invention and the American standard that has been adopted by the world a long time ago. Here is how to wear one.

 

1860S N95 Particulate Respirator Spec Sheet

 


The following video produced by the globally famous Medical Center of the University of Nebraska explains in detail how to don, doff, and limited reuse of an N95.


Wearing a medical mask does not take one away from a frontliner it keeps you off their dying patient list. One of many types of medical masks. It has straps that go around the neck and across the top of the head, not ear loops which do not fit well.
COVID-19 is a respiratory illness hence you must protect your respiratory system. Wear a NIOSH N95 mask outside your home & near anyone in your home who has symptoms or who is quarantined. This is true for all humans without exception. Learn to fit check & wear these masks. It’s your future. Wearing a medical mask does not take one away from a front-liner it keeps you off their dying patient list. Photo Credit: Melissa Hemingway.

Comparison_FFP2_KN95_N95_Filtering_Facepiece