Wear an N-95 mask. SARS-CoV-2 is in the air.



Frontliners will not worry about PPE if there are no cases. Prevent yourself being the next case.

SARS-CoV-2 is in the air and may be in your cough as well.

This should concern everyone. COVID-19 is a respiratory illness. Wear a respirator mask.

The virus that causes COVID-19 is in the air—sometimes on its own and sometimes in droplets of moisture.

Distant-from-source airborne infection may not be driving the pandemic but it is an added risk say a number of studies.

SARS-CoV-2 remains pathogenic and viable for a significant period of time following its being aerosolized by coughs and sneezes of infected people of whom there are now millions.


by Micheal John



COVID-19 is very real.

From the lecture to nurses on the importance of PPE from the head of the RINJ Foundation the following warning is stark.

“It is a pathogenic single-stranded RNA virus (+ssRNA) and it kills patients at an infection fatality rate some four to ten times greater than than influenza. That varies by a community’s typical vulnerabilities (for example, in the USA the prevalent comorbidity is obesity) may increase as re-infections become more common in 2021 and the year after.

It may re-infect everyone and continue to kill a growing percentage of victims as it re-infects patients having CoV-damaged organs.

“It could be a growing percentage of fatalities because conceivably, as SARS2 re-infects a patient it is storming pulmonary and other cells in an immune system that is damaged from the first, second or third infection.

“The urgent fact remains that whatever it takes, this SARS2 virus must be stopped by any means. If it continues re-infecting the surviving patients and kills .6-.9%-?%-?% — survivors will become weaker and humans fewer with every course of the virus, until we are all gone.

“There are many things we don’t know. But in what we are saying today you will learn what we must be preparing for and know that the fight is on. We must beat this virus.

Don’t give it another host.

 

In the air

It can be explained this way. If while shopping, a person coughing at one end of the store, within minutes, can put a cluster of coronavirus into another person’s lungs many aisles distant, out of line-of-sight. That is what many researchers are now indicating. This also suggests that the “stay home stay safe” mantra is a perfect fit to the crisis. Save lives and do that, says The Nurses Without Borders on their website and during their patient consultations. They also say that:

  • “A nominated stay-home-family shopper wearing an N95 mask is common sense. Read on.”
  • “Wearing a spit barrier surgery mask is somewhat pointless for healthy persons. If you are sick, coughing and sneezing, please wear any mask, even a cloth mask if that is all you have.”
  • And add that, “Shaming mask wearers is reprehensible and both government and institutions doing this must stop the diversionary practice and apologise to their public.”

There are nearly half a million reported infections at the time of writing.  Millions more go unreported. It is hard to know where the virus might be but many people are spreading the novel coronavirus.

“In hospitals in Hubei province of China,” says Sara Qin, a Wuhan nurse, “the virus spread at first through even the ventilation system of improvised hospitals, we suspect. Health workers accumulated  very large viral loads this way, right into their lungs, we suspect. And that could explain why thousands of doctors and nurses became ill and hundreds died,” speculates the Chinese nurse.

At this juncture of the COVID-19 pandemic, for people in most countries, evidence indicates everyone must isolate themselves to be assured of denying the SARS-CoV-2 virus another host. Options are severely limited.

“Social distancing can come later. Using digital socializing for now is a safer option,” notes Sharon Santiago, a regional director of The RINJ Foundation.

“Get inside your home and clean all surfaces, washing your hands before and after you touch anything,” says Karinna Angeles, a health worker in the Philippines.

SARS-CoV-2 could be in the air mass previously occupied by sneazy people, now out of sight.

The aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus can be airborne for as much as 30 minutes after a cough. If that cough is in an air mass moving at a ground speed of 7 km per hour, the aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, if unobstructed, will be three kilometers or more from the person who coughed it out when it falls to a surface where it continues to remain viable for even days.

Determining these facts, scientists have reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that they used  a three-jet Collison nebulizer fed into a Goldberg drum to create an aerosolized environment. The virus remained viable. Numerous studies yielded the same conclusions.

Not only can a person not see the virus, it is also not possible to predict its location but people can control their own homes. That is why many countries fighting the COVID-19 pandemic have aerosolized water mixed with bleach and spray the air, streets and building walls.

 

(There are a number of EPA recommended disinfectants that are effective in fighting the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus which has a somewhat wimpy protein/lipid outer shell unlike most viruses which are hardier, says researcher Juan Leon, an environmental health scientist at Emory University.)

American Idiots — This is a respiratory Disease. Protect your respiratory System

These surgical face masks are useful for keeping the nurse's spittle off patients when speaking. Of no use to healthy persons seeking to protect against the SARS-CoV-2 Virus. These surgical face masks are useful for keeping the nurse’s spittle off patients when speaking. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine

The life-saving N95 mask (worn by politicians and diplomats below) fits tightly around the face and filters 95% of airborne particles, like viruses, which other protective equipment such as surgical masks/spit barriers (above) can’t do.

The N95 Mask
Philippines politicians wearing elaborate N95 masks greet China Ambassador Huang Xilian who has delivered medical PPE and 100K COVID-19 test sets. Since that time, Philippines civilians learned that the country’s health department has issued an order that the test sets should be used for VIPs. Photo Credit: China Embassy in Manila
Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine

This mask is what you need to be safe from COVID-19. Wear your mask each time you go out & when meeting two meters apart from people outside your family, like the White House staff. Thousands of people from various events that the US President has attended will need to be tested.

13 Dec 2024

Consumers do not go to hospitals and buy up inventories of N-95 masks. They (in the case of Canadians) got them at Canadian Tire. So stop the shaming, government, and protect yourselves, people.

Governments and the WHO failed to prepare for this pandemic and must not be allowed to shame, scare and blame the mask-wearing public which also needs N95 masks to go shopping.

Nurses say “You are not hurting us by wearing your masks.
Government should have prepared for SARS2. They didn’t even make a Vaccine for SARS. Wear N95 mask only. SARS2 is also a respiratory disease.”
Photo by AFP
Courtesy via, TheNursesWithoutBorders.org (Manila)
Art by Rosa Yamamoto

“Don’t let the World Health Organization and others shame you into believing you are killing frontline medical workers by wearing an N-95 mask when you are the designated shopper for your family, leaving your quarantined home, going to the market every week or two,” says FPM.news health care advisor Michele Francis, a nurse practitioner leading three clinics and a faith-based hospital in the Amazon Basin of Venezuela.

“Organizations like the World Health Organization and the US Surgeon General may be talking about flimsy droplet barriers or cloth masks that operating room personnel use to prevent their saliva and moisture droplets from falling into a patient’s incision. But it sounds like they are being vague enough to cover up the fact that they are ill prepared,” says Francis.

Circulating videos that try to shame wearers of respirator masks is elitist, misguided, disingenuous and reprehensible.

The World Health Organization should have inventories prepared for a pandemic with enough PPE  stores to respond at least to the outset of the pandemic until manufacturers can exercise the WHO plan for supplying the need. (Is there a plan?)

Blaming Joe Toolbox with his grinder and sachet of N95 masks is more than just inappropriate, it is scurrilous.

“Given that there is indeed a mask shortage and that medical workers absolutely do need these masks more, what should the authorities have said? The full painful truth. Despite warnings from experts for decades, especially after the near miss of SARS, we still weren’t prepared for this pandemic, and we did not ramp up domestic production when we could, and now there’s a mask shortage — and that’s disastrous because our front line health care workers deserve the best protection. Besides, if they fall ill, we will all be doomed,” said Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep), an associate professor at the University of North Carolina in a NYTimes piece on 17 March 2020.


Public shaming is reprehensible and irresponsible: Using Fear and Shame to cover up the fact that governments and institutions were unprepared for COVID-19, or any pandemic, despite an unequivocal responsibility. This is not something Dr. Tedros would do, it must have been an administrative faux pas.

FPMag has heard several accounts of persons being harassed because of a video published on Twitter, since removed, of a female person doing blaming and shaming of mask wearers whom she implied were killing frontline medical workers. At the same time, officials were complaining to CNN that they had seen March-break teens congregating in large groups without wearing masks. The latter is valid.

“This massive attempt at shaming civilians wearing masks is not approved by the medical community because that community ideally prefers patients not inhale the coronavirus. Correctly wearing fitted protective masks when the patient comes for an appointment is also preferred. As thousands of news reports have indicated, hospitals are places where even health workers are catching the coronavirus,” notes nurse Gracie Edwards from Syria.

“Protect me and protect yourself, wear a properly fitted, fit-tested N95 mask. You can wear the N95 that came with your Dad’s power sander if it is clean and still physically intact. In any case, wear a mask. we know this thing is in the air wherever people have been. It stays in surfaces for days and can blow around in dust,” added the seasoned nurse practitioner.

“Certainly stockpiling respirator masks  for profiteering is criminally negligent and recklessly endangers other persons. That would be a crime. Maybe that is what these fearmongerers are trying to imply?” ponders Simon Baldock a private security  analyst.

  1. Consumers do not go to the government inventory of personal protection equipment and buy N-95 masks. They buy them at the hardware store, in Canada at Canadian Tire, for wearing while sanding, grinding and using their electric saw. This did not imperil health workers.
  2. Consumers did not go to the WHO inventories of pandemic-reserve PPE to buy up the masks. Apparently WHO  which is blaming and shaming public mask wearers, did not properly plan for this global pandemic . The public is not to blame.
  3. Netizens are furious at the attacks on their attempts to stay safe. But of course the best way to stay safe is stay home. In fact that is absolutely mandatory because to do otherwise is playing a mortally dangerous game of Russian Roulette, no offence to Russia intended.
  4. Car owners bought N95 masks in the automotive repair stores for sanding and buffing auto-body repairs. They did not imperil health workers as the WHO social media blitz disingenuously tries to imply.
  5. Families bought N95 masks for wearing while they patch and repair the fibreglass on their boat and their swimming pool. They did not imperil health workers and may wear their masks. But they need to make sure they are properly fit-tested at each wearing and practice hand hygiene before and after.
  6. Consumers do not go to hospitals and buy up inventories of N-95 masks. They go to the pharmacy and buy them so they do not need to breath all of the 20µg/m³ of toxic particulate that some governments have allowed factories to pump into the atmosphere.
  7. Environmentally conscious consumers buy N95 masks because they do not want to breathe over 12µg/m³ of toxic particulate which is the case in almost all of the world’s cities.

These folks offer a helpline on WhatsApp. Image courtesy of The RINJ Foundation.

Government with their communities must be responsible for the safety of communities. Today, wearing a respirator mask is a matter of personal safety. “Each person is responsible for not allowing the SARS-CoV-2 virus another host,” say The Nurses Without Borders who are offering FPM.news readers a checklist.

  • Lockdown in your home. Stop touching your face and wash your hands. That simple.
  • Stay home and stay safe.
  • Do your grocery shopping by electing one person to perform this function strategically. They will shop alone.
  • Help that person protect themselves with a fresh N95 mask. If you have rubber gloves for cleaning, wear them and treat them as infected at all times. Do not touch your face. On returning home with the groceries, put them down and immediately, doff the gloves into a container of soapy water, shed your clothes for the wash and take a shower.
  • Distance yourself two to three meters from the customer in front of you when shopping and when checking out.
  • Utilize online shopping services where available but take care to wipe clean the packages when they arrive and do not attend with the deliverer but arrange to leave the cash under the mat and have them leave the package on the step. Alternative arrangements like prepaying should achieve the same goal.
  • Use curbside pick-up, delivery services, or go through a drive-thru. In some countries, use of personal automobiles is now forbidden.

 

A bar of soap and good hand hygiene is all you need. Watch the video above. Photo Credit: Source Supplied  Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine

Correctly wearing fit-tested N95 masks has value as a protective device. Learn how to do this correctly.

Fit-tested N95 respirator masks have value as a protective device against inhalation of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Learn how to use this correctly or Do Not Enter a Potentially Contaminated Area.

 

The life-saving N95 mask fits tightly around the face and filters 95% of airborne particles, like viruses, which other protective equipment such as surgical masks/spit barriers can’t do.

 This mask will protect wearers who have done a proper fit-test. Here is how to don and doff your N95 respirator mask, especially when you have been in high risk areas. Most commonly used for Influenza prevention, these masks are effective according to the CDC in helping to prevent the spread of Flu, swine flu and avian flu transmission from person to person. 

According to the US Food and Drug Administration,Respirators are commonly used in healthcare settings and are a subset of N95 Filtering Facepiece Respirators (FFRs), often referred to as N95s.”

  • They are tested for fluid resistance, filtration efficiency (particulate filtration efficiency and bacterial filtration efficiency), flammability and biocompatibility.
  • They should not be shared or reused.

The OSHA directive indicates that a respirator can be reused as long as it “maintains its structural and functional integrity and the filter material is not physically damaged or soiled.”

“But never touch the outside of a used mask say all health care professionals,” warns Dr. Anderson of The RINJ Foundation  “Many health workers spray their masks with a disinfectant for overnight storage in a zip-lock bag but this is contraindicated for safety reasons,” he added.


“Wearing this respirator incorrectly is dangerous. People don’t need the most expensive N95 models, they only need a fit tested N95 to get safely to and from the grocery store once per week,” cautions Dr. Anderson.

 

Correctly wearing fit-tested N95 respirator masks has value as a protective device against inhalation of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Learn how to use this correctly or Do Not Enter a Potentially Contaminated Area. Stay Home.


Indicated for most people who are in need of both self protection and protecting others, here is the 1860-N95 which works for street-wear 1860S N95 Particulate Respirator Spec Sheet