The Pandemic since the last entry.
It doesn’t seem that long since March in some ways; in others it seems to have been very long. Really ashamed the USA has done much worse dealing with the pandemic than many third world countries. Amazing what a little organization can do. Perhaps the best example that it didn’t have to be this way is Taiwan, with other countries such as Vietnam not far behind. The West in general hasn’t done well. Also amazing is the callous attitude to the massive excess loss of life. Personally, I got very tired of the early refrain that the virus only kills old people, which turned out not to be entirely true. Especially moving was the very untimely death (not due to Covid) of Dr. Mary Fowkes, who happened to share my birth date: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/health/dr-mary-fowkes-dead.html
Her autopsies of pandemic victims indicated that the virus can leave all kinds of little blood clots throughout the body, including the brain. You could very well have a lot of latent damage even if you survive a bout of the infection.
There is also some indication that the CDC and WHO guidelines are inadequate. For example see:
Anyway, my personal approach has been that it is possible to stay reasonably safe even without the help of the government or a vaccine.
It’s now clear that early CDC and WHO safety guidelines were inadequate since they did not account for airborne transmission of virus particles in aerosols. In fact, officials argued vehemently against this and the use of face masks. If you searched Wikipedia articles at that time, they said that masks were useless, even during the 1918 pandemic. In a way, I can’t blame the anti-maskers if they did their research in March of this year and formed their opinions then and never bothered to test them against reality. In my case, I observed that the spread of the disease was much less in places such as Taiwan and South Korea and most of the Far East. The big difference was the use of masks. Other measures such as contact tracing are also crucial, something we never fully implemented in this country, quarantining, and testing. I cannot implement those measures, but I can control wearing a face mask for myself.
I think the 1918 pandemic eased up when enough people started wearing masks. The 1910 Manchurian pneumonic plague was finally controlled with masks and quarantine, as promoted by the brilliant Dr. Wu Lien-Teh. I am taking his advice, using a mask and staying away from people as much as possible. I am not a shut-in.
Back in July CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said that if everyone wore a mask for the next 6 weeks, we could drive the disease into the ground. (https://www.complex.com/life/2020/07/cdc-director-robert-redfield-says-if-everyone-wore-masks-pandemic-could-be-stomped-out-in-4-to-6-weeks)
He was probably right, although I would say at least an N95 mask, but unfortunately a good chunk of the population refused and now militantly refuses to wear masks. A mask serves two purposes, even if isn’t a very good mask. If you are a carrier, and we now know you can be asymptomatic and spreading the virus like crazy, it protects the world from you, and to some extent it protects you from the world. So if everyone were to wear a mask, there would be two barriers between you and a carrier. If not everyone is masked, there may be only one barrier.
The common wisdom has been that outdoors you don’t need a mask. However, what is the definition of “outdoors”. As an engineer I would expect some kind of spec. to define what outdoors means. If the air is stagnant and there are a lot of people around you, are you still safe? If you are downwind of someone and air flow is laminar, are you safe? My humble guess is that even a flimsy mask may work outdoors as long as the dwell time near someone is very short, as in seconds. But, I have no proof.
Indoors with a high dwell time with a lot of people, or even one, is a high threat situation. Besides washing your hands afterwards (I often wear disposable gloves) you need a good mask. Likewise, if you have any job with lingering contact with people, or even just with a lot of people, you need a good mask.
According to this article:
A really good cloth mask may be up to 79% effective. For my personal safety in a hostile environment, that is not good, unless maybe I am dashing in and out. If I have to go indoors, I use a 3M 6000 series mask with P95 or P100 filters (as or more effective than N95 filters). I had these before the pandemic for working in the shop around spray painting and saw dust, although I have to admit I was pretty bad about wearing them when I should have. You can still order these masks and filters from Amazon without restrictions. My understanding is that this is possible in order to keep production up. (Full disclosure: I own 3M stock, although I am sure not making any money on it.) Some masks and filters are controlled.
The problem with the 6000 series mask is that the CDC does not recommend it. It has an exhaust valve so it does not protect the world from me. To salve my conscience, I inserted a P95 prefilter inside the mask over the exhaust valve. For some reason, this actually made the mask more comfortable. I’d like to hear what 3M thinks about that. Most places don’t care about my using a 6000 series mask. If I still had access to N95 masks, I would wear those instead since they are smaller. I used to buy them at Home Depot before the pandemic.
The material that makes N95 possible was invented by the Taiwanese American scientist Peter Tsai back in 1995. N95 masks should have been easy and cheap to mass produce. There were mothballed production lines ready for this in case of an emergency such as the one we now have. Unfortunately, the government decided not to turn this on:
The government could mobilize for ventilators, which turned out not to be the game changer we were hoping for, but they refused to do anything about masks, and even turned against them.
So, medical personnel (as well as the rest of us) die for a lack of adequate PPE.
The best you can do now is to get a sort of CDC approved non-NIOSH approved KN-95 mask. You can check the CDC website at:
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/respirators/testing/NonNIOSHresults.html
For comparison, see NIOSH approved:
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/disp_part/n95list1-a.html#
One problem with non-NIOSH KN-95 masks is that they only have earloops which are not effective for getting a good seal. You might want to wear a mask over them which secures behind your head.
Amazon has a special webpage about KN-95 masks:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GCY8ADPEZ623KWSN
I am also experimenting with adding a P95 pre-filter to cloth masks that have pockets for fitler inserts, such as the OR mask sold by REI.
Non-3M N95 masks can be purchased at Amazon, but not by the general public.
So, in sum:
I try to stay away from other people as much as possible, farther than 6’ if possible. (When we could eat at restaurants outdoors, I ate by myself and only at places with really well-spaced tables or plastic dividers. I have been brainwashed into believing that the air conditioning systems in airplanes can be safe; unfortunately it’s the person sitting next who can get you if they don’t keep their mask on.)
I use cloth masks outdoors. If there is no one else around, I usually don’t wear a mask, but have one at the ready. I don’t tell people to wear masks since I don’t want to get killed.
If I have to go indoors, such as Costco or Home Depot, I wear the best mask I can get away with. If a venue looks too crowded for my tastes, I don’t go in.
I still go out to parks for walks if they are not crowded. There are a lot of parks in LA and OC that most people don’t seem to visit. There’s a blog for that coming up.
A side benefit of being paranoid is that I haven’t caught the usual colds or sinus infections that I normally get in the fall and winter.
Unfortunately, since I don’t have access to testing methods, I will only be able to tell if my measures were effective if I don’t catch anything nasty. It’s a shame the government hasn’t done more research into what are the variables that affect infection.
Dkikemi's Blog 
Leave a comment