The infectious disease Cov-19 continues to spread around the world taking an ever increasing toll of lives and suffering. Here in the United States the daily numbers of new cases is at its highest level ever while the daily death numbers are not far behind.
Without an effective vaccine to combat this disease the only tools we have to control the spread, to reduce the number of people getting sick are our own personal habits. We must change the way we live if we all hope to survive this deadly pandemic.
Now Cov-19 is a respiratory virus, it kills by getting into the lungs and destroying the fragile tissue with which we breathe. It spreads through the air, as an infected person coughs or even talks droplets of water are injected into the air, droplets containing the virus. Anyone breathing in one of those droplets is then likely to become infected, passing the virus on to others in turn.
The Covid-19 virus is in fact so contagious that under normal living conditions one infected person on average will infect about six other people. Those six will then infect 36 who will then infect 216 in their turn and so on. You can see just how rapidly this virus will spread unless we somehow reduce its ability to infect new victims. And to do that we need to change the way we live.
The best way to avoid becoming infected is to stay home, simply avoiding other people. Of Course that’s not really possible, even someone who is retired as I am still has to go out occasionally in order to buy food while for most people work is still a daily necessity. Therefore all of us must learn to practice habits that will reduce if not eliminate the chance of transmission of Covis-19. And recent studies have now clearly demonstrated that properly wearing a good face mask is the most effective tool we have to stop that spread when we are outside our homes.
Proper wearing of a facemask simply requires that the mask should cover both the wearer’s mouth and nose and that the material of the mask should fit snuggly against the face. What constitutes a good effective mask is more difficult to determine owning to the great variety of styles and materials that are being used to manufacture masks for fighting Covis-19.
To try to pinpoint some of the factors that make a facemask more effect researchers at Florida Atlantic University have been conducting a series of tests to evaluate the ability of different mask styles to prevent the spread of those virus containing droplets. As a test ‘subject’ the scientists modified the head of a manikin with a manual pump and smoke generator. By activating the pump a ‘cough’ was simulated producing droplets that traveled more than two and a half meters from the manikin’s head. This setup was then used to measure to what degree various masks succeeded in reducing the travel distance of the droplets.
Testing simple forms of masks such as a bandanna wrapped around the face or a handkerchief held up to the face it was found that the distance the droplets traveled was reduced to one meter for the bandanna and a half meter for the handkerchief. Closer fitting masks were found to perform much better with a cone shaped mask reducing the distance to 20cm while the best of all performance came from a stitched-quilted mask that reduced the spread to only 8cm. Basically it all comes down to a nice tight fit around the nose and mouth, the tighter the better.
The material that the mask is composed of can also make a big difference as scientists at the National Institute of Standards discovered. Testing the ability of a variety of materials to filter out the droplets, while still allowing air to get through so that the wearer can breathe, the researchers discovered a considerable difference in performance. Artificial fibers in particular performed very badly while the best performance came from multi-layered, tightly woven cotton cloth.
Based upon these studies it’s clear to see that the best performing mask for the general public would be a close-fitting mask made from several layers of tightly woven, in others words high thread count cotton. In fact epidemiologists estimate that the spread of Covid-19 could be reduced by as much as 80% if everyone wore such a mask whenever they went out in public. That means that instead of one infected person infecting six others they would on average only infect a little more than one person, simply by wearing a mask.
Which makes you wonder why, in the face of all of these facts has the wearing of masks become a political issue? How is it possible that some people are suing their government leaders and health officials on the grounds that requiring people to wear a mask is a violation of their constitutional rights? Are there really people foolish enough to fight for the right to get sick and possibly die?
The virus hasn’t read the Constitution; it isn’t capable of understanding the concept of civil rights. All that the virus is capable of doing is spreading from one person to another, making many of us sick while killing a few percent unless we take the necessary steps to stop it.
This isn’t a hoax; it isn’t an attempt to impose an authoritarian regime on freedom loving Americans. This is a disease, an old fashioned infectious disease like the Black Death, or cholera, or yellow fever, diseases that we fought with public health measures before we had any modern drugs or vaccines. As the virus spreads, as the case numbers in the US set new records everyday we truly are all in this together and only by working together sensibly can we get through this pandemic without a devastating amount of damage to our country.
