A properly worn respirator is the most effective way to prevent infection and spread of COVID-19 disease.

The most effective respirator at a reasonable price is an elastomeric respirator with detachable filters. The best filter is N100 or P100. These filters are at least 99.97% efficient at filtering out the tiny particles that carry the virus.

Respirators are effective against all variants of the virus. They are also effective against other respiratory viruses and pollen.

The respirator should be NIOSH-approved.

Make sure you do a seal check each time you wear the respirator so that no air leaks around the mask.

Make sure the filter material doesn’t get wet because it won't work as well when it is wet.

Don't ever remove the respirator when you are around other people or are where other people have been recently. Don't even remove it to eat. Find a safe place to eat away from other people who might be infected.

(Image: A cop wearing an elastomeric respirator, lic. CC-BY-AT-2.5. Attribution: Ryssby at en.wikipedia)

@Pat I think we can agree at this point covid is here to stay forever... so whats the game plan for you personally, just wear a resperator for the rest of your life anything you interact with someone?

@freemo

If I get COVID-19, I'm mostly likely dead, so yes all those fuckheads who can't be bothered to wear a fucking mask in order to save the lives of million people are causing of all us who are old or immuniocomprised to have to continue to wear protection.

So what, exactly, is your motivation to want cause more people to die from COVID-19? Are you just sadistic? Does your Pfiser stock go up a half point every time a million more people die? Why do you want to kill more people?

Don't answer right now. Think about it. Talk it over with your priest or your rabbi or your therapist or your accountant first.

Then come back explain why it is so important to you to cause more people to die.

@Pat You could argue tthat about flu and other common diseases... there are always a rare few people who will be at high risk.

But again my question is, knowing what you said to be true, what is your end game here.. is the proposal that no 2 humans should ever interact again without a resperator? If the risk is so dire that means even sleeping with one if your married... is that the end game?

@freemo

We've had this convo a dozen times now. If just a majority of peolpe wore a respirator, the epidmeic would end and we wouldn't have to wear masks anymore.

But because of greed or graspingness or ignorance, those who control public health policy and the media want the pandemic to continue, even if millions more die.

@Pat But thats not how it works... if every last person wore resperators the virus would slow to minimal numbers, but then they would immediately spike again when people wore them... Compound that with the fact that we arent likely to get everyone tto wear them anyway the fact will remain no matter what we do you will always have the virus and always need the resperator.

So my question is this... if we all played along and you found out that what i said was right... the virus never goes away... whats the next step, take them off and let people die, or where them forever?

@freemo @Pat

This is actually not exactly true. Let's take the case of measles because it's spread through coughing/sneezing and has a similar R0 to current strains of COVID.

You don't go around seeing people with measles every day, right? That's because the baseline number of infections wasn't astronomically high as people were being vaccinated. There's breakthrough cases of measles, just like COVID post-vaccination, but it's not newsworthy and life changing because of the numbers.

Insert polio for measles if you'd like. It's quite a similar case study.

So, yes, as has been proven with many viruses previously, if the circulating number of cases were quite low, and a reasonable percent of people were vaccinated, it would be just like measles. It would still exist, but you wouldn't be surrounded by it constantly.

Now, will we ever get enough people to wear them and get vaccinated to test this out? Seems kind of doubtful.

Nuance!

@BE

Polio is much different than measles because it's not a respiratory virus, so it's much easier to control the spread with proper hygiene. The vaccines for each of those is much different because in nearly all cases the immunity lasts a lifetime.

fremo is right that COVID-19 is much harder to develop a vax for because it mutates so much. (But it mutates more slowly when there are fewer infections.) There is also the problem of zoonotic transmission, so eliminating it entirely in the human population is only temporary. But zoonotic transmission to humans is relatively rare so outbreaks from zoonotic sources after elimination would be more infrequent than outbreaks due to human recondite transmission.

Compliance to wearing respirators varies from country to country, but in the US, we have precedents for behavioral change, e.g., seatbelt wearing.

The problem we have is ultimately a problem with our culture and morals, not a disease problem. No matter what we do, if we don't change the culture, there will be a significant number of people who want to perpetuate the pandemic.

(FYI, you're much more likely to die from not wearing a respirator than you are from not wearing a seatbelt.)

@freemo

@Pat @freemo

I'd like to touch on a part of that. I'm never afraid to say when something is out of my scientific comfort zone. I included Polio because, traditionally, droplet transmission from sneezes and coughs are listed as a method of transmission. I know there's been a lot of work done, a lot by someone who's dipped his toes into qoto.org here and is recognized as an expert, into aerosols vs droplets. I've read a lot of his work and unfortunately I don't think he's active here at the moment, but perhaps he'd weigh in with his academic expertise.

@jljcolorado

Also, yes, less infections = less mutations. This is a real part of the problem.

@BE

The whole problem is that everyone trusted the "experts" and they let us down. They mislead us. And they failed to inform us.

If you want to understand how airborne particles circulate and how viruses survive on those particles and how respirators prevent those particles and virus from entering the respiratory tract, I'd suggest you read about the high-quality studies that have been done on those subjects and the physics of electrostatic filtration. Do this yourself rather than trusting what I or any other experts say on the matter.

@freemo @jljcolorado

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@Pat @freemo @jljcolorado

I definitely do my own research whenever I'm interested in a new topic. I absolutely understand how masks work(and, yes, they do) and would still recommend @jljcolorado and his work. He's one of the first "COVID is airborne" scientists and is a renown aerosols expert.

You can see links to his work on his page at that bird site if you would like. Same username as here.

As to experts letting us down, yes, that's largely why we're here, *but* not all experts. Largely just the ones who were, and still are, platformed the most and given the loudest voice. You should still listen to the ones who are telling the unvarnished truth to us.

@BE

You previous post was not clear that you were recommending @jljcolorado specifically or that he was an expert. It looked like you were just copying him as a previous participant in this thread. So my comments were not directed at him or anyone else in particular.

If you go back over what has been said by all those government officials on the COVID-19 task force, and nearly every "expert" that has appeared in old media, you'd be hard pressed to find any of them who have even used the word "respirator", let alone explained what they are or which ones are the most effective, or how to properly wear them.

Out of the hundreds of times that I've seen experts in government hearings or on old media news shows talking about the pandemic, I've only heard maybe 3-4 that have even mentioned the word "respirators", and I can only remember once (on a local TV station) that an expert explained how to properly don and seal-check a respirator.

@freemo

@Pat @jljcolorado @freemo I understand what you're saying and my : autocorrected to a .

I haven't turned on a local TV news station in well over a decade, so I can't really comment, but I can see exactly who gets platformed online and gets the loudest voice and I bet they're the same cohort of "experts"

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