#n95 respirators

[pandemic-info]

Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review | Clinical Microbiology Reviews

Our synthesis of evidence from over 100 published reviews and selected primary studies, including re-analyzing contested meta-analyses of key clinical trials, produced seven key findings.

First, there is strong and consistent evidence for airborne transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and other respiratory pathogens.

Second, masks are, if correctly and consistently worn, effective in reducing transmission of respiratory diseases and show a dose-response effect.

Third, respirators are significantly more effective than medical or cloth masks.

Fourth, mask mandates are, overall, effective in reducing community transmission of respiratory pathogens.

Fifth, masks are important sociocultural symbols; non-adherence to masking is sometimes linked to political and ideological beliefs and to widely circulated mis- or disinformation.

Sixth, while there is much evidence that masks are not generally harmful to the general population, masking may be relatively contraindicated in individuals with certain medical conditions, who may require exemption. Furthermore, certain groups (notably D/deaf people) are disadvantaged when others are masked.

Finally, there are risks to the environment from single-use masks and respirators.

[feminist-space]

"Seminario cited the recent report, “Employer-Reported Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” that shows that the number of respiratory illnesses in the private health care and social assistance sector increased from 145,300 in 2021 to 199,700 cases in 2022, an increase of 37.5 percent.

...

As an industrial hygienist, Seminario was extremely critical that there were no experts in respiratory protection on the committee nor did it include engineers who developed ventilation guidelines. She believes that the HICPAC committee members are likely so opposed to respirators “because once you are into recommending respiratory protection, with that comes a full respiratory protection program from OSHA,” with penalties for violations.

An epidemiologist and consultant, Michael Olesen, echoed this, believing the changes reflect “pressure to remove liability from hospitals.” He added, “I take a very clear position that we should be having respiratory protection mandates in all healthcare settings right now.”

...

Many patients who spoke at the HICPAC meetings said they had gotten Covid-19 when they went to the hospital and that the new policies were keeping them from getting care.

Given that, Dr. Art Caplan, professor of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, previously told me that dropping masking requirements in hospitals is “utterly, completely, irresponsible.” Similarly, staff refusing to mask, even when a patient requests it, is a moral failure. “The first principle is, you must do what is in the best interest of your patient,” he said.

...

Several people were asked why they believe HICPAC is determined to water down protections. Consistently, respondents say, “to reduce liability.” Earlier in the pandemic, hospitals regularly tested patients and staff for Covid-19, and you could often tell where and how you became infected. Since staff are no longer masking and continue working when ill, and patients are not being tested on admission, you can no longer prove who infected you. Hospitals are the only ones who win in this scenario, absolving themselves of responsibility and liability."

[dionysiandragon]

wild that the first thing i get told when going in to a medical office is "you don't have to wear a mask"

as if I'm wearing a n95 respirator mask because "what if I have to" and not because I care about my health?

[willowreader]

Dame Sa  3.5%

@LongCovidHell

Sheep? Those who wear a mask are the total opposite! Despite mounting peer pressure, constant propaganda in the press, and government lies, we STILL stand up against forced mass infection of a SARS virus. Wearing a mask is an act of rebellion, not submission.

From Twitter (X) The only thing that is wrong with the picture is the man should be wearing a respirator (N95).

[wat3rm370n]

Public comment to CDC HICPAC committee November 2024

Infection control in healthcare.

My public comment to the CDC HICPAC Committee.

Direct link to my comment in the stream.

Direct link to the start of the whole comment period.

Day 2 of the meeting link, with another session of public comments then the vote.

I’m Chloe Humbert. Semmelweis is known for his campaign for hand washing standards. He was attacked by contrarians until his death. Today he is vindicated yet respiratory hygiene is the science denier flavour of the day.  It’s not okay that doctors and nurses are maskless and breathing directly on patients who then get infected. Now is the chance for those in positions to do so to set a precedent for deserved protection of worker and patient safety. To be on record giving evidence based practitioners something to hang onto.  We are going back.   The only question is how far back people in medical leadership are willing to sign onto. The announced incoming department of defense secretary is someone who said on national tv that he doesn’t wash his hands. We know what can happen because of what has happened before.  In the 1850s Florence Nightingale went to the Crimean War - a hospital in Constantinople. That's Istanbul now, and that situation was no Turkish delight on a moonlit night. She arrived at a British military base ATOP a cesspool where patients lay in their own feces among rodents and more soldiers died from infectious diseases than injuries in battle. Under Nightingale the place was scrubbed and she reduced the facility’s death rate by two thirds. We might go back further.  The Dark Ages was called that because society moved backwards from the technological advances that had come before. The fall of the Roman Eempire was marked by elites who only cared about the status quo; they could’ve developed a steam engine as far back as Heron in 15 BC but didn’t bother.  Going forward is a choice.  In an article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases & Preventive Medicine there’s a description of what happened back then. “In medieval times, hospitals were hazardous places, Epidemic infections killed large numbers of hospital patients during this period. Hospital infection and death rates were high. When a sick person entered a hospital, his or her property was disposed of, and in some regions, a requiem mass was held, as if he or she had already died.” Going backward is a choice.  We know better now. We use surgical gloves, autoclaves, disinfectants, checklists and yes, respirator masks exist. But big healthcare corporations don't wanna pay for that, they lock up PPE, force nurses to work without sick leave at hospitals, and make patients beg for reasonable accommodation.  Going forward is a choice.  Let this not be a case of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But a time when serious healthcare professional leadership takes a stand for sanitary conditions in healthcare, and makes respirator masks and the precautionary principle the standard of care instead doing with masks what would be like calculating whether you should wash your hands after the toilet based on age or health status.

[pokabrows]

If you can afford it now might be a good time to stock up on N95 respirators or invest in an elastomeric reusable respirator that you won't have to replace the filters in as often.

N5H1 (bird flu) has been transmitted to humans a bunch of times independently, most recently in Texas. So far it seems like the death rate is close to 50% so it's pretty scary. The concern is if human to human transmission starts. It will likely be worse than covid at least in the acute stage. Also like measles and tuberculosis have been popping up more recently.

So basically start getting prepared before people start panic buying. If demand ramps up more slowly and people start buying supplies early there will be more supplies for everyone. Plus you and your family will be better equipped. The preppers on reddit are already starting to prepare.

[doomer-diva]

Respirator Crusaders unite!!!

[pandemichub]

The Project N95 shop will remain OPEN until December 15th, 2023.

Reblog to circulate post on Tumblr

I'm uncertain if there's a way to save this non profit but I'd like to encourage us all to try. We already lost another this past year 'Body Politic' because they did not get the financial supported needed to continue, which included expansion to be able to operate well.

Part of building community and a better future involves investing. And we cannot hope to have resources, infrastructure and responses to meet the progressive derailing and degrading conditions and societies around us without doing so.

It requires time, energy, heart and sometimes yes, money. The more we put into projects like this, local and small companies, sustainability, kindness, deconstructing & decolonization and less of ourselves and resources into people, organizations and projects that do not care about us or are harming us, we actually have a road to the bright possibilities we hope and speak of so beautifully.

[ryanthedemiboy]

Mold will grow in your lungs. You often can't see mold before it can get into your lungs. Wear a respirator.

kids these days don’t know how lethal stagnant water is

[pandemic-info]

Re: Ask:

Your blog is one of the reasons I came back to Tumblr. Thanks for maintaining it! Would you mind posting reliable sources that you find on H5N1 , please? Don’t want to panic yet, but now that they found human-to-human transmission, should we?

Hey, thanks!

I just post as I organically see info, or seek it out as-needed, or what I learn in the course of my work — while trying not to be more focused on this than necessary. I'm glad it's useful for others, though there may be temporal and knowledge gaps. Like this one: I don't know as much about H5N1.

The latest I've seen are the articles about this case: US confirms first case of bird flu with no known animal exposure (bbc.com)

Yale News generally has solid info: H5N1 Bird Flu: What You Need to Know > News > Yale Medicine

If you already take layered precautions, you should be OK.

One question I personally had was whether H5N1 viruses (80-120 nm in diameter) are too small to be caught by N95 masks (which have a filtration efficiency of at least 95% for NaCl particles 100–300 nm in size.) USA Today actually has a nice Fact Check article about how masks work — in regards to COVID, but more broadly applicable and interesting:

TL;DR: yes N95s are also effective against viruses smaller than 300 nm.

Excerpts + more:

The size-based argument against N95 laid out in this claim assumes mask filtering works something like water flowing through a net — particles in the water smaller than the net opening pass through, while larger items don’t. But the physics involved don’t work like that at all. The COVID-19 particle is indeed around 0.1 microns in size, but it is always bonded to something larger. “There is never a naked virus floating in the air or released by people,” said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who specializes in airborne transmission of viruses. The virus attaches to water droplets or aerosols (i.e. really small droplets) that are generated by breathing, talking, coughing, etc. These consist of water, mucus protein and other biological material and are all larger than 1 micron. “Breathing and talking generate particles around 1 micron in size, which will be collected by N95 respirator filters with very high efficiency,” said Lisa Brosseau, a retired professor of environmental and occupational health sciences who spent her career researching respiratory protection. ... The N95 filter indeed is physically around the 0.3 micron size. But that doesn’t mean it can only stop particles larger than that. The masks are actually best for particles either larger or smaller than that 0.3 micron threshold. “N95 have the worst filtration efficiency for particles around 0.3,” Marr said. “If you’re smaller than that those are actually collected even better. It’s counterintuitive because masks do not work like sieving out larger particles. It’s not like pasta in a colander, and small ones don’t get through.” N95 masks actually have that name because they are 95% efficient at stopping particles in their least efficient particle size range — in this case those around 0.3 microns. Why do they work better for smaller ones? There are a number of factors at play, but here are two main ones noted by experts: The first is something called “Brownian motion,” the name given to a physical phenomenon in which particles smaller than 0.3 microns move in an erratic, zig-zagging kind of motion. This motion greatly increases the chance they will be snared by the mask fibers. Secondly, the N95 mask itself uses electrostatic absorption, meaning particles are drawn to the fiber and trapped, instead of just passing through.

Only one qualm about that article: it's from 2020 and at the time, based on faulty older science, it was thought that droplets were the big concern and that "there’s not a lot of evidence for aerosol spread" — we've now known for years that this is false: "SARS-CoV-2 primarily spreads through airborne transmission, which is mainly characterized by droplets and aerosols."

It's interesting that they quoted Linsey Marr in that Fact Check because: The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill | WIRED

And H5N1? I'm honestly uncertain, but found this: Aerosolized Exposure to H5N1 Influenza Virus Causes Less Severe Disease Than Infection via Combined Intrabronchial, Oral, and Nasal Inoculation in Cynomolgus Macaques - PMC (nih.gov)

[willowreader]

There are some good recommendations for masks in this article. There are many mask wearers who have protected themselves from not getting COVID even once. Masks work!

[wat3rm370n]

Of course universal masking & testing reduces hospital acquired infections from aerosol transmitted disease.

Pak TR, Chen T, Kanjilal S, McKenna CS, Rhee C, Klompas M. Testing and Masking Policies and Hospital-Onset Respiratory Viral Infections. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(11):e2448063. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.48063 In this study, stopping universal masking and SARS-CoV-2 testing was associated with a significant increase in hospital-onset respiratory viral infections relative to community infections. Restarting the masking of health care workers was associated with a significant decrease. Limitations of our analysis included a lack of concurrent controls, possible variations in compliance, difficulty disentangling effects of testing vs masking, and potential case misclassification. However, medical record reviews suggested most hospital-onset cases were true acute cases. Nosocomial respiratory viral infections remain associated with increased length of stay and higher mortality in hospitalized populations.2-4 Our data suggest that masking5 and testing6 were 2 potentially effective measures to protect patients who are hospitalized, particularly when community respiratory virus incidence rates were elevated.

I really feel like this study determined that the tub stopped overflowing once the tap was shut off and the drain plug was pulled. It does seem that obvious.

But I guess we need 10 more studies like this before supposedly educated doctors and healthcare providers and facility executives and public health officials wake up and smell the coffee and pick up the damn clue phone and actually do something about hospital acquired infections. Or we need to keep pressing elected representatives to be responsible for actually doing their job and stepping up to what it takes to face public health challenges with solutions that are both science-based and often obvious common sense.

[astrid-goes-for-a-spin]

If this post crosses your dash and you’re still masking, thank you.

If you’re not, it’s never too late to start. Do some research and order some N95s. And if that’s not affordable, check if your community has any mask-focused mutual aid efforts. Even if it doesn’t, there are numerous people on twitter who mail respirators to requesters all over the world!

does anyone else think it’s crazy how we just casually reference “the pandemic” now. i catch someone in conversation saying “during the first quarantine…” and as comfortable as it feels to hear and say now, there’s still a twinge of like…. i cannot believe we’re using these words in real life in reference to real events. this isn’t a scifi movie this isn’t a young adult post apocalyptic novel we’re literally casually discussing a global pandemic that ravaged the entire world and it was REAL ?

[pandemichub]

"Proceeds from the Project N95 shop and financial contributions from our donors are no longer enough to support our charitable mission. We have made the difficult decision to wind down operations and donate remaining inventory and funds in order to do as much good as possible with our limited remaining resources."