Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Jan 24, 2021 22 tweets 10 min read Read on X
SWITCH TO PREMIUM MASKS—I’ve been saying it for months. We need to switch to KN95, KF94, or European FFP2 masks ASAP. The new #b117 #COVID19 is just too contagious. Cloth isn’t enough anymore folks. Germany 🇩🇪 & Austria 🇦🇹 mandating on all public transits. washingtonpost.com/world/europe/e… Image
2) there are many masks that have 94/95% filtration... Image
3) N95 masks are more rare outside of hospitals because they are in shortage and needed by HCWs. You might find some NIOSH N95 from wood working, but note those are often not fluid resistant. ImageImage
4) Like Germany and Austria, in France, the country’s health advisory council on Monday discouraged the wearing of inefficient cloth and homemade masks, also arguing they may not offer sufficient protection against the more highly transmissible coronavirus variants.
5) of all the masks tested, N95 grade and surgical masks were superior this mask study. N95 class the best — they didn’t test KN95 but we know they are similar in filtration (but less perfect in fit tightness). But KN95 and KF94 and FFP2 all 94/95% good.

advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/e… Image
6) FFP2 masks (resemble KN95) in Europe are now $1.2 each these days ($2-3 before) after EU negotiated with manufacturers.

Also get this — low income families get these premium FFP2 masks **for free**!!!
7) Some call FFP2 masks “N95” on some boxes in EU. This was just 2 euros each. Made in U.K. 🇬🇧 as well as in Germany.
8) My favorite premium mask is the South Korea 🇰🇷 made KF94 that everyone wears there. It has a folding system that leaves more space for your mouth — so much that you forget you’re wearing a mask when you’re speaking! You can find them online.
9) Double masking (like Joe Biden when he traveled last year) also works. Or if you have a mask with a vent, wear another mask over the vented one.
10) There are also kids FFP2 and KN95 masks for better fit for kids too. Masks must FIT TIGHTLY or else leakage around nose bridge makes it less effective.

GOOD FIT == mask will expand when u exhale and push inward when you inhale. If your mask doesn’t, it’s too loose.
11) I honestly fiddle with nose bridge of a new mask a lot sometimes when i first get a new one— I press the nose bridge tightly first and then stick it on my nose to shape it. Pre press it then put on nose to shape it most efficiently. If you glasses fog up—there is a leak.
12) There are fake N95 / KN95 being sold right now. Just be careful. I can’t say which are real or fake but they do exist.

Staples and many major stores now sell KN95s. Presumably (?) they sell legit ones. I also directly order KF94 from S Korea & FFP2 from relatives in Europe.
14) To be clear, cloth masks do work too, just to lesser degree. And cloth is to catch your droplets more rather than be good inhalation filters. That’s why cloth works best when >95% of people wear them. But if many anti mask, then that is less effective.
14b) This was last week—they now mandating the premium masks in more places in Europe now. As result they are being given out free or subsidized to just $1.20 each in stores in Europe. We need Biden WH to DPA produce them here soon.
15) For more on the science of masks and an good detailed evidence thread, see this earlier 🧵 below.
16) Why do I care so much?

1 year ago today, I posted the “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD” warning to the world.

Hope it helped some folks keep their families safe. Please be careful everyone.

nymag.com/intelligencer/… Image
17) Why am I so concerned about #B117? Because many many models all show it will likely take over countries in infect and we lose buffer of what little containment we do half if it takes over.
18) Notably, the #B117 variant virus is such a beast—suppose we have 1000 cases/day now... with an R=0.86 we could reduce it to 500/day in 2 weeks.

➡️But w/ added contagiousness of B117 variant that has ~60% higher R, in 2 weeks, 3000 new cases/day instead—

6x vs old ⚠️ Image
19) UK 🇬🇧 former health minister now also urging mandates for premium masks on mass transit and shops. news.sky.com/story/covid-19…
20) What is the best source of premium masks? That would be @projectn95. Their masks are the most thoroughly vetted as authentic. And they are a nonprofit organization.
21) @projectn95 also fulfills N95 grade masks for both public and healthcare providers. Their email is listed below.

I receive zero commissions and not been paid in any way for this post.

@projectn95 is simply one of the best nonprofits.
projectn95.org/ppe-for-public Image
22) A reckoning of all the ways the Trump WH failed on PPE procurement and lack of sufficient mask production.

nytimes.com/2020/11/17/mag…

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More from @DrEricDing

Apr 10
It’s a trap: CATCH 22—if you register, ICE will deport you. If you don’t register, you’ve now committed a crime for the first time, and ICE will deport you. Trump doesn’t care if you’ve paid all taxes and followed all laws—ICE will deport you.

apnews.com/article/illega…Image
2) The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was mandating that all people in the United States illegally register with the federal government, and said those who didn’t self-report could face fines or prosecution. ***Failure to register is considered a crime***
3) Registration will be mandatory for everyone 14 and older without legal status. People registering have to provide their fingerprints and address, and parents and guardians of anyone under age 14 must ensure they registered. The registration process also applies to Canadians who are in the U.S. for more than 30 days, such as so-called snowbirds who spend winter months in places like Florida.
Read 4 tweets
Apr 3
Now economists know how scientists felt back when he pushed “hydroxychloroquine”
2) HCQ preventing COVID deaths has been debunked— and it’s now been linked with deaths.

@JoshuaPCohen1
forbes.com/sites/joshuaco…Image
@JoshuaPCohen1 3) JPMorgan on Trump Tariffs: “The largest tax increase since 1968” Image
Read 6 tweets
Mar 28
My god—Earthquake (a Richter ~7.7) causes a skyscraper to collapse in Bangkok. Hope all the construction workers made it out.
2) this skyscraper collapse was captured from a distant car’s dashcam while on a highway

3) another view of the collapse. For those who lived through 9/11, this collapse is a bit triggering.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 27
Welp—kiss public health & medical research infrastructure in America goodbye for the next 4 years. RFK Jr plans to cut 10,000 jobs from Trump HHS. Image
2) this will not make America healthy again… not by a long shot. So dangerous and irresponsible.
3) “Kennedy is set to announce Thursday the planned changes, which include axing 10,000 full-time employees spread across departments tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more”.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 15
SICKENING—Trump’s DHS just deported a surgeon from Brown University Medical School—who is here legally on an H1B visa that doesn’t expire until 2027, and has committed no crimes. Trained in the U.S. at Ohio State, University of Washington, and Yale as a **transplant surgeon** (one of the most difficult surgical fields in all of medicine!!!), she is a highly trained doctor on kidney transplants, which cannot be easily replaced. Her phone was seized at the border. A federal judge handed down an injunction against her deportation—but she was already deported on a plane en route to Paris. Brown’s kidney transplant clinic is now strained by her deportation.Image
Image
2) Full text:

PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she [has] been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.

The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.

Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.

“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”

He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.

Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.

“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”

A US Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson, Ryan Brissette, was not able to immediately answer questions about Alawieh on Friday evening.

Bayliss said Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut medical school and came to the United States for a nephrology fellowship at Ohio State University. She then landed a transplant fellowship at University of Washington and had a residency in the Yale hospital system before starting at Brown Medicine last July, he said.

“She’s really a very humble and able person,” Bayliss said. “She takes care of her patients. She is talented and thoughtful and a great addition to our division.”

Bayliss said Alawieh went to Lebanon to visit parents and planned to be gone for two weeks. He said she texted a colleague at 6:30 p.m. Thursday saying she was back in Boston, but then her family heard from immigration officials.

Dr. Paul Morrissey, surgical director of the organ transplant division at Brown University Health, said Alawieh works on getting people in Rhode Island on the list for a kidney transplants, and that’s a crucial job at a time when there has been a lot of focus on the need for kidneys and their equitable distribution.

He said Alawieh should not have had any problem traveling out of the country with an H-1B visa.

“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Morrissey said. “It’s putting a strain on our office. Her work has been exceptional.”

bostonglobe.com/2025/03/14/met…Image
3) There is a new Trump ban against many countries, including tourist visa bans against all countries in the red and orange lists. This list is still tentative. And it shouldn’t have affected people with existing visas, such and the Brown kidney transplant surgeon Image
Read 8 tweets
Mar 14
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… once upon a time, liberals did have our own “Leftist Joe Rogan”… his name was Joe Rogan…

Here he is advocating for socialized medicine, healthcare for all, and supporting labor unions to protect workers.
2) Recall, Rogan was once pro Obama and pro Bernie Sanders, and pro Yang Gang, and anti Trump. It’s sad he has since failed to the dark side. But like Vader… maybe he can be redeemed someday and come back to the light.
3) *Fallen, not failed (above).

Joe Rogan was also pro gay rights and pro DACA and pro helping inner city communities that suffer economic and social injustices. It’s sad what he has become. I feel we should try to pull & welcome him back someday. Everyone can be redeemed.
Read 4 tweets

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