Suboptimal masks only provide reasonable protection when everyone in the room wears them, and when they are combined with good ventilation and air filtration.
An N95 mask will not provide complete protection in a highly contaminated environment.
In her 2009 lecture "The Fuss about Facemasks," PPE and pandemic researcher Prof Raina MacIntyre @Globalbiosec really lays out the systematic suppression of research about the superiority of *continuously* worn N95s compared to surgical masks.
The targeted wearing of N95 masks, as is current practice, is not effective.
*Continuous protection with N95s is needed for airborne diseases.*
I made some clarifications in the original version of this thread, and am now linking up to the rest of the thread.
WHO ignored all her research (references 3-5) in creating their guidelines:
Disease transmission is complex -- germs fall as they will, be they airborne or fecal or blood borne. If they get into your body and latch onto your cells, they can cause disease.
WHO recommended only surgical masks for HCWs in Ebola outbreaks. Yet lab workers get N95s???
Use the precautionary principle with fatal diseases.
After Doctors Without Borders (MSF) gave their HCWs N95s, no more of them got infected.
WHO continued to only provide surgical masks, and their HCWs continued to die.
Reading this thread from @dgurdasani1 is a bit like the scene from Jaws where the police chief is reading up about sharks, and yells at his kids to get out of the water.
Naive T- and B-cells have basically disappeared from the circulating blood in people with Long Covid.
These immune cells patrol the body, waiting to find as-yet unencountered foreign invaders, at which point they will activate and fully mature.
You need these cells if your immune system is to learn to fight off any new pathogens.
If these cells are actually gone, that would portend grave consequences for your ability to fight any infectious diseases that you have not yet encountered (and potentially cancers as well).
Y’all realize the Black Death spread all over Europe because the rich people wanted their imported goods. Trade must go on!
It wasn’t the peasants who were buying silks and exotic spices.
LOL, I never expected this tweet to gain such attention. It is a gross oversimplification, but it is only meant to bring attention to the fact that the expansion of trade along the Silk Road, after Marco Polo visited China, spread plague from China. It allowed it to pass the X
Once plague went past that red X, into Persia and the Middle East, the dye was cast for Europe. But getting across those deserts and mountains from China was not something that people did unless there were great rewards in return. It was also spread by war. Again, greed.