Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

I've using HDX N95's, which HD carries in store. HD also carries the 3M's although they were out when I was there. The HDX are on the NIOSH list.
For quicker on and off--like restaurants, where I never understood the point of wearing a mask to enter and leave, I have some Korean KF94's. Also for going into ski lodges, because it's tough to put on an N95 with a helmet on. And the KF94's fold flat to carry in the inside breast pocket of my jacket.

My understanding is that the difference between FDA approved N95's and others, besides going through the approval process, is that the FDA approved are fluid resistant. Am I right?

Apparently, glasses fogging is not necessarily a fit problem.

https://youtu.be/L3TBGDb6SnA

My worst problem is when my driving glasses are in my cold car.

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Originally Posted by oldnew_guy

N95 is “better” than a KN95 and not hard to obtain. I get no glasses fogging with an N95 because the fit is tight enough air isn’t escaping past my nose. Bands go around your head significantly reducing the back of ear fatigue factor.

No brainer IMO. Just avoid buying on Amazon or other online retailers full of counterfeit junk and check the numbers against the approved list.

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I wonder how crappy the Amazon ones actually are.

3M will want you to believe they are worthless, just like Northface wants you to believe their jackets are superior to the ones made in the Chinese factory next door.

Those cloth masks with a smaller filter insert are only as effective as how well that filter is sealed over your nose and mouth. If there's cloth all around for air to travel through, the air goes there instead of through the filter.

As for the approved FDA, NIOSHwhatever, it seems to be that currently only US made products have the full approval/certification. When we were caught with our pants down and nowhere near enough legit USA made N95 masks they gave temporary approval to a lot of Chinese made KN95 masks. Unless I'm working in a hospital setting around a bunch of COVID patients I'm comfortable with the Chinese masks that were on temporary emergency approval but are no longer on the list now that Murikan made ones are available for three times the price.

I do have a couple boxes of the legit N95 ones but saving those for the Ebola wave..

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

Apparently, glasses fogging is not necessarily a fit problem.

https://youtu.be/L3TBGDb6SnA

My worst problem is when my driving glasses are in my cold car.

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Good stuff. Nice short format from that guy, too.

Ironically, if you're wearing a mask to protect others fogging your glasses means it's working.

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Originally Posted by SumJongGuy

Those cloth masks with a smaller filter insert are only as effective as how well that filter is sealed over your nose and mouth. If there's cloth all around for air to travel through, the air goes there instead of through the filter.

As for the approved FDA, NIOSHwhatever, it seems to be that currently only US made products have the full approval/certification. When we were caught with our pants down and nowhere near enough legit USA made N95 masks they gave temporary approval to a lot of Chinese made KN95 masks. Unless I'm working in a hospital setting around a bunch of COVID patients I'm comfortable with the Chinese masks that were on temporary emergency approval but are no longer on the list now that Murikan made ones are available for three times the price.

I do have a couple boxes of the legit N95 ones but saving those for the Ebola wave..

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There are plenty of off shore produced N95s on the NIOSH list.

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Originally Posted by mcphee

Anybody use those outdoor research masks that you can insert filters?

I doubt they’re as effective as an N95 or KN95, but they have to be better than a cloth mask, right? They’re comfy, washable, and you can change the filters easily but are they just gimmicky?

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I was an early adopter of those, and have used them the entire pandemic. IMO they're better than most of the KN95s currently available due to the fit. They have a longer/better nose wire (zero leaks for me), and adjustable ear loops, whereas my KN95s have fixed loops that range from slightly too short, to child sized.

I'm sure the filtration is less because they're easier to breathe through, but all of the air is going through the filter as opposed to around it.

When I have to go into the belly of the beast, I wear the OR over a KN95 to plug the gaps.

this is what a paper written by economists rather than epidemiologists reads like

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/...d-19-lockdowns

Canada has two national newspapers. You can tell someone's political leaning by which they choose to read.

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Originally Posted by ticketchecker

this is what a paper written by economists rather than epidemiologists reads like

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/...d-19-lockdowns

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I got this far “ The Johns Hopkins researchers only wanted to study death rates: They discarded any study that examined the effect of lockdowns on hospitalizations or case rates.”

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Originally Posted by SumJongGuy

Those cloth masks with a smaller filter insert are only as effective as how well that filter is sealed over your nose and mouth. If there's cloth all around for air to travel through, the air goes there instead of through the filter.

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This probably sounds like nit-picking, but it works better than that. If you have a good seal to your face and the insert is large enough to go out a ways past your mouth/nose then the air is going to go partially through and partially around the insert. Obviously the air whose momentum carries it into the insert gets filtered according to the insert's ability and the rest according to the cloth. If that was 50/50 you'd get some benefit.

Further, while the cloth of the mask may not be a great filter, it's going to be a lot more effective when air is flowing parallel to its surface and at slower speeds--both of which happen as the higher resistance of the insert pushes air to the sides and spreads flow over a larger surface area.

For a given combo of insert material and fabric there are sizes (comparing their relative surface areas) for which the cloth portion will filter as well or better simply because the flow through it is so slow (IOW, the insert is big and most of the air goes through it). The path of least resistance doesn't just get everything if both paths are blocked by pretty small holes. It's when you have a much larger hole (a gap, leak, or super loose woven fabric etc) that the air can just go around the filter. Besides that, for a large enough insert the fabric might also do the same job as when using fabric to hold on an N95 sans straps.

I'm not going to quantify any of this, since it obviously varies anyway. And none of this is to say skip the better masks, just that where things like physical activity require a more comfortable fit that doesn't just leak at the edge if you move (and where the risk is acceptably low) these kinds of products are not as bad as the NIOSH-approved vendor's literature, legal disclaimers or safety training might imply.

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Originally Posted by bennymac

I got this far “ The Johns Hopkins researchers only wanted to study death rates: They discarded any study that examined the effect of lockdowns on hospitalizations or case rates.”

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eggzachary

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Originally Posted by ticketchecker

this is what a paper written by economists rather than epidemiologists reads like

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/...d-19-lockdowns

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Not just any economist, Hanke is an Austrian-school Hayek adherent, working for the Cato. Not exactly an objective observer.

And as a lit review meta-analysis I’m not sure it’s worth digging through the 61 pages of the manuscript. I’ll await the reviews of other academics.

I dont understand why people are still so angry about the lock down.

We had this deadly disease spreading and nobody really knew how it spread or how dangerous it really was. We didn't even have enough masks and other protective barriers for hospital workers. We didn't even have reliable tests, remember?

Didn't it make sense that we all stay home/social distance the best we could while the professionals (scientists) figured shit out a little more and we got capitalism to work on the PPE and test issues?

Sure, it wasn't perfect, but what else should have happened? I'm pretty sure the death toll would have been higher if we hadn't shut down. The death toll burden probably would have hit the lower income workers with less option way harder, too.

Its like nobody understands what novel means. It means everything we know about covid19 we learned starting November 2019 or whenever it first started, and the early data was coming out of China and less than reliable.

It just completely baffles me that people have a hard time with understanding why what we were told to do and not to do kept changing. Nobody knew.

Now we know a lot more but people are using when we didn't know as an excuse not to believe what we really know now.

Its really annoying.

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Originally Posted by mcphee

Anybody use those outdoor research masks that you can insert filters?

I doubt they’re as effective as an N95 or KN95, but they have to be better than a cloth mask, right? They’re comfy, washable, and you can change the filters easily but are they just gimmicky?


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I have a few we never used if you want them….

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Originally Posted by oldnew_guy

There are plenty of off shore produced N95s on the NIOSH list.

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The US has always gotten most of its legit N95s from China. The HD ones are on the NIOSH list and are made in China. NIOSH and FDA test N95's regardless of where they're made. (That doesn't mean someone couldn't counterfeit a mask that's on the list). They don't test KN95's and KF 94's--if you buy those you're relying on testing done in the country of manufacture.

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Originally Posted by mcphee

Anybody use those outdoor research masks that you can insert filters?

I doubt they’re as effective as an N95 or KN95, but they have to be better than a cloth mask, right? They’re comfy, washable, and you can change the filters easily but are they just gimmicky?


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I use them. Have a few. The one down side is the stretch ear-loop cord loses it's stretch after a month or two of constant use. OR used to sell a small stretch lanyard for $2 that makes these masks behind-the-head, fit was great with this, but like the ear loops it also loses it's stretchiness after a while.

mentioned before - but this was published today:

Pre-infection 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 levels and association with severity of COVID-19 illness

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0263069

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/942287

Patients with vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/mL) were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical case of COVID than those with more than 40 ng/mL.

Strikingly, mortality among patients with sufficient vitamin D levels was 2.3%, in contrast to 25.6% in the vitamin D deficient group.

The study adjusted for age, gender, season (summer/winter), chronic diseases, and found similar results across the board highlighting that low vitamin D level contributes significantly to disease severity and mortality.

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Originally Posted by bennymac

mentioned before - but this was published today:

Pre-infection 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 levels and association with severity of COVID-19 illness

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0263069

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/942287

Patients with vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/mL) were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical case of COVID than those with more than 40 ng/mL.

Strikingly, mortality among patients with sufficient vitamin D levels was 2.3%, in contrast to 25.6% in the vitamin D deficient group.

The study adjusted for age, gender, season (summer/winter), chronic diseases, and found similar results across the board highlighting that low vitamin D level contributes significantly to disease severity and mortality.

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Sounds like everybody should get out in the sun, instead of hiding at home binging Netflix.

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Originally Posted by Benny Profane

Sounds like everybody should get out in the sun, instead of hiding at home binging Netflix.

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Lol…this statement reeks of “Pokémon Go…to the polls”

Sure…soak up all that vitamin D outside during the winter when most of the country is covered head to toe. Probably has the same effect as windchill on a cooler in a rocket box.


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Originally Posted by ticketchecker

this is what a paper written by economists rather than epidemiologists reads like

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/...d-19-lockdowns

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If we’re talking about the US, we never really had “lockdowns” for the most part. Any mitigation efforts were voluntary and there was no enforcement of any kind so it isn’t surprising that “lockdowns” didn’t reduce mortality rates measurably.

I know there are some exceptions when it comes to enforcement and how draconian the “lockdowns” are/were but those are rare exceptions.


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Originally Posted by Benny Profane

Sounds like everybody should get out in the sun, instead of hiding at home binging Netflix.

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Not everybody emulates you Benny, some off us are outside most days


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Originally Posted by bennymac

mentioned before - but this was published today:

Pre-infection 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 levels and association with severity of COVID-19 illness

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0263069

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/942287

Patients with vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/mL) were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical case of COVID than those with more than 40 ng/mL.

Strikingly, mortality among patients with sufficient vitamin D levels was 2.3%, in contrast to 25.6% in the vitamin D deficient group.

The study adjusted for age, gender, season (summer/winter), chronic diseases, and found similar results across the board highlighting that low vitamin D level contributes significantly to disease severity and mortality.

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This study took all patents admitted with Covid and looked at their previous Vitamin D levels, rather than looking at patients with low Vitamin D and then seeing how many got severe covid. I never know quite what to make at studies like this that work backwards from disease to possible cause rather than visa versa. More importantly--only patients with Vit D deficiency had higher risk of severe disease, not people with low, medium, or high normal. The fact that low Vid D is associated with severe covid doesn't mean it is a cause. The low Vit D could be a marker for something else--for example low exposure to sunlight in someone who is homebound or in a nursing home or a poor diet with deficiencies in other nutrients besides D. Also, the fact that low Vit D is associated with severe Covid does not mean that taking vitamin D will reduce covid severity in someone who is not deficient.

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Originally Posted by old goat

This study took all patents admitted with Covid and looked at their previous Vitamin D levels, rather than looking at patients with low Vitamin D and then seeing how many got severe covid. I never know quite what to make at studies like this that work backwards from disease to possible cause rather than visa versa. More importantly--only patients with Vit D deficiency had higher risk of severe disease, not people with low, medium, or high normal. The fact that low Vid D is associated with severe covid doesn't mean it is a cause. The low Vit D could be a marker for something else--for example low exposure to sunlight in someone who is homebound or in a nursing home or a poor diet with deficiencies in other nutrients besides D. Also, the fact that low Vit D is associated with severe Covid does not mean that taking vitamin D will reduce covid severity in someone who is not deficient.

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Oh sure, trotting out the old correlation doesn’t equal causation bull shit…


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