ICYMI, the Biden administration is giving out 400 million free N95 masks. Here’s the offer:

Here’s what they aren’t telling you:

1. An N95 respirator will “work” for around 2 hours in a hospital or similar setting with filtered air
2. An N95 respirator will “work” for around 30 min outdoors

So if 200M Americans receive two respirators each, they get around 4 hours of protection. And that only works if the respirators are fitted perfectly with no gaps and people are trained on their use. And as we noted before, even if everything was perfect, you aren’t likely to get anywhere close to 95% reduction in virions (because of the size of the particles and the rate of airflow into the respirator), and even with such a reduction, that’s unlikely to make the difference between getting infected and not getting infected.

In general, N95’s are ineffective with respect to protection against viral spread. Randomized studies show cloth and surgical masks do nothing. Zero.

Not surprising at all. If you read the WHO 2004 “Laboratory Biosafety Manual” (Third Edition) it says, “Surgical type masks are designed solely for patient protection and do not provide respiratory protection to workers.”

So it’s not like we haven’t figured that one out 15 years before COVID. It says surgical masks do not work. Period.

Yet, here we are 18 years later and the CDC and medical community are still pretty clueless.

Consider this quote from highly respected UCSF infectious disease Professor Monica Gandhi in a story about the Bangladesh mask study (which, despite the headlines, proved that masks don’t work at all as I’ve pointed out before):

The study results prompted Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, to switch from cloth masks. “I bought surgical masks for myself — pink ones,” she says.

See? You cannot make this stuff up. It is unbelievable how uninformed the doctors are. Professor Gandhi uses protection that even the WHO says does nothing (and so did that Bangladesh mask study).

And you are taking advice from her?!?!

Check out how much better N95’s are compared to surgical masks:

That’s right. Anyone with a working brain can see N95 masks are not effective at all. There is no measurable difference!

More recent data suggests that the N95’s actually make things worse than the do-nothing surgical masks:

In short, the data shows that Biden is trying to help extend the state of emergency. He is spreading misinformation. If he were an honest guy, he would add himself to his own Disinformation Dozen list.

Look, if Biden, Walensky, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy were truly serious about stopping misinformation, they should just stop talking. It’s that simple.

Respirator options with P100 filters is what the industrial hygienists recommend

Remember when we used to listen to the experts in the field, the industrial hygienists? Heck, those days are long gone.

But here’s what they say…

If you are looking for PPE that might make a difference against SARS-CoV-2, the minimum protection you’d ever want to consider is a negative-pressure respirator with a P100 filter as I’ve written about previously.

But positive pressure is, for all practical purposes, estimated by experts like Tyson Gabriel to about 50x better than passive respirators. So if you are serious about PPE, you’d want a Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) with a P100 filter or better (like a P3 filter).

For example, you can get a respirator, a P3 filter set, and a PAPR unit from mirasafety.com for around $800 per person. That would be serious protection.

All of the serious PPE equipment is specifically designed only to protect the wearer. So after spending $800 for that protection, you would then be prohibited by federal law from wearing that on a plane because it only protects you; it doesn’t protect other people. You are only allowed to wear protection that the FAA “believes” protects other people.

So on planes, you are forced by federal law to wear ineffective protection that will not protect you or anyone else. If you violate the law, you will be arrested and not be able to fly again. Basically, they want to make sure you are not protected on a plane.

The whole masking on planes is completely silly. We’ve been effectively going “maskless” on planes the entire time since the masks required by the FAA do absolutely nothing. It has been pure political theater.

Newer PPE options!

There are some intriguing new options that are available which I haven’t had a chance to look into. This looks cool:

And here’s a less high tech solution:

I’ve asked industrial hygienists Tyson Gabriel and Stephen Petty for their comments on these options.

Engineering controls are the way to go to protect workplaces, not PPE

If Biden really wanted to protect people, he’d start talking about hierarchy of controls, using MERV 13 or higher filters in your HVAC system (ideally MERV 16 if your system can work with it) and tell people to adjust their HVAC systems for 12 air changes per hour.

UV technology for workplaces

If you are serious about COVID control, consider adding the Aerapy UVGI technology to your HVAC system and/or to upper sections of rooms.

Check out the Aerapy video on Tyson Gabriel’s site (look for “Whoa, check this out!”). The video talks about the UV system but also explains the hierarchy of controls (but the information on N95 respirators is misleading as we noted above).

These UV lights are an excellent way to make the air safe in commercial buildings. Tyson is a big fan.