Urgent Petition To Keep RV Campgrounds Open

There is tremendous disagreement about the efficacy of face masks, and the design and handling of them is all over the map.  But countries that have traditionally used face masks on a large scale, seem to be fairing better than those who have no culture of using masks.  No strap on mask can stop all virus particles from entering your lungs, but reducing the viral load and, more importantly keeping you hands off your face, makes masks a viable tool to reduce exposure.  And masks are especially helpful in reducing the aerosolized particles from entering the air, when an infected (whether s/he knows it or not) sneezes or coughs.  

My wife has been experimenting with mask designs and she has come up with several that we have shared with family and others in our community.  If regularly washed, dried in a dryer, and properly handled as a potentially infectious object before laundering, they can be an aid in reducing the virus.   We don't go out in public with out one.  We don't have any reason to think we are infected, but on the off chance we are, we'd feel just awful infecting someone else.  

The physics behind the fluid dynamics of droplets is important because we need to have a basis for our decisions beyond just some doctors saying this is their experience in uncontrolled conditions. That is an opinion, not science. They have not done controlled experiments or case studies or statistical analysis. We might have better field experience after this surge in cases is over from case studies like this one. 

In the meantime we can't tease things apart with statistics either unless we can identify two populations, one which wore masks and the other which didn't, and that's the only significant difference between them. There are many other differences between the way east Asia and the West have managed this besides mask wearing.

A lot of medical personnel have fallen ill, even though they do wear masks and in theory they do wash their hands properly, and don't touch their faces. They are our front line heroes in this fight.

In the meantime my main point is that the CDC needs to treat us like grownups and rather than tell us that masks won't help us bc we haven't been trained how to use them, at least tell us that the data is uncertain and if you want to wear a mask here's how to do it properly. And this argument that wearing a mask makes you touch your face more is crazy to me. A mask is a great reminder not to touch your face as feels so unnatural. 

The 5 micron cutoff between aerosols and droplets is arbitrary and the issue the MIT research team is challenging. Their point is that there is a continuum of droplet sizes and gas puffs entrain and protect smaller droplets and can carry them much further than previously thought.

In any case, IMHO and as our good Korean Dr says, we should try to do whatever we can that can help stop the spread, including wearing masks if we have them. If we can keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed like in NY we can avoid what is happening in  NYC, Italy, and Spain. The life you save may be your own or a loved one's.