> China now makes 200 million face masks a day — more than twenty times the amount it made at the start of February.
That’s an insane number of masks.
Does one in seven Chinese wear a fresh one every day? Is this gonna be the new normal?
That’s an insane number of masks.
Does one in seven Chinese wear a fresh one every day? Is this gonna be the new normal?
Mask wear in Asia is common, for smog, smoke and controlling flu. The cheap ones don't last long, and often replaced instead of put through the wash. Common mask usage requires use of cheaper, more comfortable masks rather than the health care certified ones.
I think a lot of Asian people wore the cheap cloth ones. I have learned recently that these sometimes have replaceable inserts inside them.
Filters generally get better at filtering as they get dirty. A pore with a mountain of dirt/dust over it gets even better at only permitting gasses through. But that also means less and less flow, until you're letting nothing through at all.
I think the other problem for medical use is moisture buildup. A damp/wet/sweaty N95 doesn't let gasses through very well.
Wear creates and enlarges pores, and also, pores of the right size get clogged resulting in more flow over pores that are too large to filter.
And in your example, if pores are 0.1-0.3micron, and you have uniform 0.2micron particles hitting it, yes. But reality isn't usually so uniform.
Shards of glass will create more problems for the filter media than shredded N95 mask dust :)
A mask covered in saw dust will slow down and make a particle hit against the filter more turbulent = less chance of forcing its way through.
The normal is wearing them to protect others, not yourself.
Your temperature as well as your mask compliance will be checked pretty much at every venue/transportation/shop.
Source (in french): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQD_-2KI244
China can export those masks if they're not using them. Right now it's printing money. But even when this pandemic blows over, they'll still sell for a good price in countries without that manufacturing capacity.
Fortunately, the fires didn't happen, so I now have 10 masks, but I have absolutely no idea when/how the right time to bring use them is, and I'm doubtful that 10 would make the difference (my local healthy community is currently well stocked even if there's no available at retail).
Also to those wondering, the CDC says that, when worn correctly and while limiting adjustments, N95 masks can last up to 8 hours of continuous use for disease prevention. So yes, it's basically a 1-a-day thing.
EDIT: Forgot to add the citation
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/hcwcontrols/recommendedguid...
China doesn't hoard masks, but sends them to various countries that have been hit hard.
(EDIT: and I see the downvotes, and cringe inside that even humanitarian aid is seen as a valid target for anti China hate)
http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/447121O/filter-change-out...
Not to mention there a are only 8k active covid cases in China now.
Let's imagine you're a nurse at an ICU. You have two patients, as is customary for most ICUs. Every 15-20 mins you have to suit up, check your patient, unsuit, resuit, check other patient. Every 15-20 mins you are using two N95 masks. You do this 3-4 times per hour 24 hours a day. And you're just the nurse. You also have doctors, respiratory therapists, techs, and other people coming in and out of the room, all of whom will be disposing of an N95 mask.
In news footage of a drive through testing center, it appears that the nurse was wearing a surgical mask over her N95 respirator, and only discarded that surgical mask in between patients, not the whole N95 respirator.
She discarded her gloves too, they didn't show enough between-patient footage to show if she disposed of the blue (paper?) overcoat she wore over her scrubs between patients too.