I was following a car, the car had smoker passengers. I could very distinctly notice the products they were smoking. Which suggests that the exhaust cabin air of a car could contain viral particles. Though unlikely, the air you breathe in your car could contain virus particles from the preceding vehicles. Be cautious, and wear your mask in your car as well.
I’ll just tell folks the dirty mask on my face is what I found out in my work shop hanging next to my grinder. Then I’ll tell them to get the hell out my personal 4-meter safe space…follow up with a couple of fake raspy coughs…
I just would recommend throwing the thing in the sun for several hours. At this time of year in southern part of US we can see 130 inside a car easily… that will do it too. Hot Car (90 min ) can work well for sterilizing clothing, masks, groceries ( non refrigerated ) and other items such as phones.
Other than this i recommend the 9 day quarantine… rather than screwing around with oven heating and UV- C , ozone etc. Do the later , if you dont have the time, or good sun light.
I ve have a boatload of metal grindings in my shop. I could just dirty up my mask a bit. of course you could find some soot in your fireplace or grill that would work well too. Put some coffee stains and blood stains ( or ketchup ) for good measure…
Your microwave oven may have a glass door so you can see your food go round and round, (a technique to try and more evenly heat food). Behind the glass is a metal screen with lots of little holes in it. The metal is what keeps the microwaves from coming through the glass and cooking you too. The microwaves can’t get through the screen because the wavelength of these microwaves are larger than the holes. I have had the unfortunate experience of discovering Sugar Ants in the microwave while my food was cooking. Water came to a boil. The ants where oblivious and unharmed, although they stayed away from the hot food.
I submit that viruses are somewhat smaller than ants, so microwaves will do nothing to them.
Chris,
Here is some data regarding UV-C light irradiation and its germicidal effect.
(typical UV-C wavelength = 254 nm, or 0.254 micron).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21058-w
or here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3292282/
An example taken from the first article shows minimum dosage of 2 mJ/cm^2 to effectively kill the virus.
It is not straightforward to translate the mJ/cm^2 into Wattage.
( UV Dose is the product of UV light intensity and time Dose is sometimes referred to as fluence
DOSE = INTENSITY x TIME= millijoules/(sec)(cm2) x time= mJ/cm2
NOTE: 10 J/m2 = 1 mJ/cm2 )
How does that translate to the light source Wattage? My example: 2 bulbs, total P = 16 W, radiation area A = 1 m^2. (interior of the box, which I painted with copper paint for max. reflectivity at short UV wavelength).
16 W = 16 J/s.
A= 1 m^2.
Dosage per second: 16 J/m^2 = 1.600 microWsec/cm^2 = 1.6 mJ/cm^2.
So, my light source should be killing germs in 1.5 seconds. I use it in the box for 300 seconds (5 mins).
Lets keep in mind that there is a need for eye protection at these short wavelengths (invisible radiation @ 254 nm).
Example taken from Amazon (see goggles type #, but, basically any safety plastic glasses should do – and for additional safety I would wear plastic sunglasses as well on top -like in strong sunlight). Plastic is an important word here, because glass might be transmissive at UV!).
A good UVC light source can be bought from ebay , like here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/UV-LIGHT-Germicidal-for-ac-HVAC-ultravaiolet-dual-lamp-duct-air-cleaner-DEAL/282721315297?hash=item41d380e9e1:g:jQoAAOxylpNTUWo2:sc:USPSPriority!07094!US!-1
Hope this helps.
-Peter
But, good point. these are designed to protect the wearer not the others surrounding… Its a high pressure solution for the wearer. but it would expel infection to those around them. This is not a good mask to wear to protect spread from the wearer. ( this should be noted - on its use )
There is no way we can have enough mask for every body plus have what the health care industry needs. In six months there just to much need ,this is jut bad.
Many, Many of us are:
- Starting to mourn the loss of our normal
- Just weary!
- A little short tempered
- A little anxious about lots of things, job, money, business, retirement, getting sick, and on and on
- Feeling - lots of feelings but we push them away thinking so many people have it worse than me I should’t feel what I feel. And we suppress our feelings
- Concentrating on details, lots of details
So, let’s just say I’m an idiot. I open the contaminated doorhandle at the local McDonalds, then scratch my cheek (much like a well-known-around-these-parts video star…he he…). How does that virus get from my cheek to my eye or nostril and thence to my lungs? Do they have little legs? Now, even though we’re assuming, for this exercise only, that I’m an idiot, I obviously don’t want any HB-19 virus on my person at all. But how would a virus travel on the exterior of a human body? Should we only wash our hands when we plan on picking our nose? Inquiring minds (I’m using both…) want to know. Aloha, Steve
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/29/ohio-dewine-trump-administration-mask-ruling-154378At issue was the FDA’s decision to allow emergency use of a Battelle system that decontaminates specialized N95 face masks, allowing doctors and nurses to safely reuse them. On Saturday, the FDA approved Battelle’s Columbus headquarters to sterilize 10,000 masks per day, even though the company says its machines have the capacity to decontaminate 80,000.
"The FDA's decision to severely limit the use of this life-saving technology is nothing short of reckless," Gov. Mike DeWine, whose state is home to the company that makes the technology, said in a statement Sunday morning.
DeWine said he appealed directly to President Donald Trump to allow broader adoption of the system, and Ohio's attorney general threatened to sue if FDA didn't act quickly to authorize more extensive use.
Peter, what about something like this, using led UV lamps?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07W7HSDPZ/
But, good point. these are designed to protect the wearer not the others surrounding.. Its a high pressure solution for the wearer. but it would expel infection to those around them. This is not a good mask to wear to protect spread from the wearer.You would want to save your N95 masks for when you were not infected, then change to something like a surgical mask or DIY fabric mask once you showed symptoms. Not ideal, since you would have a few days of being asymptomatic and spreading but I don't see a reason to ditch the more efficient N95 at the beginning phase.
Dtrammel,
No technical details are provided re: wavelength and dosage (mJ/cm^2).
One of the bullets states: STERILIZES ANYTHING IN JUST 11 MINUTES – Baby bottles, teethers, soft toys, or toothbrushes are fully sterilized in just 11 minutes – Convenient DRYING CYCLE also.
SO, I suppose, the 2 mJ/cm^2 levels are reached in 10-11 minutes. Probably would be OK, but would be good to check the claims against dosage produced by this device to make sure the critical germicidal level is reached.
-Peter
This is pure gold, no sewing required, all you need are scissors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSSyl3m9WLA
That’s how we will bet this virus, thank you.
Hi Chris,
Thank you so much for your prescience and analysis in forecasting the pandemic and the economy.
I actually arrived at the same numbers (i.e. 86% asymptomatic transmission) as the data you reported today from New Scientist, by deduction from the WHO’s claimed 3.4% fatality rate, as below:
Using Worldometer numbers, today’s actual CFR is 18% (30850 deaths divided by total recovered plus total dead), being the outcome of the number of cases who were infected 2 weeks ago (126,214 cases). On this basis, and if the WHO CFR is correct, there should only be 4,291 dead today.
Guessing that governments are less likely to be lying/unaware of deaths than numbers of infected, and doing a calculation from today’s actual deaths and the WHO CFR suggests there were actually 907,353 cases 2 weeks ago, including asymptomatic cases. That seems a realistic possibility, and gives a ratio of diagnosed to undiagnosed cases of about 14%.
Applying that number to today’s diagnosed cases (663,127) suggests there are actually about 4.7M actual cases worldwide today.
Also, if 3.4% of the world’s population does die in the next year before a vaccine, that’s about 265 billion people.
I hope this deduced conformation of 86% gives you some confidence to harden up the “Scenario A/B” model to extrapolate a clearer picture on the trajectory to herd immunity, and to try and come to terms with worst case extrapolated world fatality numbers.
Warmest regards to all.
Thought you might find this interesting.
https://youtu.be/SyIsLx4RJs8
Go to 8:30 and listen. EDIT: Sorry. 32:40, not 8:30.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322931/
I don’t know if this is the research to which the virologists in the above video were referring. But it quotes the same figures.
“Wearing masks outside the home in a reference period corresponding to the 2 weeks before symptom onset for cases was significantly protective against clinical SARS. Supporting the validity of this finding, there was a dose-response effect: by multivariable analysis, persons who always wore masks had a 70% lower risk of being diagnosed with clinical SARS compared with those who never wore masks, and persons with intermittent mask use had a 60% lower risk. Many persons who wore masks in the community did not use N-95 or similar highly efficient filtration devices, which have been recommended for use in the hospital setting.”
So. Yeah. We’ve known for a very long time that masks work very well to reduce community spread of coronaviruses. And that the only reason almost no one is willing to say so is that the global supply is catastrophically low.
Elastic for DIY masks: strips of old inner tyres (bike or car).
Very handy and can be used for many other tasks (2 rings from bike tire have has been holding light switch on my 10/22 for years, a bit fiddly to get on, but once installed works like a charm 
)
AKGrannyWGrit,
When people focus more on others or on a higher calling, and not themselves, they tend to be more energetic, happier (or less distraught however you want to put it), and more resilient. Focusing on what one can actually be doing everyday to the live the best we can can go a long way to having less stress, less anxiety, and increasing contentment.
There’s a time and place for focusing on and sharing feelings about things, but this can definitely be overdone and can easily become counterproductive. My sense is the more ‘advanced’ a society is, the less emotionally resilient the society is.