Horowitz: Why masks don’t work in the real world

There is no place on Earth where masks seem to have even slowed the spread of the virus, which seems determined to cut through any population until the herd’s threshold of immunity is reached. This should not have surprised us.

How many people do you know who always wear their mask completely clamped to their face like a gas mask? Few people can afford to pass out after hours of oxygen deprivation. That, in a nutshell, is why mask mandates are useless against a virus, even before we investigate that the pores in the mask fibers are much larger than the virus itself.

Stephen Petty, one of the most experienced certified industrial hygienists and exposure experts in the country, sent me the following chart based on new research on mask filtration (Drewnick, et al.). It shows that if only 3.2% of the mask space is open, the effectiveness of the mask decreases zero

As you can see, with only 2% of the mask area open, 80% of the particles smaller than 2.5 microns will escape. Based on that study, Petty extrapolates that masks will be 100% ineffective at blocking particles so small when the open area reaches 3.2%.

What people forget is that, aside from the size of the pores in the fabric, very few people wear masks like they test in labs or on mannequins. As Petty notes, based on a new study of filtration leakage in masks made of 44 different materials, most of the seepage comes out through the sides because the molecules always travel the path of least resistance.

“Measurements with defined leaks showed that even a small fractional leak area of ​​1 to 2% can seriously deteriorate the total FE,” concluded the German study published in Aerosol Science and Technology last October. “This is especially the case for particles smaller than 5 mm in diameter, where FE decreased by 50% or even two-thirds.”

The study further explains that because “surgical masks and cloth masks never fit the face perfectly,” this is one of the main reasons why in studies of the filtering efficiency of masks under real conditions for surgical masks, “this is one of the main reasons. The efficacy is “significantly lower” than what we see in tight fitting N95s. It is also likely why filtration studies in a laboratory show some degree of efficacy, but no randomized controlled trial (RCT) has the efficacy of this masks against viruses, including 10 RCTs of flu and mask wear, as well as the Danish study of mask use for COVID Humans are not mannequins.

As Megan Mansell, a PPE expert in hazardous environments, explained to me:

This is what everyone got wrong from day one, or maybe what Fauci and others got right at first. The COVID conversation should have started with a minimum viable particle size under pressure, which is 0.06 microns for COVID particles. 90% of the exhaled particles are within the range of radically behaving particles / air particles.

What that means is that once particles are well below 1 micron (smaller than most bacteria), they can easily pass through and around the mask, float in the air for a long time, and travel well beyond six feet indoors. Once we found out that this virus was in the air and so small, it’s simply impossible to mask it and make a difference indoors.

Multiple virions can form a single particle cluster and still fall well below that threshold. So even if everyone were wearing masks correctly, enough virions would still escape to essentially make a mask that wears nothing but theater, which is why we find no real-world evidence of helping masks at all as cases become more common appearance. Michigan and fall to the lowest levels in a year in Texas and Mississippi.

My friend Emily Burns demonstrates this in a real-life example by exhaling cigarette smoke under a mask that was quite form-fitting. As she noted on Twitter, cigarette smoke is less than 1 micron, which is equal to or greater than 99% of virus-carrying aerosols.

In fact, brand new research has shown that 90% of the virions of this virus are smaller than 0.3 microns. There are 100 times more aerosols under 1 micron (usually significantly smaller) than over 1 micron. That’s much smaller than the pores on surgical masks, let alone cloth masks, not to mention the gaps around the masks.

In addition, the same study shows that at peak infection around day seven of symptoms, with the inflammation of the alveoli, the number of particles below 0.3 microns increases tenfold, while the larger ones decrease. This probably explains why asymptomatic individuals hardly spread and why masks are worthless when humans are most contagious.

We’ve been sold an illogical premise disguised as science – that masks somehow don’t protect you from inhaling someone else’s virus, but they do protect others from your exhalation. That’s the excuse given for forcing people who don’t like masks to wear them, even though the people concerned about the virus are free to wear them if they think they work. While masks don’t work against a virus that small in both directions, they are even less likely to stop your exhalation of the virus than inhalation. As Emily Burns demonstrated in her video, with a KN95, which makes you feel like choking on the inhale, the exhale seems to flow easily through the holes.

This is also why masking can potentially atomize the particles even more than people who are exposed. That could explain why almost every analysis shows more dispersion in places with mask mandates. As Megan Mansell explained:

Exhalation is the plosive outgoing release of respiratory gases and mucosal secretions along the airways. Exhalation pressure fluctuates based on a person’s overall health and level of physical exertion, as well as the oxygen saturation in the environment. More extreme changes in external pressure are associated with plosive force-generating events (sneezing, screaming, coughing, blowing, raspberry blowing), each of which is accompanied by changes in facial features such as mouth openness and cheek tightness that affect external pressure. The better a device is placed around the mouth and nose, the greater the pressure drop during general breathing and plosive force-generating events. About 90% of respiratory emissions fall within the radically carried particle range, which also includes the COVID virus particle range. The more the plosive activity is under pressure, the more force there is behind the plume.

So masking is a catch-22. Either the virions come straight from the sides and center or, in the case of tighter masks, the plosive force creates greater pressure behind the escape of small particles, which are even more prone to travel greater distances and linger for hours. That’s why, while N95s seem to perform well in mechanistic lab studies, they don’t seem to stop transmission from someone who is contagious in the real world.

Making medical grade masks mandatory has certainly not worked for Germany or Chile:

Stephen Petty sent me a map of his mask filtration presentation showing that the vast majority of virions are so large that they can float in the air for days.

Remember that the big drops that politicians and the media talk about tend to fall to the ground immediately and not travel far. There is no way they can account for this degree of ubiquitous transmission around the world. It must be the microparticles, which travel far in unventilated indoor spaces and linger for days on end, that cause the rapid dispersion. No mask has any activity against those particles.

It is important to note that it is the small particles most likely to end up in the deep lungs, not the larger droplets, which end up in saliva or throat and are swallowed rather than inhaled. Also, wearing a mask tends to force more people to breathe through their mouths rather than normal superficial nasal breathing, making them even more likely to inhale the particles that inevitably pass through their mask.

The public has been sold a lie about avoiding the virus by wearing a mask and staying two meters apart indoors. The reality is we should have focused on dilution and filtration systems for a fraction of the funding we spent destroying the economy. We should also have focused on early and preventive treatment with inexpensive drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine mixed with vitamins and zinc. But again, this was never about science or saving lives. This was about controlling our lives and making us slavish puppies for the ruling elite. The mask is the ultimate symbol and reminder that we no longer control our own body.

Editor’s Note: In the original version of this article, the beginning of the paragraph, “This is what everyone was wrong from day one … “was not attributed to Megan Mansell. This mistake has been corrected.