Higher doses of SarsCov2 at exposure correlate with higher viral loads and severe symptoms in animals.
The more virus you are exposed to the more severe your disease. (HINT: masks work to lower viral loads)
“I politely asked her to wear it and told her I was immunocompromised. She rolled her eyes, held the mask in front of her face without actually putting it on. She leaned across me to hit the button, even though there was another set of buttons on the opposite side of the elevator. This felt like a deliberate attempt to violate my personal space and ensure I knew just how unhappy she was that I asked her to mask. As time went on and more people bought into the comfortable lie that COVID was over, it became harder to access safe medical care. Fewer and fewer staff were complying with mandates; eventually mandates were dropped altogether in favour of “mask-friendly” policies.”
study on COVID-19 in auditoriums found displacement ventilation minimized infection risk, while natural ventilation had highest spread.
Masks, shorter events, and lower occupancy helped reduce risks.
“Several Bay Area counties have reinstated mask mandates at health care facilities to coincide with the beginning of respiratory virus season.
Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, along with the City of Berkeley, have all issued health orders requiring the use of face masks in health care settings starting on November 1 and continuing through March 31, 2025.”
“Just so people reading this know:
When you have covid, you exhale covid particles into the air. Even with just ordinary breathing.
Those particles can then float on the air for hours.”
“How is COVID-19 spread? When people cough, sneeze or talk, viral particles can be sent through the air and via droplets. Masking helps to prevent droplet spread, and keeping more than two metres apart and staying in a well-ventilated area can help to limit aerosol spread.
While not a predominant cause of transmission, COVID-19 can also be spread through objects contaminated with secretions from an infected person. The incubation period for COVID-19 — the time from exposure to developing an infection — is about two to four days with the current variant.”
COVID patients breathe large amounts of virus early on
COVID patients exhale high numbers of virus during the first eight days after symptoms start, as high as 1,000 copies per minute, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.
N95 Masks Nearly Perfect at Blocking COVID, UMD Study Shows
Researchers Found Even Lower-Performing Masks Were Protective
“The researchers also found that—in what might come as a surprise to many—cloth masks outperformed the specific brand of KN95 mask that was tested. Surgical masks brought up the rear in performance out of the four types, but even they blocked 70% of the virus, the tests showed. (To reflect the general public's use of masks, study volunteers were not fit-tested for their masks or trained how to properly wear them.)
‘The research shows that any mask is much better than no mask, and an N95 is significantly better than the other options. That’s the No. 1 message,’ says the study’s senior author, Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health and a global expert on how viruses spread through the air.”
