Comments on masks and Covid

 From an e-mail, name withheld.

"A little more on the masks. When you look at the size of the virus and the size of mask holes and what they filter, it behaves like mosquitos flying through a mesh wire fence at the baseball diamond (this analogy came from a friend that until recently was in charge of Covid at Walter Reed and assistant Medical Director). You might catch larger droplets. Only the medical grade masks like FPP2 and FPP2 and N95 mask offer some protection because the fibers are charged to attract the virus. I was riding the German bullet train last week and the public bus and they demand that you wear these medical grade masks because it does not seem to be a big secret anymore that all other masks are not very effective if effective at all. 

On my flight over to Germany, I sat next to an interesting Belgian logistics guy who heads up the now Belgian owned for eBay Logistics Unit.

He shared with me that he was the black sheep in the family because everyone else in the family were high powered doctors, like neurosurgeons etc.

So, I asked him about their take on the masks and the vaccines. His responses were rather interesting.

He asked me, if I ever heard of COVID spreading in an airplane and infecting the passengers. He said it is the perfect environment for tracking every person, where they sit, where they are from etc. And by the way, you constantly take your mask of for every drink, meal, cookie etc. I could not recall ever hearing about such a case and neither could he. The point here, which my German doctor friends also stated, is that only people with a large viral load infect other people through the air. And with all the testing and screening for the flights, it is not likely to happen, plus the high rate of air exchange on planes seems to prevent transmission. 

The second interesting comment was on the vaccine. None of his family members would voluntarily take any of the RNA messenger vaccines only the J+J vector vaccine or one of the traditional vaccines – I believe the so nick named ‘Texas’ vaccine is a traditional vaccine, but the US government rejected it because it was too cheap at $1.50 per dose and easy to transport – likely did not allow the bureaucrats to build empires. 

Peter