Dirk wrote:Courtside wrote:Further to the discussion on the lack of adequate N95 respirators, this is the CDC's own study on the possible needs in the case of a flu pandemic.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/60/suppl_1/S42/356585
The numbers are not counted in the millions, but in the billions. The large US population would devour millions of masks per hour.
They assume that surgical masks would be used only for patient intake and secondary protections - no civilian use - so those numbers come in lower:
So we're talking about hundreds of millions of surgical masks, and billions of N95 respirators, yet the stockpiles of either were somewhere around 1-5% of what these recommendations call for (depending on severity of scenario, vs the 39 million N95s that were apparently available.
Since we're going really in depth.
This is the UK's guidelines for health workers.
When to use a surgical face mask or FFP3 respirator
When caring for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874310/PHE_11606_When_to_use_face_mask_or_FFP3_02.pdf
Surgical masks or any type of mask that can stop the spread of droplets/breath should be worn by the public after the first wave if we want to get back to working. They are having success all over Asia wearing masks to stop the spread, in Taiwan each person gets 3 per week. It's not solely about protecting yourself with masks, it's to eventually stop people from spreading the virus and forcing it into smaller and smaller clusters as more and more people wear them.
In America you could easily shift society towards wearing them, all it would take is celebrities and a constant talk about it on the news.
For now the masks should be reserved for doctors and nurses, but as more of those people recover and potentially become immune the shift should be towards the general public wearing masks in the future. The vaccine is too far off, so something else has to take its place to limit future waves. And once the market sees a need for it they will ramp up production hard.
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