Experts at Mater Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, used a high-speed camera to test the effectiveness of various kinds of face coverings and they discovered that wearing a surgical mask or cloth covering limited the number of droplets that were suspended in the air.
But without any protection, their experiment revealed that aerosols could be propelled more than two metres and remain in the air for an hour.
The research was conducted by Dr Kevin Nolan, an engineer at the University College Dublin, and Ronan Cahill, Mater Hospital’s professor of surgery, and was carried out using two separate methods.
The first was Schlieren technology, a method which uses high spec mirrors and light to reveal the density of fluids and gages, as well as the speed and distance they can travel when someone breathes, coughs or sneezes.
Dr Kevin Nolan told a media outlet that they can see that large droplets descend quickly to the ground while smaller particles which can contain the virus linger in the air and he said that when someone with COVID 19 coughs or sneezes some of the particles carry the virus and others don’t, which is why he refers to it as Russian roulette.
As Schlieren technology doesn’t cover great distances, the team also came up with a method using high powered lasers to demonstrate how far droplets can travel and how long they stay airborne.
Dr Kevin Nolan said that their combined investigations demonstrated that wearing a mask had a tremendous impact on how far droplets could travel and he said that conspiracy theorists would have you believe that masks don’t work because the virus is so small and can travel through material, but that it’s a misinterpreted science.
The researchers also discovered that aerosols carrying COVID 19 could exit through the abdomen during keyhole surgery, potentially putting whole teams of medics at risk and they emphasised the importance of staff taking additional precautions when it came to carrying out laparoscopic surgeries on COVID patients.
Dr Cahill added that their findings had made it easier to picture precisely what’s happening within the environment when someone expels aerosols and he said that when you can see precisely what’s happening using the technology it’s extremely shocking now they have a different way of looking at it.
Unfortunately, if you’re going to catch COVID 19, you will. You can wear a mask, scrub your hands until their red raw, clean your home with bleach, clean shopping that’s brought into the home, yet you can still catch it.
And by the standards that they’ve mentioned, we should all have COVID 19 by now, as we all spent the first few months wandering around through mists of droplets lingering in the atmosphere for hours without masks on.
Sweden doesn’t have compulsory social distancing and they don’t appear to have a problem, but then that’s because they trust their Government.
And surely pubs should not be open at all, but it’s okay the Government believes that COVID only comes out after 10 pm, but if it’s lingering for an hour beforehand in the pub, that could be disastrous.
And what about those people that don’t have to wear a mask because of health reasons, what chance will they have? But then the masks have worked extraordinarily well so far in universities and now we have another lockdown, that’s worked really well, hasn’t it?
And people that live in China religiously wear masks, even before the COVID was reported, so why so much of the spread of it in China? But it’s funny how Sweden has done okay with no over the top constraints.
We need to build up our immunity against viruses like this. Not hide from it by going into lockdown and then coming out and hoping it’s gone, and so many rules just don’t make any sense, and yes, I do wear a mask where I have to, just like the rest of the sheep, but only because I don’t want to end up with a huge fine.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 