Ben Swann does a great job with outlining the data in this video.

What he doesn’t really do is explain the why.  All of this data is consistent with what I’ve said before.  The virus is approximately 80 nm in diameter.  In the simple little analysis that follows, I’m going to graciously assume that N95 masks are as effective as a nuclear grade HEPA filter.  That’s not true, not even nearly.  But this explains why not only N95 masks don’t work to filter viruses, but not even HEPA filters will.

Most of the HEPA filters available for industrial use are nuclear grade HEPA filters, which remove particles to 0.3 µm in size (more efficient HEPA filters are available but for our purposes only in use for manned space flight).  This means that a SARS-CoV-2 virus is 80E-9 / 0.3E-6 = 0.27 the minimum size necessary for even the most expensive nuclear grade HEPA filters to remove it from an air stream.

It’s no more complicated than that.  Oh, one can assume that the virus is bound within a droplet, and I can respond with the engineering of moisture behavior and reentrainment in the air stream, but that’s wasteful of effort.  You will never be able to demonstrate that moisture remains captured on filter media (charcoal filters are another story, but even there, moisture becomes reentrained in the air stream after some period of time).

You may as well try to catch mosquitoes with a chain link fence.  The masks aren’t helping you.

PJM.

Last week, a new peer-reviewed study of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness at treating the coronavirus was published, and it found that the drug significantly reduced mortality rates.

[ … ]

CNN’s Chris Cuomo also mocked Trump for taking the drug, even though he had used a version of it himself for his own treatment following his positive diagnosis for the coronavirus.

How many lives were lost because the Democrats and the media claimed that taking hydroxychloroquine would kill you? In May, Dr. John Giles of Columbia University told NPR that fears about hydroxychloroquine made it difficult to recruit volunteers for clinical studies. “Pretty much everybody said, ‘well, that’s the drug that is dangerous to your heart,’ or ‘I talked to friends and they said don’t take it,’ or ‘I saw it on TV that it was dangerous,’” Giles explained. “It became almost impossible to get anyone interested.”

But Giles knew these fears were unfounded. “It’s a very, very safe drug. It’s been used for over 75 years,” he said.

Despite the drug being safe, Giles eventually gave up on doing his study.

He wasn’t alone. Dr. Christine Johnston at the University of Washington told NPR that volunteers felt “that the study and the drugs feel too political, and they just don’t want to participate at all.”

And all this time, hydroxychloroquine has been shown to cut the death rate of the coronavirus in half.

A Yale study published in May noted that “Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy” of hydroxychloroquine alone or hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin. “These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.”

It was never in doubt with me.  But the anti-science people in the MSM killed Covid patients with their hysteria.  They’ll answer to the Almighty for their lies.

There’s this.

AUSTIN, Texas — The national narrative about the current State of Texas Covid-19 crisis (and Arizona’s and California’s) goes like this: Fault for the escalating spike in hospitalizations that have overwhelmed Texas care facilities falls entirely to Gov. Greg Abbott’s phased reopening and the cavalier partying of bar patrons and spring-break revelers, all exclusively inside the state. The governor and local officials are succumbing to the narrative by reinstituting closures as a guard against future youthful stupidity.

But my Border Patrol sources, Mexican media reports, and obscure local media reporting at the border tell a Texas story at sharp variance with that narrative. Taken all together, the collection of reporting persuasively suggests that some percentage of the Texas Covid-19 hospitalizations, likely a significant one, comes from an ongoing influx of seriously ill patients who caught the virus in Covid-exploding Mexico and are legally and illegally crossing the border to flee that country’s completely overrun health system. Refusal to acknowledge this ground truth and to excavate the data necessary to inform the right policy choices presents a danger to life that is more real than any imagined political offense by stating that Mexico is a source.

Enough evidence is now on hand that severely ill patients are pouring over from Mexico and adding to the American counts of hospitalization and death, probably coinciding with regular community spread resulting from recent mass protests. What’s needed now is acknowledgement that there are at least two merging streams, not to be conflated with one another.

The most convincing evidence emerged from national reporting back in May, before widespread second-wave spikes generating the current panicked and uninformed policy responses. These are no longer cited in context of the crisis that much more recently developed: The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and most recently, to its rare credit, CNN on June 29, have established a credible anecdotal baseline that Covid-19 patients have been flooding through California and Arizona border ports of entry from Mexico (some illegally) — by the thousands — since at least mid-May as the virus struck our southern neighbor a month or two behind the United States. It was no coincidence that at the same time the Baja and Sonora state hospital systems were seizing up in worst-case scenarios of deadly convulsions.

The CNN report confirmed other reports that American expatriates and Mexican visa-holders were coming up to California ports of entry aboard ambulances, or calling ambulances as they were crossing on foot. The CNN story, for instance, quoted Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, calling what is underway “an unprecedented surge across the border”.

But don’t look for that in the narrative.  It doesn’t fit.

Detroit News.

A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday.

Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug “significantly” decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis.

The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system’s six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died.

Among all patients in the study, there was an overall in-hospital mortality rate of 18%, and many who died had underlying conditions that put them at greater risk, according to Henry Ford Health System. Globally, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients is between 10% and 30%, and it’s 58% among those in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator.

“As doctors and scientists, we look to the data for insight,” said Steven Kalkanis, CEO of the Henry Ford Medical Group. “And the data here is clear that there was a benefit to using the drug as a treatment for sick, hospitalized patients.”

The study, published in the International Society of Infectious Disease, found patients did not suffer heart-related side effects from the drug.

Patients with a median age of 64 were among those analyzed, with 51% men and 56% African American. Roughly 82% of the patients began receiving hydroxychloroquine within 24 hours and 91% within 48 hours, a factor Dr. Marcus Zervos identified as a potential key to the medication’s success.

“We attribute our findings that differ from other studies to early treatment, and part of a combination of interventions that were done in supportive care of patients, including careful cardiac monitoring,” said Zervos, division head of infectious disease for the health system who conducted the study with epidemiologist Dr. Samia Arshad.

Other studies, Zervos noted, included different populations or were not peer-reviewed.

“Our dosing also differed from other studies not showing a benefit of the drug,” he said. “We also found that using steroids early in the infection associated with a reduction in mortality.”

This is good news, it’s safe and effective, as I told you all along.  Actually, I learned it from the NIH themselves.  They only switched position when they found out they could make money for big pharma and extend the life of the virus to cause panic and dissatisfaction with the government.

Via Glenn Reynolds, this bit of fascinating news.

The coronavirus’ particle has a diameter of about 0.125 micron, he said, pointing to recent studies. HEPA filters are designed to filter particles that are 0.01 micron and above, Cuomo said, a figure he based on a previous NASA study on HEPA filtration.

Oh dear.  It’s really a shame when non-STEM people try to do STEM without one iota of training or education.  The problem with this is that none of it is true, at least, not exactly.

To rehearse what we’ve discussed before, while he has his sources that the virus is 125 nm in diameter, there are other sources that put it at around 80 nm in diameter.  Furthermore, when he says that HEPA filters remove particles down to 0.01 µm in size, he’s referencing a NASA study of HEPA filters that essentially aren’t in use anywhere but space vehicles.  Without observing the testing and performing my own independent analysis of the data, I question the study, but let’s move ahead anyway.

Most of the HEPA filters available for industrial use are nuclear grade HEPA filters, which remove particles to 0.3 µm in size.  This means that a SARS-CoV-2 virus is 80E-9 / 0.3E-6 = 0.27 the minimum size necessary for even the most expensive nuclear grade HEPA filters to remove it from an air stream.

Furthermore, these systems are extremely expensive to design, build, maintain, flow balance and test.  The filter housing themselves must be sealed and tested, the HEPA filters must be disposed of as hazardous material, the HEPA filters must be procured (there is a marginal market for that since these systems are only used in biological labs and nuclear power plants).  A TAB (testing and balancing) engineer must test them and flow balance them, and the fans are powerful compared to normal use industrial fans since the ΔP is much higher across these filter trains than an ordinary industrial grade filter system.

The testing involves injection of DOP (Dioctyl Phthalate) to test penetration of fine particles through potential tears in the filter media and especially bypass around the filters themselves due to lack of proper sealing against the frame of the filter housing.  The testing engineers for this sort of thing reside in one place, i.e., commercial nuclear reactors and utilities which run them.

I could go on about this, but it’s embarrassing to folks who know nothing about STEM to weigh in like this on subjects way above their head.  I’ve done air filtration engineering, TAB and testing of penetration before.  I know these things by education, training and experience.

The governor is essentially telling businesses in his neck of the woods that they must go out of business.  That is the only alternative.  No store or mall will be able to afford something like this, or the highly paid personnel to install it, test it, monitor it and equip it.  Finally, these systems, if installed, wouldn’t create a virus-free environment anyway.  It doesn’t work that way.  A virus is like any other contaminant, which means that buildup and depletion of contaminants (based on a production term and loss constant) would be modeled with an ODE (ordinary differential equation).

The point is that the concentration of a contaminant can be reduced based on the terms, but not made to go away.  Belief in risk free living based on science is belief in a myth.  But someone who was studied in STEM would already know this.  Only non-STEM people believe that science can work magic for free.

Science.

In the first big research scandal of the COVID-19 era, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) today retracted two high-profile papers after a company declined to make the underlying data for both available for an independent audit, following questions being raised about the research. The Lancet paper, which claimed an antimalarial drug touted by President Donald Trump for treatment of COVID-19 could cause serious harm without helping patients, had had a global impact, halting trials of one of the drugs by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others.

Three authors on the Lancet paper requested the retraction, after initiating an independent review of the raw hospital patient data summarized and provided by Surgisphere, a small Chicago-based company operated by Sapan Desai, the fourth author of the study. Desai had previously said he and his co-authors—cardiac surgeon Mandeep Mehra of Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Frank Ruschitzka of University Hospital Zürich, and Amit Patel, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah—were getting such an audit of the data, but the agreement apparently fell apart.

[ … ]

NEJM published only a short statement from the paper’s authors, which included Mehra, Patel, and Desai, as well as SreyRam Kuy of Baylor College of Medicine and Timothy Henry of Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. “Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article,” they wrote, with apology. By including Desai, the note perplexingly suggests he has no access to the raw data generated by his own company.

The link title is tongue-in-cheek.  There is nothing scientific about what’s going on, and this is certainly not the “first big research scandal of the Covid-19 era.”  The entire thing has been a research scandal, and the retracted study is no more scientific than the claim that masks are effective.  What kind of a “researcher” doesn’t validate the models and conclusions from the raw data?

No one to date has even approached what I said I need to conclude that wearing a mask is a good and necessary protective against a virus.  No one has even proposed such a study.

So says the experts.

LONDON (Reuters) – Keeping at least one metre apart and wearing face masks and eye protection are the best ways to cut the risk of COVID-19 infection, according to the largest review to date of studies on coronavirus disease transmission.

In a review that pooled evidence from 172 studies in 16 countries, researchers found frequent handwashing and good hygiene are also critical – though even all those measures combined can not give full protection.

The findings, published in The Lancet journal on Monday, will help guide governments and health agencies, some of whom have given conflicting advice on measures, largely because of limited information about COVID-19.

“Our findings are the first to synthesise all direct information on COVID-19, SARS, and MERS, and provide the currently best available evidence on the optimum use of these common and simple interventions to help ‘flatten the curve’”, said Holger Schünemann from McMaster University in Canada, who co-led the research.

Current evidence suggests COVID-19 is most commonly spread by droplets, especially when people cough, and infects by entering through the eyes, nose and mouth, either directly or via contaminated surfaces.

For this analysis, an international research team conducted a systematic review of 172 studies assessing distance measures, face masks and eye protection to prevent transmission of three diseases caused by coronaviruses – COVID-19, SARS and MERS.

The researchers noted that the findings, while comprehensive, have some limitations for the current pandemic since most of the evidence came from studies of SARS and MERS.

Ooo … I’m askeerd, hold me Uncle Bob!

Since I’ve gone on record saying that I don’t believe them without certain studies being performed in a certain manner with certain credentialed professionals, am I now so beaten down by the academic bureaucrats that I retract my position?

Then there’s this.

They found, however, that physical distancing of at least 1 metre lowers risk of COVID-19 transmission, and that a distance of 2 metres could be more effective. Masks and protective eye coverings may also add protective benefits, though the evidence for that was less clear cut, they added.

Yea, it’s less clear cut because not a damn thing has been done to prove it.

I repeat myself.

I won’t believe any of your models or data until [at least] the following has been done.  Assemble an interdisciplinary team of experts, in fields such as industrial hygiene, air filtration engineering, physics, chemistry, and medicine.  Formulate hypotheses on the distribution of particle sizes (there isn’t one particle size, there is a distribution, and it may be a normal distribution, or it may not, it may be a right skewed distribution, or it may be a left skewed distribution); back up your hypothesis with experimental data; assemble a panel of experts to test filters of various types, from cotton, to N95, to HEPA filters, on those particle sizes; report the results; next, do the same with the [possibly] polar composition of viruses and their travelling companion water molecules or other particles, and report results; results shall at least include and consider (a) trajectory, (b) evaporation, (c) re-evolution of particles and viruses into the air stream, (d) and where the collection of particles occurs.

Determine, based on this team’s judgment, whether there is an unhealthy buildup of viruses on the masks you have tested, both for the patient and the worker (or any passerby).  Include in this analysis not only SARS-CoV-2 viruses, but other pathogens as well.  Specifically include in your analysis the buildup and concentration of Legionella bacteria, what we found to be so problematic at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel when the HVAC engineers directed intake air flow over the top of the condensate discharge from the evaporator units.  Masks collect moisture.

Considering the whole of the findings of this investigation, perform a probabilistic risk analysis for various populations wearing masks under various conditions (including people who have a low oxygen saturation level anyway).  After coming to agreement between the entirety of the committee of experts, prepare a formal report under the authority of a professional engineer’s seal and signature.  Publish all mathematical models, data and test results for peer review.  I want this seal because the researchers have nothing to lose if the contents are wrong.  A professional engineer has his reputation and livelihood to lose.

Only then are you doing science.  Only then will I believe anything you have to say.

Nothing has changed, and no one to date has done anything even remotely approaching real science on this matter.  Everything thus far has been fake.  I do science.  I know fake science when I see it.

I don’t want to hear another word about social distancing.

Annals of Internal Medicine.

Background: During respiratory viral infection, face masks are thought to prevent transmission (1). Whether face masks worn by patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevent contamination of the environment is uncertain. A previous study reported that surgical masks and N95 masks were equally effective in preventing the dissemination of influenza virus, so surgical masks might help prevent transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS–CoV-2). However, the SARS–CoV-2 pandemic has contributed to shortages of both N95 and surgical masks, and cotton masks have gained interest as a substitute.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of surgical and cotton masks in filtering SARS–CoV-2.

Methods and Findings: The institutional review boards of 2 hospitals in Seoul, South Korea, approved the protocol, and we invited patients with COVID-19 to participate. After providing informed consent, patients were admitted to negative pressure isolation rooms. We compared disposable surgical masks (180 mm × 90 mm, 3 layers [inner surface mixed with polypropylene and polyethylene, polypropylene filter, and polypropylene outer surface], pleated, bulk packaged in cardboard; KM Dental Mask, KM Healthcare Corp) with reusable 100% cotton masks (160 mm × 135 mm, 2 layers, individually packaged in plastic; Seoulsa).

A petri dish (90 mm × 15 mm) containing 1 mL of viral transport media (sterile phosphate-buffered saline with bovine serum albumin, 0.1%; penicillin, 10 000 U/mL; streptomycin, 10 mg; and amphotericin B, 25 µg) was placed approximately 20 cm from the patients’ mouths. Patients were instructed to cough 5 times each onto a petri dish while wearing the following sequence of masks: no mask, surgical mask, cotton mask, and again with no mask. A separate petri dish was used for each of the 5 coughing episodes. Mask surfaces were swabbed with aseptic Dacron swabs in the following sequence: outer surface of surgical mask, inner surface of surgical mask, outer surface of cotton mask, and inner surface of cotton mask.

The median viral loads of nasopharyngeal and saliva samples from the 4 participants were 5.66 log copies/mL and 4.00 log copies/mL, respectively. The median viral loads after coughs without a mask, with a surgical mask, and with a cotton mask were 2.56 log copies/mL, 2.42 log copies/mL, and 1.85 log copies/mL, respectively. All swabs from the outer mask surfaces of the masks were positive for SARS–CoV-2, whereas most swabs from the inner mask surfaces were negative.

Discussion: Neither surgical nor cotton masks effectively filtered SARS–CoV-2 during coughs by infected patients. Prior evidence that surgical masks effectively filtered influenza virus (1) informed recommendations that patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 should wear face masks to prevent transmission (2). However, the size and concentrations of SARS–CoV-2 in aerosols generated during coughing are unknown. Oberg and Brousseau (3) demonstrated that surgical masks did not exhibit adequate filter performance against aerosols measuring 0.9, 2.0, and 3.1 μm in diameter. Lee and colleagues (4) showed that particles 0.04 to 0.2 μm can penetrate surgical masks. The size of the SARS–CoV particle from the 2002–2004 outbreak was estimated as 0.08 to 0.14 μm (5); assuming that SARS-CoV-2 has a similar size, surgical masks are unlikely to effectively filter this virus.

Of note, we found greater contamination on the outer than the inner mask surfaces. Although it is possible that virus particles may cross from the inner to the outer surface because of the physical pressure of swabbing, we swabbed the outer surface before the inner surface. The consistent finding of virus on the outer mask surface is unlikely to have been caused by experimental error or artifact. The mask’s aerodynamic features may explain this finding. A turbulent jet due to air leakage around the mask edge could contaminate the outer surface. Alternatively, the small aerosols of SARS–CoV-2 generated during a high-velocity cough might penetrate the masks. However, this hypothesis may only be valid if the coughing patients did not exhale any large-sized particles, which would be expected to be deposited on the inner surface despite high velocity. These observations support the importance of hand hygiene after touching the outer surface of masks.

This experiment did not include N95 masks and does not reflect the actual transmission of infection from patients with COVID-19 wearing different types of masks. We do not know whether masks shorten the travel distance of droplets during coughing. Further study is needed to recommend whether face masks decrease transmission of virus from asymptomatic individuals or those with suspected COVID-19 who are not coughing.

In conclusion, both surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment and external mask surface.

This paper was retracted and one of the comments was: “This is likely to aggravate ongoing controversy regarding personal protective equipment (PPE).”  There is also this comment.

According to included table, when coughing onto a Petri dish without a barrier, the 4 patients release detectable viral load. When coughing through a cotton mask, in 2 cases the viral load is not detectable (ND), and in the other 2 it is reduced more than 10 times. Yet, according to the average (the authors use the word “median”, while they actually compute averages) viral loads presented by the authors as main results, the viral load is reduced only 5 times. This is apparently because in the computations, the averages are taken over whole rows of the table with the ND instances ignored. This is a serious methodological error. If the virus was not detected in 3 patients instead of 2, the average could have been even higher.

They need more data.  They need to properly assess that data.

If you’d like some background on what I’ve previously said about nuclear grade HEPA filters, this reference will be sufficient for now.  There are many more.

I’ll provide a link at the bottom of this page with prior posts, but let’s review what I’ve said so far.

1. First, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is 80 nm in diameter.
2. HEPA filters remove particles down to 0.3 µm in size.
3. This means that a SARS-CoV-2 virus is 80E-9 / 0.3E-6 = 0.27 the minimum size necessary for even the most expensive nuclear grade HEPA filters to remove it from an air stream.
4. Even with N95 masks, the bulk of air flow to the breather goes over the top of and under the bottom of the mask.
5. To get efficient filtration of air, a fitted full face respirator must be worn, leak tested and verified.
6. That FFR must have a charcoal filter in order to remove viruses of this diameter.
7. The necessity of charcoal is because charcoal will remove organics, including particles with a charge (especially charcoal impregnated with TEDA).  Viruses are weakly charged, water is polar.  Therefore, charcoal filters will remove water as well as other contaminates, paint fumes among them.  Water and paint fumes can actually decrease the efficiency of charcoal filters, which is why nuclear air filtration systems have air pre-heaters to reduce relative humidity.
8. Cotton rags are completely ineffective at removing particles of this size.
9. N95 masks are not leak tested and fitted.
10. Surgical masks are little better than cotton rags at removing particulate matter.

I said other things, but this is a good primer for where we start.

This should be sufficient to do away with the fairy tale notions of the use of rags and N95 masks for removing free floating viruses in the air.  As one commenter previously said, use of masks is like trying to stop a mosquito with a chain link fence.  But what about viruses attached to water molecules?

A water molecule is 2.75 Angstroms in diameter.  This is not sufficient to create a large enough particle for interception by a HEPA filter.  But what about a virus being attached to spittle?  In this case, a mask of some sort might be effective at catching the spittle on a temporary basis, but there is re-evolution of the virus into the air, evaporation of the water, and buildup of the virus on the mask to consider.

We have pointed out that asymptomatic carriers are not contagious.  Their spittle will not be a concern.  If someone is symptomatic and coughing, he should stay home.

Now, Dr. Paul W Leu of the University of Pittsburgh doesn’t like the study.

The conclusions of this study by Bae et. al are not only erroneous but misleading. 1. The main result of this study is that higher concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 were found on the outside of masks that were coughed into as opposed to the inside. The fact that the virus was determined to be present on the outside of the mask is unsurprising. Surgical and cotton masks are fabrics which will simply absorb any droplets they come into contact with. The higher concentrations found on the outside of the masks may be due to their swabbing the outside of the masks first (which may remove some of the virus) as opposed to the inside. Results should be compared with swabbing the inside first and then the outside. 2. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 on the outside of masks of infected people is of very limited concern for transmission. Most people put on and remove their own masks and do not touch each other’s masks. 3. The results of this study do NOT show that masks are “ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment.” As the authors acknowledge, their study does NOT evaluate the ability of the masks to shorten the trajectory of droplets emitted during coughing. The function of the mask is to reduce how far aerosol droplets travel during breathing, speaking, singing, sneezing, or coughing. This is the same reason one should cover one’s mouth or nose with your forearm, inside of your elbow, or tissue when sneezing. CDC guidelines advise the wearing of face coverings to “slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.”

I consider this comment to be a misdirect on a number of levels.  First of all, no one has told medical workers not to wear masks.  Medical workers wear masks for all sorts of reasons, most particularly, to prevent blood borne pathogens from entering their mouths (as my daughter, an NP, does in the ER and OR).  Further, a face shield should be worn for the very same reasons, i.e., to intercept airborne particles in their trajectory.  I wouldn’t trust a surgical mask to do that.

The researchers have focused a great deal of attention on demonstrating whether masks are effective at removal of viruses.  If one claims that masks are effective, the burden is on him to prove the point, not detractors from proving theirs.  That’s how science is done.

I do find it odd and tiring that people think that they are the first to consider these things and that no research has been done to date on air filtration engineering, industrial hygiene, and reduction of contaminates and toxicants in the air.  This science has been going on for decades, and focuses on real data and mathematical modeling, not well wishes or suppositions.  Considering what the air filtration engineers have accomplished in the nuclear industry would be a good place for people to start.

I do find it interesting that the researchers found that the previously published SARS-CoV virus diameter is 0.08 to 0.14 μm, whereas my source gives 80 nm.  This is fairly close correspondence in data, but also note that there is a range of diameters.  This leads me to my challenge problem for Paul W Leu and other researchers.

I do not believe any of your challenges to the findings of this report.  I barely believe this report.

I won’t believe any of your models or data until [at least] the following has been done.  Assemble an interdisciplinary team of experts, in fields such as industrial hygiene, air filtration engineering, physics, chemistry, and medicine.  Formulate hypotheses on the distribution of particle sizes (there isn’t one particle size, there is a distribution, and it may be a normal distribution, or it may not, it may be a right skewed distribution, or it may be a left skewed distribution); back up your hypothesis with experimental data; assemble a panel of experts to test filters of various types, from cotton, to N95, to HEPA filters, on those particle sizes; report the results; next, do the same with the [possibly] polar composition of viruses and their travelling companion water molecules or other particles, and report results; results shall at least include and consider (a) trajectory, (b) evaporation, (c) re-evolution of particles and viruses into the air stream, (d) and where the collection of particles occurs.

Determine, based on this team’s judgment, whether there is an unhealthy buildup of viruses on the masks you have tested, both for the patient and the worker (or any passerby).  Include in this analysis not only SARS-CoV-2 viruses, but other pathogens as well.  Specifically include in your analysis the buildup and concentration of Legionella bacteria, what we found to be so problematic at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel when the HVAC engineers directed intake air flow over the top of the condensate discharge from the evaporator units.  Masks collect moisture.

Considering the whole of the findings of this investigation, perform a probabilistic risk analysis for various populations wearing masks under various conditions (including people who have a low oxygen saturation level anyway).  After coming to agreement between the entirety of the committee of experts, prepare a formal report under the authority of a professional engineer’s seal and signature.  Publish all mathematical models, data and test results for peer review.  I want this seal because the researchers have nothing to lose if the contents are wrong.  A professional engineer has his reputation and livelihood to lose.

Only then are you doing science.  Only then will I believe anything you have to say.

Prior:

New England Journal of Medicine on What Masks Can’t Do Regarding SARS-CoV-2

Concerning the Effectiveness of Masks to Filter SARS-CoV-2

Asymptomatic Carriers of SARS-CoV-2 Are Not Very Contagious

News from the dark side.

Published last week in The Lancet, the large-scale study suggested the malaria drugs could be dangerous to people with severe cases of Covid-19, increasing the risk of abnormal heart rhythms and even death.

Now, scientists across the world are asking the research team, led by Harvard professor Dr Mandeep Mehra, to release its data for further analysis and independent academic review.

In an open letter, they’ve asked the journal to provide details about the massive hospital database – consisting of 96,000 Covid-19 patients across six continents – which was the basis for the observational study.

So far the authors have declined to release their underlying data, which scientists worry carries several inconsistencies.

Among them are concerns the average daily doses of hydroxychloroquine, which is cheap and easy to administer, used were higher than the recommended amounts – and that data from Australian patients does not match data from the Australian government.

Just like trials done without the administration of Zinc along with Hydroxychloroquine, or the administration of the drug too late to do any real good.

After having done this for a lifetime, I can confidently say the following.  When an analyst refuses to release the data or math models for independent review and verification, he’s lying.

Period.  End of discussion.

Edit: More.  And more.