Face Masks Do Not Protect Against Corona Virus

Face Mask Obsession:

The current pandemic of coronavirus (Covid-19) has caused a massive tide of obsession compulsive disorder (OCD) among almost everyone in the streets, trains, buses, taxis, shopping malls, super markets, banks, shops and literally every public places to don a face mask in their belief that will protect them from getting infected from coronavirus infection.

There is no point of believing without facts and figures from mathematics.

In my profession as a former medical researcher, I use mathematics and statistics to draw an inference in order to draw a conclusion or to prove a belief

The Evidence:

Let’s have a look if a face mask can prevent the coronavirus, or any virus for that matter, from entering through the pores on a face mask.

The finest surgical mask available in the market  is 0.2339 mm thick and  has the smallest pore size of just 19.29 micron (0.01929 mm.

The human coronaviruses measure between 0.1 and 0.2 microns (0.15 micron or 0.00015 mm across).

This means even the best surgical mask with an ultra-fine pores on its fabrics will have a space 128.6 times larger than a coronavirus for it to pass through.

Look it Another Way:

Maybe that is not impressive enough and has not made the point. Let’s look this another way to make it easier to understand.

Suppose we take average shoulder width of an average human.  It would be at least 16 inches (41 cm) for men and 14 inches (36 cm) for women.

Let us average this out as 38.5 cm (385 mm) across. This is 2,566,667 times larger than a coronavirus.

Let us now take the size of an average human being to present the size of a bloated up coronavirus.

Let us now also take the finest pore size available on the best ultra-fine surgical mask to present the size of the  passageway for a human to pass through this pore or hole.

The best and finest surgical mask has the smallest pore size 128.6 times larger than a single coronavirus.

This means the space available for an average size human to pass through is 2,566,667 x 128.6 = 330,073,376 cm = 3300733.76 metres  = 3,300.7 km wide space  or passageway  for any human  to walk, run, jump, skate,  or even fly across.

Mathematics Do Not Lie:

Is that what the public believes as a “no-entry protective” surgical mask they are wearing?

This is mathematics. Facts and figure from statistics and mathematics do not lie

Fly Us into Outer Space:

Now that we have clearly shown the calculation step-by-step, we can even fly tens of thousands of millions of kites freely through this wide-open passageway.

Almost   the entire population of the world, if each  corona virus were to be the size of a human being  is  able to jump or even  fly  through  each  space 3,300 km wide,  and there are tens of thousands of these pores per square cm on a face mask.

  

Such a surgical or face mask is a free-for-all  outer space  on each  pore, and there are hundreds of thousands of them  on a face mask  for a corona virus the size of an average  human  to literally fly through into their  airways and lungs.

Not Only Just That:

These face mask are so loose that they don’t even fit tightly onto the contour of the face of a wearer. 

If we observe carefully as I always do, there is a considerable space between the face and the mask especially at the tunnel-like space between the nose and the face, and that space is no less than 10 mm wide even for a small child, and  much, wider for those with long, sharp and protruding noses.

  

The easiest path to take for anything that flows, be it air, water, electricity, a stream, a river, a molten lava…anything at all, is always the path of least resistance, and in this case the easiest path for air to enter into the nose of a mask wearer obviously  is none other than through this huge gap along the ridge of the nose, the face and the mask, especially if the mask is not tightly contoured round the entire face, let alone the gigantic opening along the exterior nose.

Would any right thinking person believe the viruses will “squeeze” themselves through the pores of the mask or take the path of least resistance into the nose through this tunnel along the nose?

Not just that alone. I have seen so many people wear masks so loosely that even their lips, nose and all can clearly be seen until even a beetle can crawl in, especially when they talk if I view their faces laterally on one side.

Does that make any sense to anybody that face mask offers protection from viruses to enter? Think and reason this over!

No doctor who knows virology, worthy of his salt, unless he is selling face mask would tell you face and surgical mask can filter out viruses. 




Unfortunately there are a substantial numbers of health workers and members of the public who trust  them, and  all of them believe  in fairy tales without any clue in mathematics and scientific truths 

The Observation of Louise Pasteur:

Even long, long ago during Louise Pasteur’s time he already knew no filter can filter out viruses.

Louis Pasteur was unable to find a causative agent (virus) for rabies and speculated about a pathogen too small to be detected by microscopes (1).

In 1884, the French microbiologist Charles Chamberland invented the Chamberland filter (or Pasteur-Chamberland filter) with pores so very, very small – so small that it was enough to remove all bacteria from a solution passed through it (2).

In 1892, the Russian biologist Dmitri Ivanovsky used this filter to study what is now known as the tobacco mosaic virus: crushed leaf extracts from infected tobacco plants remained infectious even after filtration to remove bacteria.

 Ivanovsky suggested the infection might be caused by a toxin produced by bacteria, but did not pursue the idea (3).

None of them realized it was the viruses, and  not  the bacteria that could not be filtered out even using the finest of the ultra-fine filter, let alone using  a cloth or any surgical or face mask.

      

Even the giant viruses called mimivirus which is one of the largest viruses with a capsid diameter of 400 nm can just pass through ANY filter just  like an aero plane flying for thousands of km  in open free space.

 

Their protein filaments measuring 100 nm project from the surface is no match for any filter even for the finest ultra-fine bacterial filters. Their capsid appears hexagonal under an electron microscope.

In 2011, researchers discovered the largest then known virus in samples of water collected from the ocean floor off the coast of Las Cruces.

Even those largest viruses known to us easily pass through any finest filters we can produce.

 

We have clearly shown the relative sizes of the nCoV and compare them  with  the sizes of the pores on the fabric of the best and the most expensive  surgical mask available in the market.

We have also shown if a coronavirus were to be bloated up to the size of an average human, then the size of the finest pore on a surgical mask is the space of over 3,300 km wide.

Purpose of Face or Surgical Mask:

The question arises what then is the purpose of face mask if it does not protect

A surgeon wears a surgical mask not to protect himself from the patient he is operating on, but to protect the patient in an almost sterile environment from any nasal discharge or droplets from his mouth or saliva onto the open surgical wounds of the patient.

Face masks is meant to protect others if we are sick with a flu, common cold or with corona virus since nasal droplets laden the viruses or from bacteria from a person’s nose and breath can be effectively trapped along with the slimy and sticky mucus on the fabric of the face mask to prevent them from escaping into the air.

But they are completely useless if it is worn by a healthy individual to protect himself from virus in the environment from entering into his airway and respiratory tract as these viruses are so small they will just enter into any mask without any resistance even through the finest ultra-fine  pores on any face mask.

Even the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  in Atlanta, Georgia do not recommend wearing a face mask to prevent Covid-19 infection, but the public think otherwise and  seem to know better.

I hope this explanation from facts and figures helps those obsessive compulsive disorder individuals who believes in fairy-tales

Thank you for reading and believing now.