To mask or not to mask that is the problem. When I go for my daily walk or shopping, I note with a little guilty alarm the increasing numbers (and they are increasing) of veiled constituents out and about like myself. I suspect they, in their turn, may regard my naked face with some unease. Am I letting the side down? Should I look like a medical bandit too? Before Coronavirus struck, I had some (very private) disdain for people walking around London in facemasks. How things have changed.
All my life I have associated operating theatres with gowns and facemasks. It goes without saying that it is obligatory for surgeons to be masked and gowned to do their carving, life-saving business. I haven’t really questioned the matter. But if I had I would have readily accepted that surgical masks and scrubs including head coverings were necessary to stop germs coming out of mouths or off bodies to protect those on the operating table from infection. I suspect the majority of people, like me, have always accepted that without question.
A lot of people will also recall the public health advice about trapping germs with a handkerchief because coughs and sneezes spread diseases. So, am I wrong not to wear a mask in public today? Surely putting a barrier over our mouths and noses protects us all - both ways - from Coronavirus?
Well yesterday I delved into the internet. I understand our hair is about a tenth of a millimetre thick. Standard bacteria like E coli is one thousandth of a millimetre across. Now here’s the bad news. The Coronavirus is about ten times smaller than E coli. So, our deadly enemy, would be able to squeeze 1,000 copies of itself into the width of a human hair. Put another way 20 million coronavirus can fit on the head of a pin.
So, can a cloth, even with an ultra-fine mesh stop the passage of coronavirus; especially when propelled inwards or outwards by the force of breath by our lungs? I have just looked at my hanky under a magnifying glass. I can clearly see holes straight through it. It is a close-nit net to the naked eye but, on a different scale, a net with huge pores nonetheless.
I suppose surgical masks must be much more effective than everyday facemasks. Again, the internet suggests that they have pores typically three times larger virus particles. Street face masks are far more inefficient; with pores up to five thousand times larger.
Surgeons wear masks mainly to protect their patients from particulate and potentially infective matter falling out of their noses, mouths, moustaches and beards into a patient’s opened body. We’re talking about big particles here (human hair width) and bacterial infections, not viruses. The Health and Safety Executive carried out a recent study looking at influenza virus, which is a similar size to coronavirus and found the live virus in the air behind all surgical masks tested.
So, with regard to Coronavirus, it could be that masks I see being worn in public have as much chance as a tennis net does of stopping a gnat going straight through it – except that the gnat is thousands of times too big for that analogy. Coronavirus could simply fly through cloth facemasks without a problem. However, I am clear that if we want to stop spittle hitting other people when we talk, cough or sneeze or perhaps some air pollution going into lungs then they might suffice to do that.
But cloth facemasks are hardly airtight. A lot of air gets into them and escapes from the sides. That is unavoidable. So, too, is the fact that coronavirus lands on skin and clothing and can lurk there live until it is moved perhaps by a hand which then touches a mouth or the eyes and thus gains entry to someone’s body.
Surely my logic is wrong? The best face masks will stop this rotten virus in its tracks. After all, it is clear that so many perfectly sensible people believe that too as they are wearing protective masks? It is not virtue signalling. They are serious. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London no less, is adamant on the matter too.
But then I recall many briefings from medical professionals saying that cloth facemasks stop little and nothing when it comes to Coronavirus infections.
So, is my little investigation into the effectiveness of facemasks right in any way? If so then we may be wasting our time wearing them – at least standard ones. They could be a linen placebo which those that use them think will make a barrier but they don’t.
Yet, huge numbers of people clearly believe that they gain extra protection by wearing a facemask. That belief may convert into political pressure on politicians to order the wearing of them.
I wonder what the now well-known Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, respectively Chief Medical and Chief Scientific Officers of the UK, think about the utility of face masks in defeating Coronavirus. I speculate whether they will have to suggest the wearing of them, perhaps knowing full well, that they have very little impact on the infection rate. But then, maybe the public needs to think that wearing facemasks is helping and they are doing their bit. Psychologically that may help some people because they feel they are doing the bit. Yet, I am not so sure.
Possibly my investigation could be flawed and I fully accept I could have it all wrong. I will watch this one with personal and professional interest.