[conspire] A more-effective face mask as a DIY project

[Rick Moen]

As I like to say, a well-debugged checklist will save your life, and 
in these times of a soaring-in-a-bad-way pandemic, I found myself
talking with a family member, one especially vulnerable to COVID-19, 
about the checklist routine we use to minimise risk.  

If we're going to need something, has it been put on the household
shopping list to help shopping planning, in advance of need?  Have we
timed shopping to go the fewest number of places feasible, at times 
they aren't crowded?  Can we please arrange the fewest possible
residents go into indoor public places?  Do we have face masks and hand
sanitiser, and use them consistently, and at the right times?

Talking to my vulnerable family member, I kept trying in different ways
and from different angles to get across to her why absent-mindedly
wandering into a crowded store was bloody damned dangerous.  At one
point, it occurred to me she might be suffering a persistent
misperception, so I said:  "I know it's difficult not to unconsciously
feel protected by your face mask when you visit indoors.  No matter how
many times you hear it, it's difficult to truly internalise that a
surgical mask is almost entirely to protect others _from_ you if you
happen to be asymptomatically infected.  It _feels_ like it's there to 
protect you, so you're tempted to feel safer.  It's important to learn 
that that's 90% illusion.  Indoor poorly ventilated air is just
dangerous."

Afterwards, this topic made me remember February/March, when we came to 
grips with that:  Everyone learned that N95 & equivalent respirators
were protective if fitted, but effectively out of stock, and had other
problems (omitted here), so (most) people fell back on what we could
get, which was a variety of disposible or cloth surgical masks, or
things equivalent to that.

And we did that because there seemed two choices, what was good but
unobtainable, and what wasn't good but was available.

Time passed....

In early March, a small sewing shop called Suay in Los Angeles put
together a DIY effort called Suay Community Mask Coalition, thinking
'Can people who can sew do better on their own?'  They tested candidate
filter materials using _serious_ testing gear that is used to test the
ability of respirators used in medicine, specifically a machine called
PortaCount Pro that can measure the count of particles as small as 0.02
microns -- and found that several brands of "shop towels" (Zep, Wypall,
and Toolbox), disposible towels used in auto repair shops, do a good job
_and_ can be inserted into a pocket of a cloth face mask, so that you
have meaningful protection and still breathe without difficulty.

Here's their filter-material testing and a link to the v. 1.1 (latest)
version of the sewing pattern & instructions, in PDF form:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201022183123/https://suayla.com/pages/suay-community-mask-coalition

The first surge got dreadful, but California countermeasures seemed to
work, and I shelved plans to use Suay's plans.  

Time passed....

Thanksgiving arrived, and millions of idiots ignored public health
warnings, travelled, and got together for the holidays.  The
post-Thanksgiving surge made March/April look small, and keeps getting
worse.  We just had another huge social holiday, idiots still gotta
idiot, and the explosion from that will probably completely overwhelm
public health in a fortnight.

You are here.  Got needle and thread, scissors, some tight-woven cotton
fabric, and some coffee bag or twist ties for the nose clip?  OK, you
can begin.  You can get a roll of the shop towels at Home Depot.

In the instructions PDF, "Variation A" is one using shop towel materials
_as_ the mask, i.e., you're making a disposable mask that cannot be
washed and reused.  "Variation B" is what I recommend, and what I am
doing.

It's best done with a sewing machine, but I don't have one, so I've used
needle and thread.  My prototype took many evenings, taking it slowly.
The second one took just over one evening.  The third I'm doing tonight.

Consider doing likewise.  It might save your life, or save the life of
someone else in your household.

-- 
Cheers,              "Like looking both ways before crossing the street, and 
Rick Moen            then getting hit by a submarine."  -- Clarke Smith, age 9, 
rick at linuxmafia.com  winner of Washtington Post's contest for best description
McQ! (4x80)          of the year 2020 in a single word or phrase.