I found a video on the World Socialist Website the other day. It was an interview with an Engineer, Nicholas Smit, and his experiences trying to get public health authorities to get serious about masks and ventilation. It was very interesting and informative but left me with a few questions.
I would have preferred to know more about his exact qualifications and curriculum vitae. I would like him to have talked more about ventilation systems. Also, more about future developments in elastomeric masks. He may be just a bit of an elastomeric mask salesman.
Nonetheless, he has the kind of insights, coming from somebody on the front line of dealing with government officials during this time of crisis, which we need to hear. He has a lot to say. Here is a quick run through of his views.
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The crisis is getting worse, not better. The infection rate in Canada is now at triple the highs of previous waves and seems nowhere near peaking. Government keeps saying not to worry, covid will be “mild”. We do not know what mild means; but it is weeks between someone getting infected and going to the hospital, and hospitals are filling up fast.
The big problem all along has been the refusal to admit covid is airborne. The dogma was that it was spread on surfaces. It was shown over a year ago that you cannot get covid from surfaces. Yet we still do not have an end to this weird “droplet” vs airborne thing, or this “hygiene theatre”.
This is because it would then become the employers responsibility. Making it about droplets and surfaces makes employees responsible, especially if law suits develop.
So, little attention was paid to masks and ventilation. People kept working in crowded, poorly ventilated places with no masks, or the wrong kind of masks. This was especially bad among health care workers, who have accounted for one fifth of all covid cases.
Employees can get in trouble for buying their own masks, not what is recommended. Yet Unions will not fight this because they do not want to go against what government has “recommended”. They are not concerned about the workers they supposedly represent.
Governments know, or should know by now, that vaccines cannot prevent transmission but masks can. Yet they push vaccines but not masks. Political opposition criticizes governments about vaccines, but never about masks.
Total reliance on vaccines is irresponsible. Even booster shots only give 75% protection. But the way they are promoted gives people false security. They take risks they should not. But most people cannot just stay home indefinitely.
Government is solely focussed on the economy at the expense of everything else. Yet the long term effects of refusing to deal with covid properly will be far more economically damaging than doing things right. We already have all these supply problems because of worker shortages.
Between ten and thirty percent of those who get covid will get “long covid”. This could mean, with two million infected, between two and six hundred thousand people developing long term disabilities. Yet many cases are not even reported; people self test and do not tell government.
Eventually all this is going to ruin the economy. Especially, no one will want to work in health care. The interviewer thought this was a mentality of profit before human life. I think it is deeper even than that is a subject for another essay.
But Smit is very frustrated from his two years of dealing with government. Even when governments admit they are mistaken, it is because they are apologizing for being wrong, trying to silently concede it but without making changes. Also, there is a commitment to making things complicated so there is a justification for everything.
This syndrome pervades the entire system; once a decision is made, there is no reversing it because of this huge taboo against admitting any mistake. Opposition politicians, media, unions, who are supposed to hold government to account, have this “not worth doing, not important” mentality. It is too hard to go against the flow.
All these people cannot seem to see the harm done by these ways. If people are incapable of admitting mistakes, cannot learn and adapt, that is guaranteed failure. At the core of this that is nobody seems to have any real power.
One problem is there is no one voice, it is all conflicting messages. The federal government should be that one voice, communicating through all media.
There needs to be accountability. People who keep making bad decisions and not correcting them must go.
No one calls out negligence because everyone is negligent themselves.
There needs to be someone to whom complaints are directed. Unions seem useless for this. They try to bury complaints, then attack workers who report elsewhere.
Now, I zero in on Smit’s struggles for mask use, elastomeric or otherwise. With good masks the risk from covid could be reduced to near zero.
Airborne virus moves like smoke and can float in the air for hours. Covid works similarly to another airborne disease, tuberculosis. Someone can infect other people who were not even in a room with them at the same time. It can infect in seconds.
Thus, masks must be able to filter what you breathe in. It must have a good seal. Air must pass through the filter material, not the gaps.
Elastomeric respirators have been in use as long as the N95s; since 1996. In previous pandemics, notably SARS in 2003, elastomers were the main masks used by those treating the infected. N95 were used as alternatives, never surgical masks.
Health Canada at the start of the pandemic said they “don’t understand” elastomer respirators, so would not comment.
Elastomers are much better than N95 and can be used for years. Some organizations, like police, dentists, paramedics used elastomer respirators from May 2020. Smits got the mining industry to donate elastomers to hospitals.
So it is most puzzling why public health systems all over the world came up with the idea that only surgical masks could be used for covid. Anything better was discouraged. Such explanations as they bother to make, make no sense.
From the start of the pandemic, the federal government rejected the precautionary principle. Surgical masks were good enough even if better was available. No chance this is airborne.
Even if you assume droplet transmission, N95 still does a better job. Surgical masks would only be adequate with mask braces, which are hard to buy. But they are promoted and N95 “or better” downplayed.
China, at the start of pandemic, gave N95s to all health workers. It has had very few cases among them.
Also, there are now masks called N99 or KN100. Few people know about them and they are hard to find.
Now, conflicting messages are coming from government bodies, some saying elastomers are recommended; others saying ‘do not use, too dangerous’. The public is not being made aware of them.
The main beef against elastomers seems to be that they have an exhalation valve, so that if the wearer is contagious, he/she is spraying virus all over the place. Yet they promote surgical masks, which will also spray covid around. If you are testing positive, you should not be out and about, no matter what mask you have on.
Smit gives a good description of Elastomers. They are not hard to understand. They were designed originally for industrial purposes and later adopted by some health care units.
They are synthetic rubber masks with cushioning that lets them fit very tight over your face, eliminating leakage. You breathe in through one valve with a filter and out through another. They last for years but need to be cleaned periodically.
There are many kinds on market and many manufacturers. There are even child sized elastomers. Many elastomerics have no exhalation valves at all.
The Ontario government discovered it had a hundred thousand elastomers. It distributed a few to hospitals, then locked the rest up and said “health workers won’t want them.”
A recitation of the ways by which all kinds of respirators are kept locked away from health care workers would be to dreary. Some of the chicken shit excuses for this are; “people would not know how to use them”, “they are uncomfortable”, “we have to keep them for the health workers,” or “we have to save them to protect the health workers if a new and more dangerous pandemic breaks out.”
Our bright interviewer noted that it is as if government wants us all to catch the virus, in line with herd immunity doctrine. Smit agreed, saying that the only thing that will change this is public pressure.
Governments are not interested in hearing experts, health care workers, or even journalists. As for workers, the risk is so high, workers are now scarce, but no effort is made to return them to work with protection. They are trying to make it normal to go to work when you are sick.
Government does not mandate proper safety. Cloth masks must not be allowed; surgical masks only with mask bracers.
This podcast has caused me to look a little deeper into the issue of elastomer masks and mask bracers. Bracers are very hard to find, but there seem to lots of elasto jobs looking for owners. I am seeking to obtain these products for evaluation.
People seem to have been frightened off using any mask with a valve. I had a mask like that but was told they were unsafe so I dumped it. I have seen a very few of them around on the street. I have seen no one strolling around with an elastomeric respirator.
Smit says the exhale valve thing is misinformation. He says this started when Delta airlines decided it did not want its passengers or crew wearing N95s with exhale valves. So in August of 2020 it got US regulators to pronounce the malediction against them.
I am not sure how this came to apply in Canada. But I am ambivalent about this ‘valves’ thing. Yes, such masks protect the wearer but not those around if he/she has covid. So why were elastomers recommended over N95s in the SARS outbreak and others?
As well, it is baffling to learn that the province of British Columbia in 2013 put out a manual on the use of elastomeric respirators during pandemics.
As I already said, leaking cloth, surgical, or badly fitting ‘N95 and up’ masks would also leak covid into the immediate environment. Few people actually wear these things well. In fact, the only mask I could ever find that did not leak from my nose bridge was the one with the valve.
I do not think elastomers would be the best choice for the general public. Yet I have ordered one. I plan to wear it next time I must have someone come into my apartment to do some work, such as the crazy inspector with the very unique style of valved mask.
Elastomers make more sense for health care workers, when these workers are being protected from infection and tested regularly. Thus, all these knucklehead politicians should unlock their trove of masks, testers, and other treasures and get them on the faces of our dear health care workers.
Elastomers may again become the standard for virus protection in health care settings once design improves. Below is a quote and link to an interesting article about it.* What is most needed is something which also filters the exhaled air.
I am awaiting the arrival of some expensive mask bracers. I hope these will solve the problem of my N95 masks fogging my glasses up every time I go out in the cold.
Smit thinks that bracers would make surgical masks usable by health workers and other people. They will never make cloth masks holy. But they seem to improve N95s and nobler strains of masks.
I do not think it is possible to get a perfect fit with any mask except perhaps an elastomer. I have tried a number of types.
Perhaps I just need to be trained to wear them right. If so, so does most of Canada. No level of government is making much effort to educate people about masks. Perhaps all this will have changed by the next time we have a pandemic.
Thus ends my relation of the wisdom of Nicholas Smit on masks and covid protection.
The video is found here; https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/12/nsmi-j12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
*Cited article
Conclusions
Elastomeric respirators have significant advantages during respiratory pandemics due to their durability and capacity for repeated use. Unlike filtering facepiece respirators, elastomeric respirators allow for robust user seal checks. However, to optimize their utility in healthcare settings, elastomeric respirators should be further enhanced with respect to ease of communication, moisture control, suitability for high-level disinfection, capacity to filter exhaled air, and adaptability to filters from multiple manufacturers. The authors believe that the development, implementation, and stockpiling of improved elastomeric respirators around the world should be an international public health priority.
I have been a shield and mask person, as I have emphysema as a result of Swine 2010 and 8 days in hospital. I do not recommend as the side effects and lasting disabilities are a struggle. I am also on CPAP, and wondered why so little talk about them when ventilators were rare. This is why Dr Judy immediately had zero credibility to me with her theory about how masks caused covid.