The Government Recommends Masks

The only point is a mask reduces the range of your sneeze or cough dramatically, it rips the momentum out of the majority of the volume of the air and droplets.

The virus will get out through a mask as well Jim but the mask acts as a wind break.

If you imagine going for a brisk walk in the UK on a freezing cold still slightly misty morning, if you are walking and you happen to stop and look back you could see a long trail of your own breath hanging there in the air, if you did the same with a scarf or mask on there would be a far less visible trail but there would still be a trail.

That is why I don't trust standing in queues outside a supermarket with this UK two metre rule, because two metres is just a made up number there is no science behind it, I personally think that standing in a supermarket queue outside with many others in still air is quite dangerous.

A mask being worn by an asymptomatic person who is shedding virus will protect others to some degree.

I don't think anyone is trying to argue that you should not wear a mask, but it is important to understand what a mask will actually achieve for you and for others.

Why does a surgeon wear a surgical mask?

It is not to protect him it is to stop him breathing all over his patient and to stop his spittle from landing inside the opened up patient in front of him when he speaks to the other doctors and nurses around him.

People wear masks because they imagine that the mask protects them, but the mask does not protect them, and a mask also gives them a false sense of security if they don't understand exactly how the virus spreads.

If everyone wears a mask we all protect each other, if one person fails to wear a mask like the arrogant dick of a USA Vice President Mike Pence just did in a US hospital then that person risks infecting all those around them who are wearing masks.

Also remember the mist example above if you walk through someone else's breath trail droplets can settle on the surface of your eyes, your tears your eye's lubricant drains through your sinuses directly to the nasal cavity the kind of tissue that the virus binds too, it's a respiratory virus, from the nasal cavity it can make it's way down into your lungs.

If everyone in a room is wearing a mask then almost no one needs to wear googles, if one person in that room is not wearing a mask and sneezes violently the ten people around them in a closed space have a much higher chance of picking up the virus through aerosol droplets landing on their eyes, even if their mask managed to prevent them breathing in the virus.

For three more steps

Trouble is Jim, these are expensive and the delivery times are only estimates and these are also small quantities, I would buy these to be able to use for an hour at a time as once they get wet they are even less effective.

Fifty for twenty quid is not that bad but 10 for just less than a tenner is not cheap given how quick people will go through them.

I do find the pictures funny Mike, its a laugh or cry situation, but the reality of some of those pictures is that they could actually be effective, the plastic bottle and the paper bag and even the plastic bag over the head while some of these are dangerous they would, under the criteria I have been posting, actually largely work.

When things calm down I will add a stockpile of disposable masks to both my UK and Philippines homes, but I don't want to try to do that while the NHS could still be under pressure to source these.

The alcohol would evaporate in very short order and breathing in alcohol is not such a great idea, and you are still left with the fact that if you walk through an aerosol suspension that happens to contain the virus coughed or sneezed out by someone you risk some settling on your eyes and draining into your nasal cavity.

To be effective the alcohol needs to be around a 70% by volume solution, alcohol and soap work by disrupting the fatty protein outer coat of the virus, to do that there needs to be water present.

That's good enough to offer some protection to others around you, when I go to the supermarket I feel guilty not wearing anything, I might see if I can get a couple of these.

And I agree it would be nice to get more conventional masks at a reasonable price.