Feeling okay so far, so let the science fun begin!
(Not gonna lie, I've been happy to avoid COVID for the last 5 years, but I've been looking forward to having fun with it, god-willing, when it got me.)
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1893061064662884675
First, this red hot positive today is on what I think is day 2 of symptoms.
Interestingly, my first symptoms were probably achey legs yesterday. (Vascular disease much??) Since last night, mild sore throat and some stuffiness. Was expecting flu or nada, COVID was a surprise!
Now, to the fun. I put a fresh 3M Vflex n-95 on for the last hour. And then I cut two pieces out. One from right in front of the mouth/nose, and one from the top side as far from the droplet "splash zone" as possible. And then put both cutouts in rapid tests. Result?
The line-of-fire center sample was positive after about a minute, and maybe doubled in intensity over the remaining 14 minutes. I have no cough or sneezing at all, and so this is a measure of virus excreted during tidal breathing.
The side sample from top-left of the nose was negative.
Each sample was about 1 cm^2 in area, from a total x-sectional mask area of ~200 cm^2. With the mask on, the side surface is nearly parallel with the breath jet, and is far off-axis. So the effective x-section is very low.
While this is far from a careful test, it's interesting to notice that perhaps the quality of the seal isn't that important for source control, provided the jet region is well-covered. Something to perhaps find some comfort in if when worrying about fit factors on "baggy blues".
This can't disambiguate droplet from fine aerosol shedding. I'll put a mask cutout over the filter material in my HEPA overnight to see what happens. But I also have a box fan blowing out for negative pressure, so I'm not sure there will be enough buildup to measure.🤞🏻 we'll see!
You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: typefully.com/famulare_mike/iok2rPO
Mike Famulare
@famulare_mike
Like polio, Twitter lingers on. Learning to be a father, husband, and person. Systems epidemiologist, see Google Scholar. All tweets mine alone, not my employer
