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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 7

Good work - carry on.

Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

I used to have a virus basically every week from September through to May before I started making for Covid - through doing this I've driven it near zero and that's in a country where we've also had years of unbridled Covid (and everything else) spread.

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

Typically these studies vastly underestimate the effectiveness - but from my own experience (and likely many others in Covid aware world) I have to say that for me N95 masking has cut my own virial infections to near zero over the years we've been doing this thing.

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

And by actually endemic I mean that the virus flares up occasionally but is quickly stopped as there's just not enough infections and opportunities to keep it spreading.

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

Basically the more N95s the less virus there is around and so the chances of getting infected keep dropping and could be driven to near zero levels - or what we could call actually endemic.

bsky.app/profile/enem...

Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 2

New Study Shows That 'Stopping Universal Masking & SARS-CoV-2 Testing In Hospitals Led To Surge' In Hospital Acquired Airborne Infections From Covid To Flu To RSV...

When masks were reinstated INFECTIONS again significantly dropped...

Masks work.

MEDPAGETODAY*

Infectious Disease > RSV

Want to Limit Respiratory Virus Infections? Mask and Test in
Hospitals
- Healthcare workers masking makes a difference, study found

by Rachael Robertson, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage Today
November 27, 2024

4

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Stopping universal masking and SARS-CoV-2 testing in hospitals led to a surge in
hospital-onset respiratory viral infections relative to community infections, a cohort
study found.

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

Of course, this study is looking at population level effects - rather than individual ones.

On the individual level we know that N95 masks are 'near perfect' at stopping infection:

bsky.app/profile/enem...

Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 2

(Another) Study Shows N95 Masks Are Near Perfect At Blocking Covid #XEC

= Q

ATHLETICS

ARTS & CULTURE

CAMPUS & COMMUNITY

PEOPLE

RESEARCH
N95 Masks Nearly Perfect at Blocking
COVID, UMD Study Shows
Researchers Found Even Lower-Performing Masks Were Protective

By Fid Thompson / May 31, 2024

f

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

The paper is about how to significantly reduce Covid transmission and shows how it can be done NOW with N95 masks.

Study link: journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

Estimating the population-level effects of nonpharmaceutical interventions when transmission rates of COVID-19 vary by orders of magnitude from one contact to another

Statistical physicists have long studied systems where the variable of interest spans many orders of magnitude, the classic example is the relaxation times of glassy materials, which are often found t...

journals.aps.org

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

'I have focused on one NPI for airborne transmission: masks/respirators.Another NPI is improving indoor air quality,as Morawska et al.[31] have recently called for. My model suggests that,for example, doubling the rate of turnover of air should reduce transmission by approximately 1 − 1/√2 ∼ 30%.'

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

'Mask use reduces the inhaled doses and so scales up the time needed for transmission, such that a smaller fraction of contacts are long enough for transmission.'

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

Essentially this is telling us how the virus could - combined with clean air, testing, isolation etc, drive the virus down to near-zero levels:

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

As the author themselves who is a computational physicist says in their conclusion:

'I have predicted that for a population like that of the UK, wearing FFP2/N95-type masks should reduce the effective reproduction number R by a factor of nine'

5 / 8
PHYSICAL REVIEW E 110, 064302 (2024)
Estimating the population-level effects of nonpharmaceutical interventions when transmission
rates of COVID-19 vary by orders of magnitude from one contact to another
Richard P. Sear *,†
School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom
(Received 6 June 2024; accepted 7 October 2024; published 3 December 2024)
Statistical physicists have long studied systems where the variable of interest spans many orders of magnitude,
the classic example is the relaxation times of glassy materials, which are often found to follow power laws. A
power-law dependence has been found for the probability of transmission of COVID-19, as a function of length
of time a susceptible person is in contact with an infected person. This is in data from the United Kingdom’s
COVID-19 app. The amount of virus in infected people spans many orders of magnitude. Inspired by this,
I assume that the power-law behavior found in COVID-19 tran

1

Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

..Also shown are predictions for PT when one susceptible person wears a surgical mask (green dashed), one person wears an FFP2/N95 (orange dashed), when the whole population wears surgical masks (solid green), and when the population wears FFP2/N95s (solid orange)'

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

...also fitted a power law to data and found the same value for the exponent β. Data has dynamic range of three decades in time (minutes to tens of hours)....

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

...[22], using data from UK’s COVID-19 app [21]. Fit (blue) is obtained by fitting a straight line to logs of the data, and fit parameters are slope (exponent) 0.47 ± 0.01 and intercept −3.6. R2 = 0.996. Ferretti et al. [22]...

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

Chart from the study showing the effects of various interventions of reducing spread of the virus:

'Plot of the probability of transmission of COVID-19, as a function of the length of contact time [23]. The blue points are data from the work of Ferretti et al...

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

......person with high genetic susceptibility to infection. In panel (b) the transmission rate r is much lower. There the infected person has much less virus (lower viral load) and the susceptible person is across a well ventilated room from the infected person.'

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

...The droplets are then carried by air currents toward a susceptible person, who inhales them and becomes infected [3–5,8]. In panel (a) the rate of transmission r is high because an infected person with a high viral load is close to and talking with a susceptible...

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

...The evidence is that the transmission of COVID-19 is at least predominantly across the air [3–9]: an infected person breathes out the SARS-CoV-2 virus in an aerosol of droplets of mucus that contain the virus...

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

Or to be more precise: Study shows that N95 masks reduce Covid transmission by at least 9x.

Anyway: from the study:

'Pair of schematics showing two possible contacts between an infected person (I, left) and a susceptible person (S, right)...

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

The study has recently been featured by Nature journal which has given it the headline:

'What if everyone had masked up?'

Setting it in the past tense, when of course it should be in present tense because the pandemic is STILL RAGING.

'What if everyone masked up now?'

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

The present study used data from the UK's Covid App to find out that using FFP2/N95 masks reduces transmission of the virus by nearly 10x:

HYSICAL REVIEW E 110, 064302 (2024)

Estimating the population-level effects of nonpharmaceutical interventions when transmission
rates of COVID-19 vary by orders of magnitude from one contact to another

Richard P. Searo*,+
School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom

(Received 6 June 2024; accepted 7 October 2024; published 3 December 2024)

Statistical physicists have long studied systems where the variable of interest spans many orders of magnitude,
the classic example is the relaxation times of glassy materials, which are often found to follow power laws. A
power-law dependence has been found for the probability of transmission of COVID-19, as a function of length
of time a susceptible person is in contact with an infected person. This is in data from the United Kingdom's
COVID-19 app. The amount of virus in infected people spans many orders of magnitude. Inspired by this,
I assume that the power-law behavior found in COVID-19 transm

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 6

(ANOTHER) New Study Shows That Using N95/FFP2 Masks Reduce Covid Transmission By A Whopping 9X.

Masks work.

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 5

EXACTLY

halekoa313.bsky.social @halekoa313.bsky.social · Dec 5

This study is very interesting. Based on "hyper mind, hyper body" theory. I'm not a scientist, but fits my experience. Teen daughter with ADD and straight A student, was hospitalized and still struggling after 2 years. Now diagnosed with POTS, and has energy crashes that last for days.

Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 3

Extensive Study Shows That High IQ Gifted Kids Are Much More Likely To Have Severe Covid With Many Being Killed By The Virus

Being gifted & smart, having autism, ADHD - being athletically gifted found to be significant risk factors for severe Covid & #longCovid diseases

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 5

2/ And yes it is from 2021. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34560443/

High intelligence may exacerbate paediatric inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2 infection - PubMed

The body's innate and acquiredimmunesystems are critical in responses to a wide spectrum of assaults, including SARS-CoV-2 infection. We identify studies of autoimmunity to support our hypothesis that...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Chris Turnbull @enemyinastate.bsky.social · Dec 5

I think given the nature of it and the fact it violates many dogmas the research has not been followed up.

The study forms their hypothesis using relevant data and sources etc: I wouldn't call it meta level though.