If they say 3-ply, I buy them, I actually wear a surgical mask over my cotton mask when I go in stores. On walks, I just wear the cotton one.
It is hard knowing what is a genuine “surgical mask.”
I bought a Costco box, too. My son has been running, masked, with his cross country team and struggling to breathe. Thought these were worth a try. They don’t bother me too much to wear. But he was skeptical about filtration. We lit some matches to test them out. Could not blow out a match held at arm’s reach when wearing a homemade double layer cotton, or an Athleta double layer part synthetic. With some heavy puffing, he could blow it out wearing the Costco mask.
Also, the Costco masks kind of gap on the sides. I have other surgical masks and they don’t do that.
You can tie a knot in the ear loops, close to the mask, on both sides, and that gets rid of the gap 
This is discouraging news. New Zealand has 4 new cases of COVID after going 102 days without any. The family involved has no history of international travel.
One would think that after 102 days there would be no more virus circulating in New Zealand. They’ve cut off international travel there and back almost completely. So either the virus is still circulating there asymptomatically or the virus lingers in the air or on surfaces longer than previously thought?
i bet it came in from outside.
Agreed. NZ must be receiving shipments of goods via ship and plane, and those people likely interact with residents.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if there is asymptomatic spread (don’t know how much NZ is testing).
There is no way to keep this virus out of an area long-term. At some point (likely before a vaccine or herd immunity) NZ will have to open up.
Is NZ testing everyone in the country weekly? Is there a test, trace, isolate system?
Key word: almost
There has been inbound international travel, subject to quarantine restrictions on arrival. But perhaps the quarantine was not airtight enough.
New Zealand opened up fully domestically (i.e. all domestic COVID-19-related restrictions were lifted) after seeing the absence of cases about 100 days ago. But Auckland (where the affected family is) will now be at level 3 restrictions, and the rest of the country will be at level 2 restrictions.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/423305/covid-19-new-cases-push-new-zealand-into-resurgence-plan
Yes, almost. I doubt New Zealand can feed itself so freighters must be unloading food etc. and someone from the crew may have somehow spread it.
My NZ friend has been traveling around the country maskless, eating in cafes maskless and so forth for some time now.
‘A Smoking Gun’: Infectious Coronavirus Retrieved From Hospital Air
Airborne virus plays a significant role in community transmission, many experts believe. A new study fills in the missing piece: Floating virus can infect cells.
Skeptics of the notion that the coronavirus spreads through the air — including many expert advisers to the World Health Organization — have held out for one missing piece of evidence: proof that floating respiratory droplets called aerosols contain live virus, and not just fragments of genetic material.
Now a team of virologists and aerosol scientists has produced exactly that: confirmation of infectious virus in the air.
“This is what people have been clamoring for,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne spread of viruses who was not involved in the work. “It’s unambiguous evidence that there is infectious virus in aerosols.”
A research team at the University of Florida succeeded in isolating live virus from aerosols collected at a distance of seven to 16 feet from patients hospitalized with Covid-19 — farther than the six feet recommended in social distancing guidelines.
remainder of story here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/health/coronavirus-aerosols-indoors.html
It’s been 6 months. Have there been any studies on low symptomatic or asymptomatic Covid positives that show if there are any long term heart issues or other long term issues? I understand that there are some asymptomatic Covids that show some heart issues just after testing- but how about long term?
How can you want long term data when we have had 6 months with the virus? Everything is short term.
Re: New Zealand
. I’m not a virologist, but I do go with the “it’s a horse, not a zebra” idea. I would bet on lots of asymptomatic spread among young healthy people before thinking that the virus lingered somewhere for months before striking out.
Depends on what you mean “long term”. If “long term” is a year or more, then there obviously cannot be any such studies.
If “long term” just means after effects after eliminating the virus, then there could be studies of after effects, but there do not seem to be too many studies on the subject, compared to (fairly common) anecdotes and accidental experiments (like the lung scans of cruise ship passengers).
Here is one of the anecdotes of COVID-19 after effects:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-09/op-ed-people-ask-me-if-ive-recovered-from-covid-19-thats-not-an-easy-question-to-answer
Three months after discharge from the hospital, the author still cannot run due to decreased total lung capacity, and is much weaker than before.
But that’s a person who was hospitalized for Covid. I’m asking about asymptomatic/low symptomatic people (40+% of all positive cases). I keep hearing in the press about how there could be long term effects. Why don’t we have info on CT scans etc. Of low/no symptom Covids 1 month after getting it, 2 months, 3 months, etc… Have not seen a single thing. Just more fear “even if you have no symptoms, you could have permanent heart damage” etc. I’d like to know the real “medium term” effects of asymptomatic/low symptomatic Covid patients. We have plenty of people to choose from at this point. Bring on the studies - scans, MRIs, etc.
We’d all like to know those things, among many. However, it’s difficult to study asymptomatic patients unless you are randomly testing the population to find them, and then following them for months. Instead of using our limited tests on healthy people, doctors and researchers have been trying to figure out how to save lives.
One thing that is growing more common is that people who were never sick go to the doctor with new mystery symptoms. They likely were not previously tested for Covid, but some doctors are now doing antibody tests to see whether they had it in the past. It will take time to gather information on these patients. Whose job is it to do that anyway? We have no national health system, so we can’t just subtract the personally identifying info, and crunch numbers on all American Covid patients. In England, that can be done, and it’s no surprise to me that helpful research is coming out of that system.
We do have information, just not large studies and exact percentages. Here are three articles with examples:
- “Two new studies from Germany paint a sobering picture of the toll that Covid-19 takes on the heart, raising the specter of long-term damage after people recover, even if their illness was not severe enough to require hospitalization”: https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/27/covid19-concerns-about-lasting-heart-damage/
- “From ‘brain fog’ to heart damage, COVID-19’s lingering problems alarm scientists”: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists
- “We don’t know for sure how common long COVID is; there hasn’t yet been much research into its frequency or duration. Nevertheless, we have some clues. A study across 13 U.S. states found that 35% of people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, but who weren’t hospitalized, still had symptoms when interviewed two to three weeks later. That’s a stark contrast with seasonal flu—over 90% of flu patients who aren’t hospitalized are fully recovered within two weeks. And the COVID Symptom Study, in which millions of people in the U.S., U.K., and Sweden are using an app to self-monitor their symptoms, suggests that around 10-15% of people have a long-term illness.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5878448/longterm-covid19-recognition-research/%3famp=true
Just want to note that that study on aerosols used particles collected from 7-16 feet from patients with COVID. The 6 foot distance so often referenced really would not be safe, at least indoors, according to this study (which is not yet peer-reviewed)…