| One thing I'm wondering about is "useless in what sense?" Will they prevent you from getting sick? Unlikely unless it is N95 or even N100 PPE But I'm been wondering if they are not useless in terms of the speed at which the human body experiences a high viral load. If only one virus particle gets through that should be enough to infect if it takes root and multiplies, but going from one virus to tons in your body takes times since they have to multiply. Compare that with an infected person coughing right in your face. In this situation, potentially thousands of virus particles will infect you. In this situation, the viral load your body experiences will climb high quickly. The faster the viral load climbs the less time your immune system has to be able to develop antibodies and learn to fight off the infection. I imagine this is not too dissimilar from how vaccines work. If this is the case, that might explain why Li Wenliang died at 34 years of age. Being at the center of it all, it's likely he was exposed to many more virus particles than the typical person. I imagine this would be enough to trigger a cytokine storm if the viral load got high fast enough. Disclaimer, IANAE (i am not an epidemiologist), I'm just reasoning from first principles here. |