Contaminated Face Masks And Covid Tests. With Harmful Parasites?

a reply to: Doctor Smith

I would say the bigger problem is people, including myself, are re-using the one time use masks.

I haven't found it yet, but I saw this clip of a lab tech who took a 3-day worn mask and and 1-time used mask and did petri dishes of both.
The 1 time mask hardly had any growth.
The mask that had been worn for 3 days had A LOT of growth...

Which is not surprising by the way, since your mouth at any time isn't really an un-contaminated area.
But ugh... I'm gonna toss those masks more often :S

originally posted by: flice
a reply to: Doctor Smith

I would say the bigger problem is people, including myself, are re-using the one time use masks.

I haven't found it yet, but I saw this clip of a lab tech who took a 3-day worn mask and and 1-time used mask and did petri dishes of both.
The 1 time mask hardly had any growth.
The mask that had been worn for 3 days had A LOT of growth...

Which is not surprising by the way, since your mouth at any time isn't really an un-contaminated area.
But ugh... I'm gonna toss those masks more often :S

Just put them on the floor for us floor mask wearers
Someone mentioned a penchant for wearing improperly disposed of masks a while back.
I’ve been collecting and reselling them ever since!
Dal’s dependable disposable mask company.
Slogan you asked?
‘They worked for someone once, they can do it again! Statistics have your back.’

a reply to: flice

That's true. But this is about "brand new" masks. A warning to check masks and Q tips for black fibers.

And I wonder why they would make them black? Easily spotted?

a reply to: Doctor Smith

Nah, ol' Phage is old and set in his ways.

originally posted by: flice
a reply to: Doctor Smith

I would say the bigger problem is people, including myself, are re-using the one time use masks.

I haven't found it yet, but I saw this clip of a lab tech who took a 3-day worn mask and and 1-time used mask and did petri dishes of both.
The 1 time mask hardly had any growth.
The mask that had been worn for 3 days had A LOT of growth...

Which is not surprising by the way, since your mouth at any time isn't really an un-contaminated area.
But ugh... I'm gonna toss those masks more often :S

Sure, if you wear a mask and are exhaling through it for a period of time, undoubtedly the inside surface will have trapped a lot of whatever microbes were in your breath. And if you wear it for a longer period, obviously more of them will get trapped. But so what? At the risk of stating the obvious; any microbes that get deposited on the inside surface of the mask were inside you at one time. If you breathe some of them back in, that doesn't make you sicker.

On the other hand, the external surface of the mask can trap microbes that weren't inside you to begin with. Most virus masks can't filter out 100% of the stuff outside, but they can reduce the amount you inhale by a substantial amount (maybe 50% to 85%) So, they improve your odds of not picking up a stray infection.

The main risk of reusing masks is if you handle the outer surface after you've been using it for a while and pick up microbes on your fingers from the surface and then transfer those microbes to your eyes, nose, or mouth. Some microbes are much easier to transmit this way than others. At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak researchers thought that the Coronavirus was easy to transmit this way, but research over the last year shows that it is not. Transmission through aerosols is much more important for COVID-19.

a reply to: DarkestConspiracyMoon

Its called sarcasm and he's not bad at it.

He must have some Irish in him

a reply to: Doctor Smith
Unless you're hospitalized,