Maybe take a picture of an actual box of N95 masks instead of this box of regular disposable surgical masks.
The million Americans that died from COVID took a big hit to their basic freedom.
If you have access to a suitable microscope, then go ahead and put an N95 under it and see if you see anything different than what my images show. As much as I am tiring of arguing with those blindly believe the official lies, I will remain, for now perfectly willing to give any guidance to anyone who wishes to try to replicate my results.
I’ll supply this much information, for now…
The microscope is itself, nothing remarkable. It’s a basic compound microscope, which included, as I inherited it from my father when he passed away, 5×, 10×, and 15× oculars; and 5×, 10×, and 60× dry objectives. The 15× objective has a scale built into it, visible in the image that I posted. Per a note inside the case, in my father’s writing, the calibrations of that scale are such that each numbered tick on the scale is 230 microns, 122 microns, and 20 microns, when used respectively with the 5×, 10×, and 60× objectives. I have personally verified my father’s calibrations using microscopic objects of known sizes; and have similarly calibrated two oil-immersion objectives that I have since received from another source—A 50× objective, which yields 26 microns per numbered tick on this scale, and a 100× which gives me 11 microns per numbered tick.
The vast majority of pictures that I have taken through my microscope are with a cheap digital camera, a Sakar 87690. I’ve done a little experimentation as far as trying to get my much better camera, a Nikon D3200, to take pictures through y microscope, but so far, my results have been unsatisfactory. I may eventually work that but, but it’s not a high priority. As cheap and primitive as it is, the image quality and resolution of the Sakar, when used this way, exceeds the optical limits* of my microscope anyway, so there’s really not much to gain by getting higher-quality, higher resolution camera to work, and the dynamics of trying to make a larger-format SLR work with my microscope are much more complex. The Sakar, I can just point into the eyepiece, and it will see the same thing that my eye sees when I look into it. I have the Sakar calibrated as well, so that given a known combination of objective and ocular, I can know the size represented by each pixel in the resulting image.
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The image that I used in my visualization was taken using the 10× objective and the 15× ocular. Thus, as indicated above, each numbered tick on the scale represents a distance of 122 microns. As I have the Sakar calibrated, I know that in the original image, each pixel represents a square about 0.408 microns in size— approximately twice upper range of the known size range for a COVID-19 virus. virus. (The calculated theoretical maximum resolution of this 10× objective, having a numerical aperture of 0.2, ranges within the wavelength range of visible light* from 0.95 of a micron at the violet end of the spectrum, to 1.8 microns at the red end.)
My initial processing of the image consisted of rotating it slightly, just to level the scale, cropping it to a square shape, and scaling it up by a factor of two, just to get the size of one pixel to a very close approximation of the upper limit of the size range for a COVID-19 virus. I then colored one pixel in red, to show the size of the virus relative to the image of the mask, and I put a red circle around it, so that it could be seen on the scale of an image showing the structure of the mask. I wasn’t really thinking of the scale size of that larger circle when I added it, just trying to get a size that would be easily visible on the view zoomed out to show the whole structure of the mask, and how big that circle is relative to that structure, and yet be small enough to fit another view zoomed in to show the size of the pixel representing the size of a virus, relative to that same larger circle.
It turns out, by chance, that the larger circle represents a size of around a dozen microns, which happens to be around the size I have since most often heard cited as the size of the water droplets that the virus supposedly rides in. By luck, my image thus also shows that even these droplets are small enough to fit through the gaps in the mask.
You can see the full-scale version of the image thus processed, but not yet made into the visualization that I’ve already shown, at this link for the Flickr page, and this link for the direct image itself.
Any questions about my equipment or methods, please feel free to ask.
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∗ Odd observation, just now. It seems, at least according to the formulas that I have found and used to calculate the theoretical resolution of my microscope, that with my 50× and stronger objectives, it is supposedly possible for them to resolve detail smaller than the wavelength of the light. Can that be correct? It seems intuitively obvious to me that the wavelength of light would, itself, impose a minimum size of any detail that can be seen in that light, that it would seem unlikely that you could resolve any detail smaller than that wavelength. Visible light ranges from 0.38 to 0.75 of a micron, in wavelength. According to R=λ÷2NA, my 100× objective with a numerical aperture of 1.25 should be able to resolve down to about 0.4 of the wavelength of light, and my more humble 50× with an NA of 0.8 should be able to resolve down to 0.625 of the wavelength. The formula does not seem to impose any hard limit as to how much below the wavelength of light the resolution can go. I wonder if there’s a hard limit on the possible NA itself. In air, the hard limit on NA is 1.0, but oil immersion makes it possible to go somewhat beyond that, as my 100× objective does with an NA of 1.25.
Publish your theories in Nature or Science and then cite yourself. Or, find an existing cite.
Others have already explained that smaller particles get trapped due to electro static forces. Where do you address that? Nowhere?
You repeatedly ignore the following arguments:
- melt blown masks are ionically charged and attract and capture particles significantly smaller than the pores in the fabric
- SARS-COV-19 is exhaled in moisture droplets that are significantly larger than the virus itself
- SARS-COV-19 bare virus particles inactivate (viruses don’t “die” as they are not alive) quite quickly on surfaces
- An N95 or it’s close cousins and a procedure mask are not equivalent.
- Governments world wide test and certify these masks to do what they claim to do
To use your phrase, sounds like someone took the red pill and then “did his own research”.
What kind of masks are most people wearing, that they think protect them or anyone else from any virus? If a substantial portion of such people were using N95 masks, and have had them properly fitted, and know the correct protocols for using them, then there’d be a point to arguing how much better, if at all, they protect against viruses than the cheap masks that almost everyone actually is using.
I am wondering of 3M™ would dare to make the affirmative claim that any of their genuine N95 masks offer any meaningful protection against anything as small as a virus. Taking a quick look at a random N95 product on their site, I see mention of applications that would mostly involve dust and non-biological material; there is mention of mold and bacteria, which would be believable, giving how much bigger bacteria and fungal spores are than viruses.
Most people really have just no grasp at all of how tiny viruses are, and what it takes to filter them out. Most people just are not capable, I think, of comprehending such a small scale. That is why it is so easy to convince most people that a rag over your face can stop viruses from getting through.
It is enlightening to see the sort of proper PPE used by anyone who actually works in a virus-rich environment, and has a genuine need to be protected from viruses. It’s not a simple mask. It’s a full suit, slightly pressurized, with air pumped into it through a much more robust filter, and taken, preferably, from outside the working environment. Sort of like the image you might have in your head of a common HazMat suit, but quite a bit more sophisticated than that. I’ve only ever once seen such a setup in person. At the time of my second surgery on my broken leg, in August of 2020, I was required to have a COVID test two days before. The lady that roughly shoved a swab up my nose (doing some damage in the process that caused me to have nosebleeds for the next day or two) was wearing such a suit. The hose supplying air to it went to somewhere outside the room. I think it was exhausting out the back, into the same room; so even though it very well protected her in the event that I might be shedding any contagious pathogens, it really did very little to protect me in the event that she was.
My post, to which you are responding was a response to @Joey_P having accused me of falsifying my image. It was very long-winded, as I tend to be, but the point was to challenge him, or anyone else, to try to replicate or refute my results. If it is suspected that my image is falsified, then the remedy is to try to produce a genuine image, and see if it doesn’t show what mine does.
Do you have any scientific training in biology, virology, materials engineering, physics, or any of the other 50 odd specialties that would give any credibility to your “research”?
I can do my own plumbing and solder pipes - this doesn’t make me a metallurgist that needs to understand how the materials are bonded together at a molecular level, just that the water doesn’t leak out.
Formally, a couple of college classes in botany, back during the 1980s.
When I was about eight or nine years old, in the very early 1970s, my father, being out of work for a while, spent a lot of time teaching me on a very broad range of subjects, at levels way beyond what you expect a boy to learn at such an age. My father was very much an extraordinary polymath, as I might dare to claim of myself as well, though perhaps not quite to the degree that my father was. His Master’s Degree was in botany, and much of what he taught me was in biology in general, including microbiology. Also a great deal about electronics (which was his profession), physics, astronomy, aerodynamics, and many other fields of science. I have forgotten more on many of these subjects than most people will ever learn.
A considerable amounts of random self-study here and there, particularly during the time shortly after my father passed away in late 2008, and I inherited, among other things, his microscope, and was learning again how to use it and what sense to make of what I saw through it, and of related sciences.
Not much by way of formal credentials, but enough background and knowledge that I am not just talking out my ass.
So what are your credentials, then?
And do you have the ability or the will to try to replicate my examination of a mask?
Next time you’re at the hardware store, look for these ultra cheap air filters like this:
These filters work in a similar manner to N95 masks. The charged fibers in these filters attract the dust to them like a magnet attracts metal. The filters themselves have huge gaps between the fibers. You can easily put your finger through them. But if you use them in your house, they’ll quickly get clogged with all the dust that gets stuck to the fibers. Even though a dust particle is way, way, way smaller than the gaps in the fibers, it’s not able to easily pass through because the dust gets pulled to the fibers by their electrical charge.
This same principal is behind N95 masks. The gaps between the fibers don’t have to be smaller than a virus particle. They can have larger gaps since the fibers will pull the virus towards it. A virus going through the middle of the gap will veer towards the fibers and get stuck. This grabbing ability means the fibers can be farther apart, which allows air to pass through easier. A mask which had gaps smaller than a virus would hinder air flow so much that it would really be hard to breathe through. A N95 mask still impedes air flow, but the electrostatic property of the fibers means the fibers can capture viruses while still being far enough apart that it’s relatively easy to breathe through.
I’ve also taken biology and physics at the university level, but I’m not claiming to being an expert. You are making the claim that you are. My father was a big shot real estate lawyer who handled some of the largest deals in Canada. Regardless of what he taught me over 50 years, I’m not a lawyer and to claim to be is ridiculous.
I believe that the various certification agencies worldwide that study these masks, backed up by investigation, research, and domain specific training are competent.
Moderating:
And with that, let’s close this non-productive thread.
@Bob_Blaylock, your posting privileges with respect to this topic are currently under moderator review. Don’t make further posts on this topic in any thread until a formal decision has been made.