Everything You Need To Know About Masks and P100 Respirators
By Steve Kirsch
Tyson Gabriel, is an expert on masks. P100 respirators greatly reduce your risk of getting COVID, but only for the wearer. AFAIK, no public health official ever talks about them. Why?
Tyson Gabriel is the smartest guy I know when it comes to masks. He did an excellent video series on showing that masks don’t work which you can watch here:
I spoke to him today and here are the key things you should know about masks.
- Cloth and surgical masks do absolutely nothing positive and N95 masks aren’t much better than that. They are basically worse than no mask since 1) they lower your oxygen levels 2) can make you more likely to get infected with a respiratory virus, and 3) they actually increase the inhalation of virus (big droplets would fall to the floor from unmasked people, but for masked people they are instead they are aerosolized).
You can see the effectiveness against COVID here in this graph below which is from the highly acclaimed Bangladesh randomized trial done by Stanford and Yale. This is for purple cloth masks. As you can see, there is no difference. None. Nada. See Masks don’t work for more info on the two mask randomized trials.
- If you really want serious protection, get yourself a 3M 6000 or 7000 series half-face mask. The 6000 is the older model and is heavier duty. The 7000 is newer and a lot more comfortable. There are three sizes: small (7501), medium (7502), and large (7503). Generally, you’d get the large size if you are 6 feet tall or over. Here’s the sizing chart:
- The mask is sold without a filter. You’ll need a 3M brand P100 particulate filter, such as 3M 2091 to protect against COVID. For heavy-duty use, the 7093 filters are larger and more expensive, but more durable and last longer.
- These masks make it easy to both inhale and exhale. They will truly protect you from the virus and they are much easier to breathe through than a cloth or surgical mask (they are designed to allow you to maintain suitable oxygen levels).These are serious products.
- Due to federal law, the airlines won’t allow these masks to be used on planes because they protect you, but they don’t protect other passengers since they aren’t filtered for the exhaust. If they filtered the exhaust, your oxygen levels would fall to unsafe levels. In short, the airlines can’t let you protect yourself with legit protection. It’s illegal. That’s insane.
- So on an airplane, you must wear a cloth or surgical mask that doesn’t protect you or anyone else. It is the filtration systems on airplanes that are responsible for the safety record of flights (people sitting right next to an infected person could still be infected). The FAA has never figured this out. They probably never will. They will likely require these useless masks for decades to come.
In short, the FAA is brain dead. If they followed the science, they would allow people to wear respirators, but only if they wanted to. These interventions should not be forced.
If you want a mask to protect you in other situations (or to protect grandma), the 3M respirators are the way to go.
If schools were actually serious about protecting students
If a school seriously wanted to protect students from COVID or any other virus using masks (which is not the best way), they’d require all students to wear a respirator, e.g., the 3M 7502 respirators with the 2091 filters. And boy, our classrooms would look really silly since nobody would be able to talk to each other. If you remove the mask to speak or eat, it’s all over; the protection goes out the window. But our kids would be safe!
Here’s what all the kids would look like:
The point is this: if you want to wear a respirator, you should be free to wear one. And if you don’t want to wear one, you should never be forced to wear one. Never.
There is no societal reason for forcing me to wear a mask to protect others. It simply doesn’t work that way. A “safe” mask (one that allows sufficient oxygen to function properly and doesn’t increase the likelihood of a respiratory infection) ends up only protecting the wearer, never the public (since the exhaust must be unfiltered).
So mask mandates are completely nonsensical. Anyone who wants protection can put on a mask. Problem solved.
There are over 3,243 public health officers. AFAIK, none of them have figured out that P100 mask protect people.
If you want clear proof of how totally inept the public health officers in America are, you are reading the right article. I don’t know of a single public health official that realizes that the only way to stop COVID with a mask is using a P100 respirator.
Instead, they all mandate toy masks (cloth, surgical, and N95) that provide no protection from viruses.
Our public health system is truly fu***ed up, there is no other way to put it.
The blind (the CDC) are leading the sheep (public health officers).
This isn’t just in the US. I don’t think they’ve figured this out in any country.
Even the P100 isn’t perfect
A P100 respirator is a lot better than the typical N95 or surgical or cloth masks. But it isn’t perfect. Some virus particles will get through. Much of the time, the virus particles are attached to something bigger which is why most are stopped (you can’t just compare the size of an isolated virus particle to the filtration size).
See this 3M datasheet for details on using P100 masks to protect against viruses for more info. In particular, pay attention to the part around where it says, “Because of the various mechanisms by which particulate filtration occurs, the smallest particles are typically not the most difficult to filter.” In short, really small particles are stopped efficiently (this is counter-intuitive), it is the particles that range in size from 0.05-0.5 μm that are very difficult, so these particles are filtered with lower efficiency. However, also keep in mind that the virus is normally hijacking a ride on a bigger particle rather than being isolated. So for all these reasons, these masks work. Are they perfect? No. But they are a hell of a lot better than the toy cloth masks and surgical masks and N95 masks that the CDC tells you to use.
For anyone prominent on the pro-vax, pro-mask side who thinks that cloth, N95, or surgical masks are superior to P100 respirators and wants to debate me, you know where to find me.
