Christina Cat

For full protection, what’s most important is that the mask is legitimate and fits you tightly with a good seal However, even with an imperfect seal, any mask is ALWAYS better than no mask. Volunteer-run resource collection of mask deals linktr.ee/buymasks

Long COVlD "experts" giving unmasked testimony on the dangers of Long COVlD are as effective as thoracic oncologists warning of lung cancer while smoking cigarettes.

LET THIS SINK IN—the U.S. now has no confirmed CDC director, no FDA commissioner, no Surgeon General, an NIH director with no medical license, and the last Acting CDC Director was a George Bush speechwriter. In fact—the only doctor/scientist we have in the White House is… Dr Oz.

One of the worst things society has ever done is discussing infectious disease in binary terms: “you either die or you survive” This implies survival = full recovery. Surviving viral illness can often mean never returning to baseline health. And people need to remember this.

Seizing the FDA, Oct 11, 1988. ~1,500 activists shut down FDA headquarters in Rockville, MD. They blocked entrances, staged die-ins on the steps with cardboard tombstones, chanted “hey hey FDA, how many people have you killed today.” A week later, the FDA announced new rules to speed up drug approval. The accelerated approval pathway we still use today traces back to that day. theguardian.com/society/2023/o…

If there is one word that I have learned to abhor since 2020, it's the word, 'mild'.

Satire Creators Urge CDC and WHO To Slow Down With All The Source Material Please

@Monogrammaton @AdvancedTweaker Respirators while putting face in water swimming still not viable. But face out of water pool activities while staying masked can be a really good thing for a lot of people. Once dried from water, the eletrostatic charge should be fine again

@tinawind @AdvancedTweaker In the immediate term though I still think soaking would be very bad for a currently worn filter. Anyone saturating a readimask while going for a swim is going to have a hard time keeping it on for breathing! And not sure if the electrostatic particulate removal keeps working

It’s pool and beach season! Will a respirator work for swimming and water parks (or shower sans hair washing)? Using my PortaCount 8020A, I tested the most accessible & affordable water-resistant respirator, 3M Aura 1870+, after 6 and 8 hours of wear at the pool (1.5hrs total of swimming) across a month. I did install a SIP valve in it – you get thirsty! To see if you really need a water-resistant version, I then tested the 1870+ against a non-water resistant 3M Aura respirator with similar rubbery straps, the 9205+. The results were surprisingly good all around. (photo is a fresh and used 1870+ side by side)

@AdvancedTweaker @Monogrammaton I recently re-shared your swim thread on facebook and a whole bunch of people are incredibly grateful & talking about doing water activities again.

When you wear a soaked respirator for a long period of time, it probably does ruin the fit. They do dry pretty fast though. The water resistant ones are very hard to soak, as I've shown (unless it's super leaky on you from the start and too much water gets inside). Fyi I also did this. Soaking and drying it out won't ruin the filter. x.com/i/status/18413…

Thank you 😎 Yes, absolutely! I would definitely mask in a sauna now. I have tested the 1870+ in a pool and with non-boiling water in another thread: x.com/advancedtweake… I suggest at least qualitatively fit testing the 1870+ before wearing it in an indoor pool. If you swim with your head above water, you will be ok *if* it passes a full OSHA qualitative fit test on you (look it up!). I rigged my own setup using $30 Bitrex from International Safety, a $20 nano mister, and a garbage bag. Worked perfectly. The Vitacore Can99 is also fluid-resistant and has better fit scores on me (in the 200s). I'd personally use that for swimming indoors.

There are multiple studies suggesting that boiling N95s for 5 minutes and air drying will not significantly impact filtration efficiency. A couple of examples: N95 Respirator Cleaning and Reuse Methods Proposed by the Inventor of the N95 Mask Material; Juang, P.S.C. & Tsai, P., J. Emerg. Med., 2020 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… “Masks will retain 92.4% FE after boiling. The elastic band should not be immersed in boiling water. Do not stir while boiling to avoid disturbing the physical structure of the mask. Charge loss is insignificant, and wet masks do not decrease FE of the filtering layer. Air-drying masks is recommended.” Decontamination of face masks with steam for mask reuse in fighting the pandemic COVID-19: experimental supports; Ma, Q. X. Et al, J. Med. Virol, 2020 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32320083/ “MMs (medical masks) and N95Ms retained their blocking efficacy even after being steamed on boiling water for 2 hours. We also demonstrated that three brands of MMs blocked over 99% viruses in aerosols. The avian coronavirus was completely inactivated after being steamed for 5 minutes.”

Long Covid patients are better equipped to understand the dynamics at play bc, thanks to the utter abandonment of public health (including @ashishkjha!) we’ve spent years studying airborne infection control bc our literal lives were on the line

We're now at 10 confirmed positive cases from the ship. Which makes sense and aligns with: 1) prior dynamics from land-based outbreak (1 infecting many; no close contact required), and 2) what a doc on the ship shared about his experience that later cases were not 'close contact'

@X_Fact_Checker @michael_hoerger @mysteriousrona @scott_squires you can apparantly neither tell the truth nor do math.

@michael_hoerger @mysteriousrona @scott_squires I thought Facci said Covid has a 5+% death rate. Aren’t we all dead by now? I believe with new borns unvaccinated, we are close, if not over, 60% of people have no covid vaccine in them within the US Math ain’t mathing.

"Should I start masking again because of #hantavirus?" It's been a wise preventive behavior to mask the past 6 years. The U.S. has twice annual COVlD waves. We've dipped into a "lull" after the 12th wave this winter, but we're still at 180,000 estimated new daily infections.

@Monogrammaton @AdvancedTweaker Those studies were about detergents, solvents, and alcohol. Those studies showed that wet heat worked fine without damaging the respirator. Water is not the same as detergent.

@AdvancedTweaker Is anyone else really hoping that people do NOT try this? Moisture fouling is the most well-understood way of ruining PPE. Back in 2020 a lot of studies went around about how washing N95s to reuse them would ruin their electrostatic charge, including with different solvents.

@SmthPaluuobu Yes, its brand new.

@tinawind Hi, I hope you’re doing well. I wanted to kindly confirm if your campaign is still active and receiving donations?

Several friends have been encouraging me to ask for help because I've been struggling financially, and after this expensive dental surgery happened I set up a GoFundMe. #SupportChristina gofund.me/79da686ad

Mask C (everythirty) is having yet another (maybe 8th) going out of business sale. Mostly $15 for bag of 10 masks, everythirty.com

YES. YES. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS. I started a spreadsheet in 2019 tracking every category where America is number one globally and people keep asking me to stop bringing it to Thanksgiving. We lead the PLANET in medical debt. Not the developed world. The PLANET. There are countries where "medical bankruptcy" doesn't translate because the CONCEPT doesn't exist in their language. We invented it. We EXPORTED it as a field of academic study. German researchers fly here to observe it happening in real time. They take NOTES. We are a living laboratory and the experiment is "what if you made people choose between insulin and rent." We chose. Exposed. This is the thing we're best at. We lead in incarceration. More humans in cages than China. China has 1.4 billion people and an authoritarian government and we STILL have more prisoners. We beat AUTHORITARIANS at their own game using FREEDOM. We did it with both parties cooperating across NINE administrations. Name ONE other bipartisan project that lasted fifty years. You can't. This is our moon landing. We just don't film it. We lead in insulin pricing. $300 for a vial that costs $30 in Canada. Canada is VISIBLE FROM DETROIT. You can see Canada from a Walgreens parking lot where someone is deciding between half-doses. The same molecule. The same manufacturer. The border adds $270 of LEADERSHIP. That's what leading looks like. It looks like a 900% markup on not dying. We lead in mass shootings. Not per capita. Not adjusted. RAW TOTAL. We have so many that researchers had to invent subcategories. School. Workplace. Concert. Grocery store. We have a TAXONOMY. Other countries have incidents. We have a CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM with peer-reviewed SORTING CRITERIA. That's infrastructure. That's RIGOR. We lead in healthcare spending AND in maternal mortality among rich nations. Simultaneously. We spend $4.3 trillion a year and mothers die at rates that would concern a developing nation. We spent MORE money to get WORSE outcomes so consistently that it can't be incompetence. Incompetence wouldn't be this RELIABLE. This takes PLANNING. This is an ACHIEVEMENT of systems working exactly as designed across multiple industries cooperating to extract value from the specific biological event of someone trying not to die. We lead in per-capita spending on our military while our veterans sleep in tents. We allocated $886 billion to defense and our soldiers come home to a VA waitlist so long that some of them die on it. We spent the money. We just didn't spend it on THEM. The money went somewhere. It led the way. Just not toward the people who fought. I printed this tweet on a 24x36 poster. It's in my living room. My wife moved out last month but she didn't take the poster so I think she agrees.