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If you are using it in dusty working conditions, it might become clogged after a while. But if you are breathing fresh air, I would think it would last much longer. Isopropyl alcohol is very volatile, and will evaporate from the mask very quickly, leaving the material clean and sterile...

You seem very sure about that, where are you getting the info from? I cannot see why in principle heat or pure alcohol cannot be used to sterilize the material of a mask. What is it that you think prevents a mask from working after 8 hours, in terms of blocking the ingress of pathogens? Just...

I've got a pack of FFP3 dust masks, which I occasionally use when doing DIY which creates fine dust. I've always found that the place the air gets in past the filter is by the bridge of the nose, because the mask does not always precisely follow the contours of the top of the nose. These masks...

I don't think it would be a good idea for governments just to relax, and not bother to take concerted action against viral spread, just because the exact death rate has not been finalized. No doubt in the coming months, we will have much more accurate figures for the death rate. However, if...

The government needs to implement measures, as you cannot trust the general populace. People the UK government got out of Wuhan were not happy to remain in quarantine for the 14 days that they had agreed to. They started demanding free alcohol and private chefs, else they threatened to leave...

This paper provides an interesting definition of aerosols (small droplets) versus large droplets in the context of pathogen transmission. To quote: So if a pathogen is spread by aerosol (small droplets), face masks which are not close fitting will not be effective, as aerosols can get in...

Coronavirus is normally one of the viruses in circulation which cause the common cold (other cold viruses include: rhinovirus, adenovirus, influenzavirus, parainfluenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus). Interestingly enough, Dr John Chia has observed that acute respiratory syncytial...

That's true! One should never attempt arithmetic when you have brain fog!

Let's hope so. What I find interesting is that if you look on the map at the Chinese cities far flung from Wuhan, these have in the range of around 300 to 1000 infected people at present. But percentage-wise there are a lot fewer deaths in those far flung cities. For example, Guangzhou in the...

By a quick calculation I did (see below), it is predicted that by April 2020, there may be 2 billion Chinese infected with the Wuhan coronavirus, and 40 million deaths in China. This is because if you look at the graph of the number of reported cases in this live updated page (bottom right...

Was a blood pressure cuff used during your tilt table test? To diagnose orthostatic hypotension on a tilt table, you need to measure blood pressure, and check for a drop in blood pressure soon after becoming vertical. Whereas to diagnose POTS, it's the heart rate you measure. And to diagnose...

Were you also tested for neurally mediated hypotension (NMH) and orthostatic hypotension (OH) while on the tilt table? The Canadian consensus criteria describes 3 forms of orthostatic intolerance which commonly occurs in ME/CFS: POTS, NMH and OH. If you experience symptoms when becoming...

For diagnosing POTS, I understand that there is no significant difference between the tilt table test, and the active standing test (which people can easily perform at home). In either case, if your heart rate increases by 30 bpm or more on becoming vertical, you have POTS, by definition. Thus...

Being dead is a distinct advantage when taking brain tissue biopsies! Sadly it's often ME/CFS patients who have committed suicide who have their brain tested for viruses, if the family donates the body to science in order to further ME/CFS research.

I hope Dr Prusty and his team use suitably sensitive methods for detecting viruses, and use a system which can detect all viruses. Sometimes even with the right testing, finding viruses in the tissues can be tricky: When John Chia first tried to find enterovirus in the brain tissues of an...

Same for norovirus: it's known for causing infectious outbreaks with gastroenteritis (stomach flu) symptoms. You sometimes hear of norovirus outbreaks (winter vomiting bug) on cruise ships. But I've never come across anyone on the ME/CFS forums whose ME/CFS developed after being infected in a...

EBV has by far the most published evidence that ME/CFS can follow after an acute infection: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19564299 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9926075 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20819961 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16950834 Enterovirus has by...

Interesting that some sources suggest the Wuhan coronavirus incubation period is 10 to 14 days. That's a bit longer than the incubation period of influenza virus, which is 1 to 4 days. Possibly that may make it harder to track new cases, as you may contract the virus from someone, but will not...

Yes that's a possibility, that more people have caught it than is being detected and reported, therefore the mortality rate may be lower than the figures suggest. SciAm says about the Wuhan coronavirus: Current figures are 830 confirmed cases, and 26 dead. Ref: here. So ostensibly that's a...

Ah right. But they did use the viral genome sequencing data to optimize the PCR test: Source: here