It’s not our intent to re-litigate this possibly still somewhat tender topic, suffice to say there are opinions across the spectrum. While Tony Fauci famously reversed his initial position on the viability of wearing a mask which was then labelled anywhere from of course it works, or better than nothing, to it’s useless other than as a society wide visual panic reminder psyop, we’d prefer to focus on the point of this post.
The Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo conducted basic research on alternate materials to improve particulate filtration efficiency for airborne viruses. For microscopic scale reference; influenza and CV-19 measure in the 100 nanometer range and best-in-class N95 masks claim 300 nanometer pore structure vs. generic cloth masks running +10x that gap, or basically pebbles through chicken-wire.
While the press release with simple introduction is in Japanese, it notes their paper was published in Materials Advances by the Royal Society of Chemistry. It certainly appears this composite of nanofiber filter and molecular nanosheet method succeeded on review to filter 100nm particles at 96% efficiency with comparable differential pressure – airflow breathing resistance – of the N95 at 300nm weave.
Ideally in the future actual experts, along with those who claim the obligation of holding truth to power, will reflect on our recent past lessons learned and simply follow the science, without fear or favor. Meanwhile it’s wholly predictable there will be increasing activities on related health domains, globally, and of course we will continue to track and surface some of the interesting bits from under the radar here in Japan.
— 5×5 Editors