Covid 19: one and a half feet of society versus mouth caps.

Can the 1.5 meters distance work? Yes! If everyone would always keep that distance from each other, but I mean every individual under every circumstance. So at home, too. And that's not gonna be. It has already been shown that these virus droplets when someone coughs or sneezes in the air, you are not necessarily safe even 5 meters away. Okay, they're already falling down over that distance, but it's just gonna happen to you that one...

That 1.5 meters is based on a study by Wells and that was about the big drops of a bacterial disease, and we're dealing with a viral disease. “Viruses are much smaller than bacteria: about 0.1 micrometer in diameter. As a result, a small drop can still contain dozens of viruses. Small drops should therefore be taken into account. No problem, as long as those droplets don't fly too far. According to the Wells model, they evaporate in the air within a second and thus reach only one to two meters. However, according to Lohse and Bourouiba, it is now known that small droplets can go much further. Bourouiba's research shows that the small drops that we emit coughing or sneezing can fly through the air as much as eight to ten metres.”

It is still uncertain how far the small drops can get because it has been examined in healthy people and not in sick people but it comes down to the fact that you can already conclude that the 1.5 meter distance is NOT enough to NOT be infected. But just as practical: taking more distance is not workable in our society. And with that you can conclude that the distance of 1.5 metres and society is not really meaningful in the fight against the virus. And then the question is what makes sense. I think there are two options.

1> We all go simultaneously worldwide in a total lockdown of one month. Whatever happens, everyone stays inside. This requires just as food-technical “some planning” and this will mean that people who get sick have to solve it themselves or not and then just die. Sort of survival of the fittest. Another solution is less drastic and also less effective than solution 1, but more effective than the 1.5 meter distance/society and that is my point 2.

2> Wearing mouth caps in busy environments. Perhaps we do not need to wear medical mouthcaps, but we should start wearing mouthcaps that ensure that virus particles do not easily pass through such a mouthcap. Because apparently we no longer want to go for the protection of the other by keeping that distance, but we do want to protect ourselves. And I think it's win-win because if we protect ourselves, we protect another. So no flut mouthcaps that do not work and indeed provide false safety but mouthcaps that do have a function. The knowledge to make them is now the will to make them. There must be someone who can think of some kind of impregnation to treat mouth caps. Mouth caps that you can wash and reuse so that we can move freely again and the 1.5 society is not needed.