Dr. Anthony Fauci - I respectfully DISAGREE

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, believes Americans will be able to sit in theaters again once a coronavirus vaccine has existed "for almost a year."

He added that if the U.S. gets a "knock-out vaccine that's 85 [to] 90% effective," and "just about everybody gets vaccinated," society will have "a degree of immunity" that allows the general public to "walk into a theater without masks and feel like it's comfortable" that they will not be at risk of catching COVID-19.

Source: Fauci: Americans can go to theaters once a vaccine has existed for 'almost a year'

In Indiana, the movie theaters have opened up a few weeks ago. I have been to the movie theaters 3 times so far and saw 4 films. In my opinion, I have felt very safe. Actually very, very safe.
* For one thing the theaters are mostly empty. In two of the films, I was the only one in attendance.
* I wear a face mask while I watch the film. But it is an N95 and it protects me from the coronavirus by design. Even if the theater was full, my N95 would shield me.

And I believe him far more than anyone else.

I came across this article today. I find it somewhat comforting that some movie theaters have started to incorporate high tech solutions to minimize the spread of the coronavirus within their theaters.

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron told CNBC on Thursday that the company has been pleased with the reopening of its movie theaters following coronavirus-induced closures, citing positive reactions from attendees.

“Our theater cleanliness scores are the best they’ve been in decades, an all-time high,” Aron said on “Squawk Box.” “I think you can eat off the floor,” he quipped.

More than 1 million people in the U.S. have attended movies at AMC theaters since they reopened in late August, the Kansas-based company said Wednesday. AMC started with roughly its first 100 locations on Aug. 20. Aron said the company, which had 636 theaters in the U.S., as of Dec. 31, will have about 75% of its locations open this weekend.

Aron said AMC worked with Clorox and Harvard University’s School of Public Health on its safety protocols for reopening. There are policies in place such as mask requirements — except for when eating and drinking during the movie — and blocking out seats to allow for additional space between guests, he said. AMC has disinfectant wipes and other products that it uses to clean, as well.

“But much more important than that, we’ve invested literally millions and millions in high-tech solutions. We’ve upgraded our air filters to MERV 13. It’s about four times the filtration that we had prior to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said. “We’ve bought electrostatic sprayers for all of our theaters so that we’re spraying down out auditoriums with these electronically charged cleaning solutions, so we’re all over both tough and airborne transmission of the virus.”

In most places where theaters are allowed to reopen, there are capacity restrictions in place that are meant to allow for social distancing. Aron said those caps are less of an issue for AMC’s business than perhaps an outsider may think.

“We’re not an airline or a Broadway theater that traditionally runs full. In the movie theater business, we’re more of a church built for Easter Sunday,” he said, noting that the 350 million tickets it sold last year represented just 17% of its overall seats. “The issue for us will be convincing moviegoers that our theaters are safe and that our theaters are clean.”

Source: AMC’s CEO describes coronavirus precautions, including upgraded air filtration at reopened theaters

So I thought I would dig a little deeper and see what MERV13 filtration provided.

Let us begin with an N95 mask: N95 respirators filter out most airborne particles from the surrounding air, preventing wearers from breathing in particles down to 0.3 microns in diameter. When worn correctly, N95 respirators block out at least 95% of small airborne particles. So the respirators can filter out some droplets carrying coronavirus. The average diameter of the virus particles is around 0.12 microns (.12 μm, 120 nm).



Hmmm! The coronavirus particles are actually a little smaller than 0.3 microns. I wonder how these N95 face mask deal with smaller particles!

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Sneezing or coughing leads to the generation of large droplets (4000+ nm) that can be easily captured by a respiratory mask but what about very small particles? A single influenza virus particle average about 100 nm in size, too small to be trapped by a mask. Or is it? Shown in the figure below is a graph of an N95 filtering facepiece respirator tested in our lab against a polydisperse (broad size range distribution) salt solution. A polydisperse aerosol is used to test the mask’s ability to capture particle sizes from 30-400 nm. The graph demonstrates the typical penetration curve of an N95 filter with few particles (300 nm size) passing through the filter mask (0.4%, circle), well below the NIOSH standard of 5%. As the size of the particle increases, fewer were able to pass through the filter. Note, however, that small particles were able to penetrate through the filter; however, they were still well below the 5% limit established by NIOSH.

Figure 1 in the following link provides a graph of the effectiveness of N95s with smaller particle size. Respiratory Infection Control: Respirators vs. Surgical Masks

When fitted properly, the N95 filtering facepiece respirator has been proven to stop 95% of airborne particulates down to the 10nm (0.01 micron) range

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MERV is an abbreviation for Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value. The filtration of MERV filters is given in the following table.



Thus a MERV13 filter will efficiently filter out around 50% of the smallest airborne particles, those between 0.3 and 1.0 microns. Therefore it might be equivalent to wearing a N50 face mask (maybe better than wearing a surgical mask that doctors wear in surgery and many times more filtration than a cloth face mask).

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So the MERV13 is a major step in the right direction. But my N95 provides almost complete protection.

There are many different coronavirus experts and many of them disagree. As this video reports:

'Mulan' struggles in China as North American box office remains mostly closed amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Fnord I seem to recall on 27 January 2020 at 8:32 pm, before the pandemic took hold in the U.S. and people were beginning to issue warnings that you said:

I went to the movie theater and watched another film today. This makes #5 since the theaters reopened after lockdown. It was really crowded today. There were two other people in attendance to the showing.

On the way in, I chatted with the ticket taker a little. Since this was an AMC theater, I asked about the upgraded to MERV 13 air filters. He said yes, the theater recently installed this change. Then I asked about the electrostatic sprayers. He said you mean one of these. He held up a unit that looked a little like a small vacuum cleaner and showed it to me.

It was just me and my N95 enjoying life. Stay safe everyone.