BTW, the average size of a virus is not relevant to this discussion because the numbers from .08 to .12 are all larger than .03, so that's the end of that. Your crummy math skills cannot make virus smaller. Diverting attention from your poor math skills by discussing Medicare won't make virus smaller, either. But maybe it will give the Smith family sometihng to talk about on their last 255 miles.

Anyway I agree there is no question that the numbers from .08 to .12 ,any way you want to look at them, are all larger than .03
The problem is, if you reread the original quote (below) you will see that the number we are talking about is .3 and not .03

N95 respirators, which cost $1 to $3 apiece, are designed to filter out 95 percent of particles that measure about 0.3 micrometers, or thousandths of a meter, in diameter. Influenza viruses range in size from 0.08 to 0.12 micrometers, though they are often clumped together or stuck to other airborne debris.

MD, you are correct. I wasn't watching my decimal points. You learned how to average a group of numbers, however irrelevant, and I learned what a difference a . makes.

Nonetheless, I encourage you, in the event of a pandemic, to wear a face mask to give your immune system an edge.

__________________
The Truth is out there...somewhere.

Hi! I'm back! I've been busy for the past few days fighting some windbags on a blog belonging to an epidemiologist named Tara. But now Tara threw in the towel (no fault of mine), because she couldn't take all the nastiness anymore. She closed the thread. So now I'm back here, where people are nice to each other.

I see a lot of discussion about masks. Well, a virus will easily pass through it. I have no evidence at hand that colloidal silver destroys viruses (it probably does), but ionic silver blows viruses to bits. I know that, because I did the experiment myself. (Checked it out in the analytical ultracentrifuge).
Silver is a remarkable element. They are now selling socks with silver threads woven into them (probably expensive as hell). They claim they are very effective against stinky feet (a well-known young man's ailment).

But maybe all this talk about masks is a passed station. Here in Europe (where bird flu was actually reported), it's all over, and the chickens, which were cooped up for some time, are running about in the farm yard again. Maybe there's still a bird, too sick with the flu to be able to fly, on a raft somewhere in the Atlantic, on its way to infect America. But I don't want to scare you...

Donee wrote:
I'm stunned. Why? Because I'm so completely in agreement with this, and I noticed before that you make a lot of sense.
And... You were a Marine? That's amazing. I've had conversations with U.S. Marines before (during the Vietnam war), and they were always far to the right of the John Birch Society. You must be from before the Great Brainwashing Experiment.

Skepzilla, where do you get your information that face masks are ineffective against flu viruses? According to this report, face masks against flu have not been tested.

Reusability of Facemasks During an Influenza Pandemic
https://www4.nationalacademies.org/ne...sbn/s04272006?

The committee was not asked to assess the effectiveness of various forms of face covering against the flu. And, in fact, no form of face covering has been tested for its effectiveness against influenza viruses specifically. However, the committee's approach to the question of reusability was shaped by several well-supported ideas. Some refer to flu generally and some to the first use of a face covering.

� First, of the forms of respiratory protection the committee was asked to consider, properly fitted N95 filtering facepiece respirators are likely to provide the best protection against influenza to the extent that it may be spread via an airborne route.

� A closely fitting, high-efficiency medical mask is likely to provide adequate protection against viruses borne in droplets projected through coughing and sneezing.

� A facemask that combines traits of both a medical mask and an N95 filtering facepiece will provide protection against both droplets and aerosols.

� Medical masks are likely to provide far less protection against aerosols than filtering facepiece respirators, but may offer better protection than woven masks, homemade alternatives, or no protection at all.

� No device is fail-safe, and its effectiveness depends on fit, level of exposures, and appropriate use.

� None of these devices protects against transmission of flu spread through direct contact, and hand washing is necessary when using and after removing these devices.

Malodorous feet are not caused by a virus, are they? Bacterium and virus seem to be used interchangeably in this thread, which is incorrect.

Ruby:

Hey it is easy to miss a decimal point, that times they appear to be only slightly bigger then a virus. Now just don�t ask me how much scrap I have made when working on some project by misreading a dimension on the drawing.

Ruby, you're right on both counts. Face masks have not been tested against flu virus. And yes, bad foot odor is caused by bacteria.

But not all of my information comes from outside. Some of it is intuitive. When I see that the pores in face masks are .3 micrometers in diameter, I know that the virus particles are much smaller (around .1 micrometer, or 100 nanometer), so they should be able to go right through. I could apply the same reasoning to condoms: They have much larger holes than the size of most of the pathogens they are supposed to protect against.
Indeed, bacteria and viruses should not be interchanged, as you say. Viruses can even pass through filters of unglazed porcelain. That's how they were discovered in the first place.

Inflamatory!

Skepzilla is correct. Here's the full story.

In 1884 C. Chamberland, in Pasteur's lab, discovered that if you passed a liquid containing bacteria through an unglazed PORCELAIN tube, the bacteria were COMPLETELY RETAINED and the solution that passed through (the FILTRATE) was sterile. The advantages of this tool were immediately apparent, for with it one could sterilize solutions containing heat-sensitive components by filtration through sterile porcelain tubes into sterile containers. By carefully controlling the components of the porcelain tubes you could CONTROL THE PORE SIZE and selectively remove larger organisms while letting smaller ones pass through.

This type of filtration immediately became one means of testing the Germ Theory, since if you passed an infected sample through a filter that would hold back all microbes, the filtrate should not induce the disease in a new host if a microbe was responsible. You could then begin to devise ways of growing the suspected pathogen. However, in 1892 D. IWANOWSKI applied this test to a filtrate of plants suffering from TOBACCO MOSAIC DISEASE with shocking results; the filtrate was FULLY CAPABLE of producing the ORIGINAL DISEASE in new hosts. When repeated, filtrations produced the same results and nothing could be seen in the filtrates using the most powerful microscopes, nor could anything be cultivated from the filtrates, Iwanowski and associates concluded that they had discovered a new pathogenic life-form which they called by the unimaginative, but functional, name of "FILTERABLE VIRUS". We now know that viruses range in size from 20 nm (10-9 meters) to 250 nm. We also know that some of the smallest bacteria such as the chlamydia and mycoplasma are almost as small as the largest viruses and that they too can pass through filters that retard 99% of the other bacteria.

By the early 1900 diseases like foot-mouth-disease in cattle, some cancers (in animals) and yellow fever in humans had been demonstrated to be caused by filterable viruses. The scientific community knew that it had a new group of dangerous pathogens to contend with. The term "VIRUSES" became permanently associated with this life form. You have previously seen that bacterial viruses (view the "Single Burst Graph Animation") or #bacteriophage (phage) were discovered in 1915 & 1917. Viruses, however were not "seen" until the electron microscope was developed in the late 1930s. This site contains electron micrographs of many bacteriophage; view the P2, lambda and P4 phage.

Figure 2. T-EVEN PHAGE. This is a large bacteriophage. It happens to be one of the most complex viruses. Not all phage are large; some are composed of only 7 genes. This is an E. coli phage and it has been studied intensely and much is known about it.

We now know that viruses exist that attack perhaps every form of cellular life on this planet. I haven't seen references to thermophilic phage, but I would be surprised if they didn't exist. We are discovering new viruses all the time and most virologists feel we have only scratched the surface of viral variety. For example, when sea water is concentrated and examined under the electron microscope it teems with VIRUS-LIKE PARTICLES. We have no idea what they are or where they come from or what their hosts are.

The nature of viruses became even more confusing when it was observed in 1935 that they could be CRYSTALLIZED like inorganic salts (table salt) and protein molecules. This observation started a spirited, but rather barren, argument as to whether viruses are really "alive" or a "form of life". People have argued that viruses are like salt crystals that grow and reproduce (sort of). In my view this discussion is a waste of time by people who need to "get-a-life". Viruses clearly REPLICATE their genetic material, which like that of all other life forms, is composed of nucleic acid polymers. Viruses have one major characteristic in common: they are OBLIGATE INTRACELLULAR PARASITES. Viruses are UNABLE to grow and reproduce OUTSIDE OF A LIVING CELL. Therefore their survival is absolutely dependent upon the continued survival of their hosts. This poses an interesting dilemma for pathogens that often as not kill their hosts, wouldn't you say?

The intracellular nature of viruses presents a challenge for the investigator who must not only grow the virus but also be able to cultivate the virus' host cell. With plant and bacterial viruses it was possible to extract sufficient virus from an infected host to do analysis on it. These studies showed that viruses were mainly COMPOSED OF PROTEIN AND NUCLEIC ACID. With multicellular eukaryotic viruses the field of virus investigation could only move as rapidly as the advancements in eukaryotic TISSUE CULTURING. The first breakthrough in this problem came with the discovery in 1931 that the fertilized hen's eggs could serve as a "petri dish" for some viruses. This capacity led to the first use of artificially cultivated viruses for vaccine production. Even today many viruses are grown on eggs because they are relatively inexpensive and because the techniques are so well established.

VIRUS MORPHOLOGY

With the discovery of the electron microscope it became possible to study the morphology of viruses. It was quickly realized that the size and shape of an individual virus is a constant and distinguishing characteristic. Therefore a virus's size and shape is always part of its description. Viruses may consist of circles, ovals, long thick or thin rods, flexible or stiff rods and ones with distinctive heads and tail components. The smallest viruses are around 20 nm in diameter and the largest around 250 nm.

Some electron micrographs and computer renderings of viruses are seen at the following Internet addresses :

These were all functional as of 2/26/99:

https://www.pbrc.hawaii.edu/~kunkel/gallery/viruses1/ Lots of colorized viruses (Psst!! the viruses are really these colors folks)

Many good EM pictures of virus types

Picture of Ebola virus

https://www.bocklabs.wisc.edu/virusviz.html Lots of very good virus pictures.

https://www.tulane.edu/~dmsander/garryfavweb.html; huge site for viruses with courses and virus pictures etc.

https://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/335/335Structure.html; Excellent discussion of virus structure.

Pictures of plant viruses.

https://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/109/structure.html ; Many pictures, cartoons and good explanations, but many are a bit too advanced for Micro 101/102.

More at: https://www.slic2.wsu.edu:82/hurlbert...es/Chap11.html

Inflamatory!

Iggy, are you imputing to systemic colloidal silver the same benefits as silver used as a sorbent? Why?

Inflamatory!

Inflamatory!

Jabbo, do you think that colloidal silver ingested systemically provides the same benefit with respect to viruses as silver applied topically for bacterial infections? Why? Is it because both applications use the word "silver" to describe a cause-and-effect?