Modifying a Mask to Protect Others During COVID-19

Right, in this video I wanted to do something very simple, using toilet paper to make masks safe for other people. Now you might think, what the hell are you talking about? Also, if you're just wondering what happened to the moustache, there was an accident shaving it the other day, it became a bit lopsided. Every time I straightened it out, I looked more and more like Hitler, so I decided to just shave it off. But I might grow it back. Anyway, the problem was, with masks, obviously if you're wearing a respirator like this, it protects you. It doesn't protect other people, because when you breathe out, you're still passing your exhale breath out an exhale valve, there's nothing to catch it. So I thought something as simple as toilet paper could be employed. And I know toilet paper at the moment is stupidly hard to get, so maybe it's not the best idea, but I'm sure kitchen roll, regular tissues would work just as well. The idea of obviously that if you sneeze or cough, you're meant to sneeze into a tissue and then bin it. I thought ideally what you could do is use toilet paper on quite a lot of masks, like so. So just get your mask, get the toilet paper, maybe fold it once. It's not that easy to do while holding the mask, but the idea being that basically you get the toilet paper over the exhale valve like so, then clamp it on with the exhale valve cover. You could also, alternatively on a lot of masks, if they're not designed so you can do this sort of thing, do it with elastic bands. Right, that's sort of clamped on there. Again, it's not the tightest thing in the world, but the point is the exhale valve is totally covered. So what I want to see now is if you put the filter on, will it let you breathe out fine? Because obviously the worry is going to be that what you want to do is just be able to breathe out, and the valves work properly, but basically the air you're breathing out is catching in the tissue, so when you get home you could just throw this tissue in the bin. The idea being that you're protecting other people potentially if you had a virus. So it's basically doing both the job of a surgical mask and a gas mask or respirator. What I would like though, is if a company at some point actually invented a mask where over the exhale valve you can put some sort of like proper filter paper type thing, that'd be quite a nice idea. But anyway, let's try this. So there's a bit of resistance breathing out. As you can see the mask is inflating a bit, but overall it still works all right. So what I'm just going to do now is take this back off again, pop this cover off, and just try changing the size of the paper, or you know changing this a bit, because I think it might because it's folded quite a few times. So I would definitely protect other people from you at least, because it's actually causing you know a bit of backflow with the valve. So let's just put it flat like this, over here like this. So that's got about two layers on it now, not four. And obviously if you wanted to do this properly, you could cut them to size and everything, but let's just try and get this back over there. That's gone on a bit better that way, because you can see the CM5 a bit clearer. So now let's try this. Let's put the filter back on. We're going to try it with a half face mask as well. With some masks obviously they've not got XL valve covers you can do this with, but I think what you could do very easily is just literally get an elastic band with a tissue or something and do it that way. A bit less resistance this time. So yeah I think the mask should work fine. Because obviously the air is still escaping from that valve, it just builds up a bit in the mask first. So there's that design. Again not perfect, but it works. Now I wanted to try it with a half face mask. So we have the GVS Ellipse here, and basically the XL valve there is there. So what I was thinking of this one is obviously we want to get it in that bit there. So what I'm just going to do is just rip this paper into about a quarter, if that. So that should just about cover that valve. There we go. So now let's put the filter mechanism. Dropping the paper back on. I'll tell you what, I'll just kneel out of frame a second and get this put on here. Try this, that bit goes there and twist this bit back through. There we go. Get the actual covers to fit. Right I definitely don't want to break the integrity between the seal filters though, so I'm going to be very careful about that. It should probably work better with this mask if I just squish this paper into, rather than in front of the valve, into the actual holder section. Yes, that's going to work better. It seems like a strange idea, but I'm sorry I'm doing this all out of frame, so I'm just going to pop back up. So you've got something to look at. So yeah, with this mask I think it'll actually work better to stick it in this plastic holder here, rather than directly in front of the valve. The reason being that the air still has to flow through these holes, but this way it's going to cause less interference with other bits of the mask's mechanism. So there's that. Of course you could also just elastic band over the front of this cover, which might work a bit better, but I thought this would be an easier way of trying it to begin with. I was probably wrong there. There we go, so it will look like that. And then let's reattach the other side. Let's just get the straps back where they're meant to be. Because that's part of the problem when you do this. That's strange. Why is the top strap...? Oh, it's because I'm looking at it upside down, aren't I? No? I'm very confused now, because the top strap is clearly at the bottom. Was it always like that? I'm very confused. Or has it been threaded on wrong? Well, for the sake of this video this doesn't matter, but yes, this is really confusing me now. Or is this back to front? That would be the best explanation. Maybe that GVS thing was always upside down, I don't know. So yeah, let's take this back off again. Oh, I see, you can rotate this round like that. Yeah, that will be why. Right, so it was just something very simple. Yes, now this is back where it should be. Okay, I didn't realise that entire thing would rotate. So now let's reattach this with these around the right way. This is why I don't like editing this stuff out of the videos, because I think some people might find it amusing, or it might just answer a question somebody else might have down the road if they had a GVS ellipse and all the straps were on the wrong way. So basically, as you can see, you've got a tissue wedged in there, the mask looks the same from the inside. So what I just want to see is, can you breathe out without it completely ruining how the mask's meant to seal? Let's get the straps tightened again, if I can find where they've gone. There we go. That seems to work perfectly. Yet the air is still definitely flowing out of there, as you can probably see the tissue moving. Obviously most of the air is filtering through the tissue. So again, there'd be much better ways of doing this if you wanted to spend a lot more effort on it. Personally, I would recommend maybe a bit of cotton, like, you know, from a pillowcase or something, and then you could wash it or just bin it. If you've got an old sheet or something, you could probably cut that into like hundreds of these little bits, and then, you know, do that on your mask. But I think it would work with most masks, say with something like a GP5. I think if you just literally got an elastic band, you could hold it over the exhale valve that way. With a mask like this, again, a similar principle, you could probably just elastic band a bit of cotton over here. Or with some of these masks, of course, you could just stick the thing inside against that valve there, and as long as your face kept it in position, it didn't irritate your face too much having it in there like that. You could just essentially breathe in and out that way. So that's that. I hope this video has been interesting for some people. I know some people are going to say, what's the point of this video? But the point is, if you were conscious of other people and were a decent person, you know, and we're going out and about, and we're using a mask, but you didn't want to put germs onto other people, because, you know, the air is filtered coming in with a respirator, but not coming out, you could do this to, you know, give other people a bit of germ protection. Because quite a few countries now are basically forcing or recommending people to wear masks, but often it's just the ones to prevent your germs going to other people. So this way, you could have a fully inclusive mask, in theory, I guess, where, you know, it protects the air you breathe in and protects the air you breathe out, which is better for everybody. Because I'm sure in this sort of corona situation, if everybody had a mask which protected what they were breathing and protected, you know, the people from what they're breathing out, you know, their exhale and their inhale is both protected or shielded in a sense. It would do a good thing to lower the R0 a bit. So there we go.