Killing viruses best strategy

WE knew the facts of coronavirus in January 2020,

when we were told to sneeze into a tissue, and ‘bin it.’ Microscopic viruses derived only from infected lungs, and most were trapped in moist globules, which could be caught, before they went into the air currents which others breathed in, thus expanding the disease exponentially, at figure R, and, arithmetically, evolving variants, in accordance with the total number of live viruses.

From that, every adult could deduce that wearing a cloth cover over your lower face when in wider company in case you did not know that you were infected was an intelligent personal response, killing some viruses.

From that, every adult could see that a skimpy bit of cloth was a pathetic tool in modern times, and a responsible government would manufacture millions of small masks fitted with replaceable filters which could be cleaned and disinfected before reuse, in an effort to minimise the quantity of active

viruses. Perhaps experts would prefer to manufacture two separated filters in each mask since screening exhaled breath is a completely different problem from purifying the air one breathes in.

Such masks would only be a cheap toy compared to those essential for the saints in the NHS who work in the wards, at the risk of their lives, but they hope to teach the overall principle of killing viruses before people.

Such a rapid public expenditure, reminiscent of 1939 when the government produced gas masks for millions for a quite different threat, would have saved billions of pounds in 2020-21, when our present government advised citizens against wearing any form of mask until July 2020, and so viruses multiplied. Killing viruses must be the best strategy, even now, and other incompetent governments might have learned from us.