@Flowerwall I mentioned that in my reply. Was what I meant by “sterilizable”. Hopefully facilities still have an old school autoclave or two...

@Zster oh sorry, my brain is only half present today and the thought was not fully written out. I meant for the ones out there now. Yeah helping to create is a great idea.

I think a problem with this idea is in obtaining the right materials. To actually be effective, the material has to be up to the task of blocking the virus and have the right kind of resistance to fluids.

@Flowerwall The problem with sterilizing existing N95 masks is that the materials used and the design of the mask itself probably don't lend themselves to the process of autoclaving, which is essentially like putting them into a pressure cooker for a period of time.

@bingst I did not propose N95, (though that is what works best). For the idea to work, strict standards in materials and designs would have to be required, along with some sort of QC. Lots of potential hurdles. Right now, though... NOTHING? Just let them run out? I was thinking back to how households and individuals pitched in during WW2, wondering how new ways of working might be applied here... Better ideas are possible, I hope.

@Zster The following on making masks was mentioned on Georgia Public Broadcasting radio today, in which they're using these homemade masks to place over N95 masks in order to prolong the use of the latter.
[ajc.com]

Maybe you could contact your local hospital, or health dept, or whatever to see if it would be useful to them. I'm still not sure about fabric. Someone else posted about making masks, that had a video. Found it: [agnostic.com] .

@bingst Thank you!!! A neighbor mentioned hearing about a home made mask donation effort this morning. As to materials, high threadcount sheets come to mind. I have used such with my animals and have found that little gets through sheets with very many threads per cm.

@Zster I wondered about high thread count, but what about the water resistance?

@bingst Might depend on the materials, presence of surfactant and whatnot. It looks like there actually IS such an initiative as this post was suggesting. The hospitals are using home-made masks to extend the life of the viral protective ones worn underneath.

On a related note... I’ve put reptiles in wetted pillow cases to help with hung up skin shedding. With high thread-count cases, the water forms an impermeable barrier such that the animal could suffocate. Not sure if that = water resistant or just water trapped.

You must know a lot about building things.

@Flowerwall I've done a fair bit of home repair and improvement, including plumbing, electrical, and carpentry. I've also worked on cars and motorcycles a bit. And in the past, conceived and implemented improvements to machinery or in support of machinery in manufacturing, i.e. practical engineering.

@bingst Sounds like a good idea to come up with. Let us know if it works.

The shortage of PPE is a bigger problem right at this moment. There's also a shortage of specimen collection kits. Both of these are needed even before testing. I'm not sure that the CDC isn't doing some kind of forecasting, but... I think under normal circumstances, they would do surveillance (more at random testing) in order to get a better idea of the infection saturation of the populace, but of course, testing is being limited at the moment. At some point, a serological test will be approved, which will tell us who has recovered from infection (looks for antibody in the blood).