McIlvaine Coronavirus Market Ale

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Grizzly bears are as tough to stop as the coronavirus. Even relatively high powered guns may not stop the charge. No one would recommend a BB gun for protection. Yet a BB gun to stop a bear is as illogical as a loose fitting inefficient mask to protect against COVID.

When the guidance is to wear a mask without specifying the level of protection, it is equivalent to telling people that any kind of gun will protect them in bear country. The false sense of security could be doing huge damage. Some studies show that 70 percent of the COVID cases occur in people who are wearing masks. This coincidently ties into the likely efficiency of a cloth ill-fitting mask. If everyone is wearing inefficient masks you would expect only 20 percent better protection than if no masks were worn.

Mask inefficiency is a subject many experts are avoiding because they worry that this fact will be used to persuade people not to wear masks at all. Some experts such as Professor Osterholm of the University of Minnesota express the opposite view. He worries that people will feel safer than they should and will venture into risky situations with a false sense of security.

What is particularly puzzling is that no one argues about the physics and yet there is no major campaign to encourage use of efficient and tight fitting masks.

· Medical personnel in the best PPE are close to 100% protected against the virus even if the virus load is extremely high.

· The salts remaining after evaporation vary in size but are much smaller than the droplet.

· Large droplets captured on the inside surfaces of masks are either divided into smaller droplets by air flow back and forth or they evaporate.

· Particles adhering to media surfaces will very likely not become airborne but particles in droplets which evaporate can penetrate the mask or flow out the leaks around the mask periphery.

· Most masks worn by the public are loose fitting. The amount of air circumventing the media is often 50% or more.

· It is misleading to judge the mask fit by the leakage of all particles. It is the small virus which will act like perfume or cigarette smoke and penetrate any opening.

· Most masks have a very low efficiency on perfume or cigarette smoke and therefore are just as inefficient on viruses.

· When you combine the virus which is inhaled around the periphery of the mask with the virus which penetrates, it is likely that the total efficiency is as low as 20%.

An efficient tight fitting mask will only allow 3 percent of the virus to penetrate and 2 percent to be inhaled through the periphery.

It is very important that this mask knowledge be continually assessed and debated. Engineers and aerosol scientists cannot disregard the physics just described. The one variable where the medical community has superior knowledge is the viability of the virus. Does the virus initially captured in a large droplet become inactive as the droplet evaporates and it becomes airborne? The opposite seems be true with documented cases of aerosol viability 24 hours after exhalation.

Does a massive instantaneous dose of virus cause more harm than if that dose is metered out over 15 minutes? There is some evidence that the opposite is true. Some super spreader events such as the Washington state choir imply that continuous exposure over an hour is likely to cause transmission.

If in fact reliance on cloth masks is as dangerous as relying on a BB gun in bear country, it is very important to gain a consensus on the dangers. The daily alerts and webinars included in Coronavirus Technology Solutions provide a forum to analyze all aspects in depth. Click here for more information

Bob McIlvaine can answer your questions at 847 226 2391 or email rmcilvaine@mcilvainecompany.com.

2020 will be a down year for Daikin with sales dropping 4 percent and profits down 20 percent.

	Unit	FY2015	FY2016	FY2017	FY2018	FY2019	FY2020 (Forecast)
Net Sales	billion yen	2,043.7	2,044.0	2,290.6	2,481.1	2,550.3	2,400.0
Operating Profit	billion yen	217.9	230.8	253.7	276.3	265.5	198.0
Ordinary Profit	billion yen	209.5	231.0	255.0	277.1	269.0	198.0
Profit Attributable to Owners of Parent	billion yen	137.0	153.9	189.1	189.0	170.7	130.0
Earnings Per Share	yen	469.23	526.81	646.53	646.39	583.61	444.32

A number of steps are being taken to deal with COVID. They include the following:

✓ We have responded to changes such as demand fluctuations and regulations on logistics and production by understanding information on procurement, production, and sales of the five global regions. This has enabled us to avoid opportunity loss and expand sales.

✓ To promote medium- to long-term development, we are built a strong, flexible SCM that extends globally.

Outperforming rivals in response to global changes and declining demand; and strengthening sales and marketing capabilities to increase market share while maintaining selling price

✓ As demand declines, we are working closely with customers to meticulously capture demand and expand sales

✓ All five main air conditioning divisions are expected to achieve higher sales than the previous year in the second half. (Japan 101%, Europe 107%, China 118%, Asia / Oceania 100%, and the United States 100%)

Japan: We are aiming to further increase market share for commercial use and gain the No. 1 share for residential use.

Europe: Expand sales for residential and commercial use utilizing environmental technology as we work to achieve a large sales expansion of heat pump type heating systems.

China: In addition to offline sales utilizing our unique sales network, we will promote online and e-commerce sales. Annual sales are expected to exceed the previous year as we develop best practices in China to other regions.

Expanding sales of air and ventilation products; developing and launching new differentiated products; and creating solutions on a global level to thoroughly capture the growing demand resulting from greater awareness for air quality and ventilation

✓ In response to the growing interest in air quality worldwide, we were the first to introduce air quality and ventilation products. Sales of air quality and ventilation related products this year will be 160% year over year.

✓ Sales for residential air purifiers are expected to grow significantly by 205% year-on year. Production will start in Malaysia by the end of 2020, and we will also manufacture these products in Japan.

✓ As the leading air-conditioning manufacturer, we have developed globally by determining the future customer needs, quickly developing products, and proposing solutions in becoming a large-scale business. Japan: Expand the RA lineup with built-in air ventilation function, launch a new air purifier product, and introduce a new heat exchanger that can be retrofitted. Americas: Launch a UV light that disinfect heat exchangers and construct a system to detect air quality in air ducts. China: Introduce a residential use heat exchanger and an air purification system. Europe: Introduce a high efficiency heat exchanger. Asia: Equip RA with a high-performance filter, strengthen sales of air purifiers.

Profitability is expected to quickly recover by thoroughly implementing aggressive and challenging measures. In 2022, we foresee a return to profits at a pre-COVID-19 level.

Daikin-AAF Flanders, the world’s largest manufacturer of air filtration solutions, operates production, warehousing and distribution facilities in 22 countries across four continents. With its global headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, AAF Flanders is committed to protecting people, processes and systems through the development and manufacturing of the highest quality air filters, filtration equipment and containment housings available today.

Flanders was formed in April 2016, when American Air Filter Co. Inc., doing business as AAF International, acquired Flanders Corp., now a wholly owned subsidiary. The combined company offers comprehensive, innovative air filtration solutions designed to remove and control airborne particulates and gaseous contaminants in residential, commercial, industrial, cleanroom, transportation and nuclear power applications.

McIlvaine is forecasting a big demand for HEPA filters to capture virus particles. These filters will be used in HVAC systems as well as in room air purifiers. The membrane option has some attractive features including availability. compared to microglass. At a Belgian cleanroom conference last year Dr Marc Schmidt of AAF addressed the advantages of membranes in HEPA filters. one advantage is the high efficiency.

McIlvaine will continue to investigate the membrane option and encourages input from our subscribers.

MANN+HUMMEL has compiled various information on protection inside the car by means of cabin filters.

With a size of about 0.1 micrometers, the new virus is roughly 500 times smaller than a human hair. As a rule, however, the corona virus adheres to larger droplets, such as those caused by coughing or sneezing. These droplets are 10 to 1,000 times larger than the original virus. Due to their size, they fall to the ground quite quickly.

It is highly unlikely that a contaminated droplet from the road surface will enter the vehicle's cabin filter system from the outside air. The probability of exposure to the virus from an infected occupant inside the vehicle is much higher.

Thorough cleaning of the outside air by a high-quality cabin air filter is, in any case, essential. This is especially true for frequent drivers, allergy sufferers and accompanying children. A cabin air filter cannot be considered part of "personal protective equipment", such as a face mask. However, it does block irritating pollutants in traffic like brake dust, harmful gases, and allergens like pollen. A cabin filter can only perform these meticulous cleaning actions properly if it is replaced on a regular basis. This interval varies by vehicle manufacturer, but generally falls in the one to two year time period. Many drivers are unaware of the cabin filter or the benefits it offers, with average replacement occurring only once in five years!

An innovation in cabin air filters from MANN-FILTER is FreciousPlus. The filter blocks unpleasant smells, and harmful gases such as nitrogen oxides and ozone from the outside air, while removing almost 100 percent of harmful particles such as fine dust. With the help of its third filter layer with biofunctional coating, FreciousPlus stops allergens almost completely and prevents bacteria and mold growth on the filter.

When the next history of the CDC is written, 2020 will emerge as perhaps the darkest chapter in its 74 years, rivaled only by its involvement in the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which federal doctors withheld medicine from poor black men with syphilis, then tracked their descent into blindness, insanity and death.

With more than 216,000 people dead this year, most Americans know the low points of the current chapter already. A vaunted agency that was once the global gold standard of public health has, with breathtaking speed, become a target of anger, scorn and even pity.

How could an agency that eradicated smallpox globally and wiped out polio in the United States have fallen so far?

ProPublica obtained hundreds of emails and other internal government documents and interviewed more than 30 CDC employees, contractors and Trump administration officials who witnessed or were involved in key moments of the crisis. Although news organizations around the world have chronicled the CDC’s stumbles in real time, ProPublica’s reporting affords the most comprehensive inside look at the escalating tensions, paranoia and pained discussions that unfolded behind the walls of CDC’s Atlanta headquarters. And it sheds new light on the botched COVID-19 tests, the unprecedented political interference in public health policy, and the capitulations of some of the world’s top public health leaders.

Senior CDC staff describe waging battles that are as much about protecting science from the White House as protecting the public from COVID-19. It is a war that they have, more often than not, lost.

Employees spoke openly about their “hill to die on” — the political interference that would prompt them to leave. Yet again and again, they surrendered and did as they were told. It wasn’t just worries over paying mortgages or forfeiting the prestige of the job. Many feared that if they left and spoke out, the White House would stop consulting the CDC at all and would push through even more dangerous policies.

To some veteran scientists, this acquiescence was the real sign that the CDC had lost its way. One scientist swore repeatedly in an interview and said, “The cowardice and the caving are disgusting to me.”

Collectively, the interviews and documents show an insular, rigorous agency colliding head-on with an administration desperate to preserve the impression that it had the pandemic under control.

Some of the key wounds were self-inflicted. Records obtained by ProPublica detail for the first time the cataclysmic chain of mistakes and disputes inside the CDC labs making the first U.S. test for COVID-19. A respected lab scientist made a fateful decision to use a process that risked contamination, saw signs of trouble, but sent the tests to public health labs anyway. Many of those tests didn’t work, and the scramble to fix them had serious consequences.

Even when the CDC was not to blame, the Trump administration exploited events to take control of the agency’s messaging. As a historically lethal pandemic raged, the White House turned the CDC into a political bludgeon to advance Trump’s agenda, alternately blocking the agency’s leaders from using their quarantine powers or forcing them to assert those powers over the objections of CDC scientists.

Once seen as an apolitical bulwark, the CDC endured meddling on multiple fronts by officials with little or no public health experience, from Trump’s daughter Ivanka to Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s immigration crackdown. A shifting and mysterious cast of political aides and private contractors — what one scientist described as young protégés of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, “wearing blue suits with red ties and beards” — crowded into important meetings about key policy decisions.

Agency insiders lost faith that CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield, a Trump appointee who’d been at the agency only two years, would, or could, hold the line on science. One division leader refused to sign what he viewed as an ill-conceived and xenophobic Trump administration order. Redfield ultimately signed it himself.

Veteran CDC specialists with global reputations were marginalized, silenced or reassigned — often for simply doing what had always been their job. Some of the agency’s most revered scientists vanished from public view after speaking candidly about the virus.

The Trump administration is “appropriating a public enterprise and making it into an agent of propaganda for a political regime,” one CDC scientist said in an interview as events unfolded. “It’s mind-boggling in the totality of ambition to so deeply undermine what’s so vitally important to the public.”

The CDC repeatedly declined to make Butler, Redfield or any other employees mentioned in this story available for questions, and a CDC spokesperson declined to comment on behalf of the agency. The White House did not respond to an email seeking comment.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, rejected accusations of political interference.

“Under President Trump, HHS has always provided public health information based on sound science,” the HHS spokesperson said. “Throughout the COVID-19 response, science and data have driven the decisions at HHS.”

People interviewed for this story asked to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation against themselves or their agency.

In interviews and internal correspondence, CDC employees recounted the stunning fall of the agency many of them had spent their careers building. Some had served on the front lines of the CDC’s most storied battles and had an earned confidence that they could swoop in and save the world from the latest plague, whether it was E. coli on a fast-food burger or Ebola in a distant land. Theirs was the model other nations copied. Their leaders were the public faces Americans turned to for the unvarnished truth. They’d served happily under Democrats and Republicans.

Now, 10 months into the crisis, many fear the CDC has lost the most important currency of public health: trust, the confidence in experts that persuades people to wear masks for the public good, to refrain from close-packed gatherings, to take a vaccine.

Dr. Martin Cetron, the agency’s veteran director of global migration and quarantine, coined a phrase years ago for what can happen when people lose confidence in the government and denial and falsehoods spread faster than disease. He called it the “bankruptcy of trust.” He’d seen it during the Ebola outbreak in Liberia in 2014, when soldiers cordoned off the frightened and angry residents of the West Point neighborhood in Monrovia, the capital. Control of a pandemic depended not just on technical expertise, he told colleagues then, but on faith in public institutions.

Today, some CDC veterans worry that it could take a generation or longer to regain that trust.

“Most of us who saw this could be retired or dead by the time that’s fully fixed,” one CDC official said.