With no effective vaccine available, the current pandemic was spreading globally like a blazing forest fire. Citizens had been advised to wear masks and maintain a minimum “social distance”, while outdoor. But the repeated utilizations of the same masks followed by decontamination especially in healthcare facilities were making them vulnerable to failure. On the other hand, the inferior qualities of the currently available regular masks within many countries were not preventing new infections, allowing aerosolized virus to enter, hide, and then infect victims.
Suddenly a novel idea hit Prof. Durham like a lightning. He contacted Prof. Shepherd to get an update on her “super-smellers” theory. She informed him that she was able to collect data applying advanced computer tomography (CT) scans technology on the nasal passages of both a dog and a pig. Subsequently, she sent those data to Prof. Kim Lee at the Seoul University (Korea), an expert in feeding that kind of information into computational modeling, generating three dimensional (3D) image of an object. Prof. Lee was successful in generating and printing out desired 3D models. Both displayed torturously complex nature of both animals’ nasal passages.
Three days later, three scientists from three different continents met in a virus-free virtual world. Prof. Lee displayed the 3D model of a dog’s nasal passage, reminiscent of an ancient complex Mayan art object. Prof. Durham proposed that Prof. Lee ship several copies to him so that his research group could attach antiviral laden fabrics on those computer-generated passages, followed by attaching the medicated mask to a regular mask. The idea was to trap and annihilate the virus particles on complex passages of the detachable combo-mask, followed by decontamination and recycling the outer part only. Prof. Shepherd reminded both of them of the recent protests in different southern states in the US for not wearing a regular mask even in a pandemic, as part of one’s constitutional right. She wondered whether anyone would agree to try on this kind of pseudo dog-mask.
Fortunately, the human trial has just begun in a northern liberal state. So stay tuned for the outcome.