I thought about this a lot last night trying to get to sleep.

Using what we know about the lifetime of the virus on various surfaces can we exploit that to allow reuse of masks that have been exposed to the virus but that still retain their filtering ability because they were only used for the time period necessary to treat one patient and then were discarded so as not to carry the virus into clean areas?

I wonder whether masks that have been used once could be bagged and set aside long enough for the virus to die after which time they could be reused. One could speed the process by placing the masks in a humidity controlled environment so that air circulates around them allowing any water film from the user's breath to quickly evaporate. Obviously it would be critical to avoid any situation where you created an opportunity for mold growth.

In this model, the masks are collected as they are discarded. Then they are held out of service for at least double the known time necessary for them to die on the mask surface. This requires someone to determine how long it is viable on a mask. That seems easy enough to determine.

This may be an option for places where ordinary disinfection is problematic. Sounds extreme and potentially dangerous and that is why it should be thoroughly vetted before anyone attempts it. Don't try this at home!

I also wondered about how health care workers are being infected and after seeing a number of posts with pictures of workers showing their faces marked by the masks I have a question.

Is it possible that the health care workers are infecting themselves by creating an environment on their skin that is conducive to infection? There are pictures showing deep marks that to me suggest that the masks have been made to fit around noses but in the process, the fit across the rest of the face is compromised.

The model for this comes from my own experience repairing cars, plumbing, etc. in any situation where a gasket is used to create a seal.

The user needs to avoid over-torquing the connections being joined because that over-torquing deforms the gasket enough to compromise the seal thus creating a leak.

I know that the average mask does not fit many people's faces. It seems that a more effective seal can be accomplished if one had a gasket kit with the mask that would effect a seal without the need to tightly compress across the nose. The gasket could be applied directly to the edge of the mask and would adhere to the mask using a peel-n-stick gasket.

I know from using masks in my own shop that leakage around the nose is the biggest problem with masks. The second biggest in my experience is leakage on the cheeks due to facial hair since I have a mustache that grows wild on my own lip and I am unlikely to trim or shave it.

If health workers don't clean their faces when they put on a new mask they may be allowing virus to infect them in the damaged skin areas.

Thinking out loud here. It just seems stupid to throw away an effective filter that has been used once for a few minutes when it has been demonstrated that virus has a finite lifespan that we can nail down by testing. If we simply wait for time to do its job, the masks can be reused multiple times with no opportunity for chemical or mechanical degradation of the filter media.

Probably a monumentally stupid idea like all those ideas you get just before you slip into unconsciousness.

tl:dr - For those workers with no sterilization options can they just set the used masks aside out of service long enough for the virus to die before returning them to service?

Obviously this a question for someone with the facilities available to determine viability on mask media so no one should consider this to be an option at this time.