Universal Citizen Protection Device

Bring me up to speed. What is the problem?

This pandemic has caused a humanitarian and economic crisis at an unimaginable global scale. The worst part of it is that there is currently no effective way to prevent it. Vaccines are probably a solution but they are a year out at a minimum and will not work if the virus evolves. The closest solution we have to date is social distancing. Even without the economic impact, social distancing has its challenges. A significant portion of the population provides essential services or supports essential services and is already working or will need to get back to work for our world to function. Healthcare, Law Enforcement, and Utilities are the obvious ones. But there are many many more. Take for example, everyone in the supply chain for something basic like farm produce, who must go to work every day and cannot stay at home. The pickers (about a million in the US) , transporters, distributors, truck drivers, gas stations, and retailers. Every time they go to work, they unwillingly risk their own health and the health of others.

And what are we going to do about it?

The primary focus needs to be -"How can we get things back to normal?". We can’t wait for a year for vaccines.

If we, and the world, have to go back to work today, we need something to wear that would guarantee us at least a 99.9% probability of protection for 8+ hours even if one of our colleagues was an asymptomatic or symptomatic carrier. If we had gear like this, we could put it on before we headed out, keep it on the entire work duration. Not the best solution, agreed, but so much better than not going to work at all!

We call this the Universal Citizen Protection Device or UCPD concept. The UCPD is not an existing product. It is an idea, but it's an idea worth working on. A UCPD could the virus out of our eyes, nose and mouth (and in, when worn by a carrier). The defining characteristics of a UCPD are:

Easy to use and can be worn 8 hrs a day
Isolates the complete head (especially eyes, nose and mouth) from the environment
99.9% effective
Reusable
Globally manufacturable at low cost

In an ideal world, Governments would immediately mandate this, everyone would wear this device, and infections would come down dramatically, while still allowing people to go to work. In the real world, we anticipate the early adopters to be businesses and specific parts of the government for whom securing their workplace is a priority. Once it's proven to work, they will be quick to mandate this in their workplaces so that employees don't infect themselves and others. Once it's seen working there, we expect adoption to go up exponentially.

So what should we make?

We think the ideal device criteria are (assuming that 1+ billion of these will be required and possibly more):

MINIMUM CRITERIA

Isolates the entire head of an individual while allowing him to breathe and see comfortably
Keeps the virus out of the head area (if uninfected), and within the head area (if infected) with 99%+ effectiveness-
Disallows touching of mouth, eyes and nose. Which then ensures zero transfer to/from hands to face
Wearable for 8+ hrs
Bulk Manufacturable Globally
Reusable
Costs <$50 dollars and ideally even less so that it is affordable by poorer sections in developing countries

DESIRABLE CRITERIA

-Should not have glare