This relates to a musical instrument shield that is used to slow the rate of disease transmission caused by infectious droplets or aerosols while playing the instruments.
The following prior art appears relevant:
Covid-19 is the deadliest pandemic in United States' history. Because of how easily the disease is spread via droplets from infected people, this pathway needs to be blocked to minimize transmission. The present embodiment relates to musical instrument shields for the protection of infection spreading through musicians' droplets and aerosols as musicians blow through their brass and woodwind instruments. Infection protection shields have mostly been used as face shields in the medical community to protect the healthcare worker from direct sneezes, coughs, or other patient produced sprays. In the era of the Covid-19 pandemic, plastic face shields have also been used by the general public to protect both the wearer and others in the near vicinity. Most live music venues were shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic not only because it is difficult for the audience to physically distance, but also because musicians were not able to easily control potentially infected droplets that are exhaled through normal breathing and through their instruments.
With the introduction of Covid-19 and anticipation of other future novel coronaviruses for which there are not vaccines, the CDC recommends the best way to prevent infection spread when out in public is the wearing of face coverings such as face masks, handwashing, and physically distancing at least six feet apart from others. Musicians who play instruments such as woodwinds or brass can play through improvised face masks but the air coming from the instrument is not captured by the mask. Viruses, including the Covid-19, are transmitted from human-to-human by droplets, aerosols, and fomites.
Musicians in school bands, community bands, and professional bands run the risk of spreading viruses when potentially infected members play instruments such as woodwinds and brass without protecting all key holes and other openings where air or droplets escape the instrument. It is also difficult to maintain six feet of distance (or greater when pertaining to the more transmissible viruses such as the Delta virus) between members of large bands on a stage due to the large size of the stage needed.
The physical or social distancing guideline of greater than six feet away from others allows any larger droplets time to drop to the ground or be diluted before reaching others. Physical distancing does not prevent spread 100% of the time as factors such as wind, fans, and HVAC could potentially keep micro droplets airborne for longer distances and times.
There have been many musical instrument cases for fully assembled instruments such as U.S. Pat. No. 8,637,756 (2014), 9,552,799 (2015) both to Brawley but these are meant primarily as damage protection cases and the user must still remove the cover in order to play the instrument. U.S. Pat. No. 5,875,890 (1999) to DiBernardini and U.S. Pat. No. 6,239,338 (2001) to Robinson offer soundproofing while playing instruments so the covers are heavy and opaque. U.S. Pat. No. 6,774,296 (2004) to Aesch is a clarinet weather shield cover but it is open on both ends so is not conducive to preventing droplets from leaving the shield. Because the world has not experienced a disease that is so easily spread even by non-symptomatic people, a protective instrument shield has not had any utility until recently.
Musical instrument covers that enclose fully assembled instruments are made of porous, opaque fabric that do not adequately filter the aerosols nor do they allow the unencumbered visualization of the musicians' fingering.
One embodiment of the shield is illustrated in
A filtered vent (28) is shown at the bottom of the shield but its location is not limited to the location shown in
A cuff (22) cinches down around the top of the instrument such that the mouthpiece still protrudes out of the shield. A double drawstring (24) is shown such that the user pulls both loops to tighten the cuff around the instrument but this can also be a single loop drawstring as well. The cinched cuff (22) provides both a method to attach the shield to the instrument as well as to take up the slack of the shield opening to form a seal around the instrument.
Two hand ports (26A, 26B) are shown corresponding to where one needs to place ones hands on the instrument. The hand ports are sized so that the musician's fingers or hands can easily be inserted into the shield with ease, generally between 4-7 inches long.
In
Operation—
The manner of using the see through musical instrument shield is one first inserts the wind blown instrument through the top shield opening such as shown in
To remove the shield, one first removes one's hands from both hand ports, then holds the instrument enclosed shield, loosens the cuff, and removes the instrument from the top of the shield. One then can clean and dry the inside of the shield by either hanging it up to dry or wiping the inside of the shield with a dry cloth, similarly to how one dries the inside of one's instrument. Once dry, the shield can be folded up and stored inside the instrument case.
Additional embodiments are shown in
Advantages
From the description above, a number of advantages of some embodiments of my shield for wind blown instruments become evident:
The reader will see that the musical instrument shield for wind blown instruments of the various embodiments can be used to allow traditionally high risk activities that involve deep breathing, aerosol generating instrument playing to a more confined space within the closed off instrument shield. The shield quickly, easily, inexpensively, and effectively protect against the spread of virus laden droplets to others. Various woodwind and brass instruments can be quarantined within the described embodiments yet still allow for unencumbered playing, for full instrument viewing, and for clear musician's fingering. A hybrid of impermeable plastic, protected hand ports, and semi-permeable filtered vents optimize the protective properties of the embodiments while still allowing safe playing. Furthermore, the plastic see through shield has the additional advantages in that:
Although the description above contains many specificities, these should not be construed as limiting the scope of the embodiments but as merely providing descriptions of some of several different embodiments. For example, the cuff can be formed using a multitude of materials such as wire, straps, reusable zip ties, belts, elastic, string, Velcro, etc.; the hand port flaps can be made deeper so that they provide more protection over the hand ports; the filtered vent can be made from various fabric, commercially available filters, etc.; a plurality of filtered vents can be located at multiple locations on the shield or not at all.
Thus the scope of the embodiments should be determined by the appended claims and their legal equivalents, rather than by the examples given.
Current US Class: 84/382
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/083,867 filed Sep. 26, 2020.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
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11328697 | Stewart | May 2022 | B1 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20220277712 A1 | Sep 2022 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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63083867 | Sep 2020 | US |