Making masks a requirement could help shorten our lockdown.
Here’s the deal: the coronavirus is extremely contagious. It spreads primarily from people’s noses and mouths when they cough, sneeze, or even talk. While the 6-foot rule does help prevent the spread, covering your nose and mouth with something — anything — will help even more.
The big problem is that some people who have coronavirus have few or no symptoms. They’re carriers who are lucky enough not to feel the affects of the illness. But they can still make other people sick! And if they don’t show any symptoms or don’t have serious enough symptoms to suspect they have it or can’t/won’t get tested, they can’t know they have it. They’ll go out to buy groceries or dog food or work in their essential jobs. And every time they cough, sneeze, or talk, they’re spreading virus germs that can make other people sick.
The Centers for Disease Control provides lots of advice for fighting the virus, including this:
“CDC continues to study the spread and effects of the novel coronavirus across the United States. We now know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack symptoms (“asymptomatic”) and that even those who eventually develop symptoms (“pre-symptomatic”) can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms. This means that the virus can spread between people interacting in close proximity—for example, speaking, coughing, or sneezing—even if those people are not exhibiting symptoms. In light of this new evidence, CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.“
The solution? Require people to wear masks when out in public. This covers their mouths so they keep their germs to themselves.
Now I know what you’re saying. I can hear you screaming it from here. There’s a mask shortage! Masks should go to medical professionals!
Yes. I agree. Surgical masks — especially those designated as N95 — should must go to medical professionals and first responders.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t make or buy your own relatively effective mask. There are tons of instructional videos online these days; I shared one in yesterday’s blog post; I made that mask for myself. Just yesterday I saw a tweet with a picture of a mask made from a folded blue shop towel, rubber bands, and staples. And masks are widely available online from folks with sewing skills — check Etsy.
Here’s the mask I made for myself yesterday with the instructions in the video I linked to above and in yesterday’s blog post. It’s cotton fabric from an old set of curtains. Machine washable and durable, I expect it to last as long as I need it to. I’ll probably make a few others so I can always have a clean one handy when I head down into town.
I was in town briefly yesterday and was glad to see a handful of people wearing masks. But what I’d really like to see is everyone wearing masks.
Remember, while you wearing a mask probably won’t keep you from getting sick, it will keep you from spreading the virus to someone else. If everyone wore masks, we’d greatly reduce the spread of the virus — and maybe we can all get back to something a little closer to normal life than what we have now a little sooner.
Discover more from An Eclectic Mind
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The weird thing about both the US and the UK is that we tend to be anti-mask cultures. I have been wearing one for two weeks (I lost my spleen in a car crash many years back and my risk of infection is a tad higher than normal).
People looked at me as a freak 10 days ago but now they are gaining ground for the reasons you give. I use standard builders dust masks, they are the same as used by clinicians in the UK when they can’t get WHO standard PPE, which is about 95% of the time.
I ordered standard surgical masks from Amazon five weeks ago. They are Chinese, of course, but they never arrived. Just a scam but Amazon did the decent thing without argument.
New York looks really worrying. I see your noble president has declined to wear a mask. Presumably because he cannot endure the thought of anything messing with mobile artwork of his hair?
I think more and more people will wear masks. I have a bunch of construction masks that I use when I’m polishing or grinding metals or doing other jewelry things that create dust. I don’t like them; they don’t fit me right and I can’t breathe properly with them on. I’ll be wearing home made masks for the same thing in the future.
Etsy put out a call to shop owners to make masks. My sister has been making them for friends using the pattern I used and I convinced her to add them to her shop. She’s off from work today — she works in a supermarket — and plans on spending the day making masks. I’ll probably share a link to them when she has them online. They’ll be like mine — simple, cotton, washable.
Our president is an idiot. How is your PM doing?
Agreed about your pres. I watched his update delivered on Saturday afternoon and it was shameful, meandering, ego-defensive waffle. At one point he listed all the sports people he had heard of and then blamed state governors for asking for too much help. Incoherent drivel.
Our PM has similar problems with narcissism but has some humour and quite a good brain. He is ill with a mild Covid fever at present and his ministers who have taken over the daily briefings are generally hopeless liars who promise rapid testing for hospital staff and patients and all the PPE the hospitals could wish for. This is simply not happening. I have family members working on the Covid frontline in large hospitals. They are not yet tested nor do they have visors which were promised three weeks ago.
Back to Boris. His main problem is that he always admired Winston Churchill and secretly wants to emulate him at a time of national crisis. Well, he has got his crisis but he gets bored by detail and knows little of science, so until he can summon the courage to face his government’s shortcomings we will be lead by man whistling in the dark.
Your masks look really good by the way.
The president’s “shameful, meandering, ego-defensive waffles” — an excellent description, by the way — happen every single day. He can’t do campaign rallies so he takes up the airwaves on a daily basis to get the ego-stroking he needs. Most television and radio stations here have stopped broadcasting them live, mostly because they’re full of lies and misinformation and he can’t be fact-checked in real time. It’s shameful.
Boris might have a good brain, but he comes off as inept and flighty — about as close to Winston Churchill as Trump is to Abraham Lincoln. It’s a real shame when our world leaders are motivated by power or greed rather than doing the right thing for the people they serve. This is a major crisis and we’re not even close to the end yet. I wish we had a president who could lead us through these times without all the bullshit and flip-flopping Trump delivers on a daily basis.
If your president is inept and functionally useless in this context, there is one person who seems to have the ‘right stuff’.
The Brit press has begun to notice Andrew Cuomo, partly because he makes Trump look like an overgrown incontinent toddler with delayed social skills.
Cuomo seems honest, he is able to inhabit the real world. He has humanity and is a fine, direct, communicator. He is informed and does not attempt to ‘spin’ the grim truth his state faces.
Over-excited reporters here are saying he ‘could run for President’. I have not heard him say anything about that.. Have I missed something?
Whatever, he seems a good guy with a more dynamic persona than Joe B.
It’s not just the British press. We’re noticing it, too.
And yes, I’d rather have him than Biden. I’ve been saying since day 1 that I’d like a president who is 65 or YOUNGER. I don’t think we can face the future with someone who has so much of his life in the past.
Trouble is, we have an absurd primary system which, over the course of months, narrows the field down to just one candidate in each party. Trump pretty much prevented primaries in his party so he’s one “nominee.” On the other side, its already mostly done with Biden likely the winner. So I guess what I’m saying is that in a normal year, it would be too late to introduce him as a candidate.
This is not a normal year so who knows what might happen? Right now, I think more of us are worried that Trump will use the virus as an excuse to delay the presidential election in November.