The New York Times and Washington Post have now come around to a place I advocated for right here on Medium final week: We should all be wearing masks. Not just health care workers, but ALL of us. Whenever we exit in public.
Why?
Because they work.
Analysis from the SARS outbreak in 2003 shows that washing hands 10+ occasions daily was 55% effective in stopping virus transmission; wearing a mask was really more efficient, reducing transmission by about sixty eight%.
Combining multiple types of protection — hand washing, masks wearing, gloves, and one other layer of outerwear (gowning) — was ninety one% effective.
Read that again: ninety one% effective at stopping virus transmission.
COVID-19 and SARS are similar types of viruses (coronaviruses), and it makes sense that what works to stop transmission for one will work to stop transmission of the other.
Masks work, first, because they’re a physical barrier to whatever’s driving along on that air you’re breathing or moving through. Here’s a chart showing the relative barrier effectiveness for numerous materials:
Secondly, they work because they maintain you from touching your face all day long. The mask makes you more self-aware of the fact that you’re not supposed to touch your face- specifically, your mouth, nose, and eyes, and the areas around them- and if you by accident do, you’ll touch the mask, not your skin directly.
Third, the expertise of other countries who masks show that masks work in the real world. In the words of Jeremy Howard, researcher and Masks4All activist, explaining a chart in his recent Youtube video showing how some international locations have efficiently “flattened the curve” on new infections: “For those who look at all the international locations which have flat curves, they’re international locations the place masks-wearing is extremely regular, and NOT wearing a masks in places like public transport would be considered anti-social.” He notes that the Czech Republic went from zero masks utilization to a hundred% in 10 days, and in the process they halted the growth of new covid-19 cases. The Czechs made their own masks- the government didn’t give them out.
When you still must be persuaded, take a look at this Chinese research of a local outbreak case on January 22 in the course of the peak Lunar New Year travel season. A sick particular person on the bus who didn’t interact with anybody spread the virus to 7 others, a few of whom had been seated much more than 6 ft away. Two new passengers caught the virus 30 minutes after the unique sick particular person had left the bus. NONE OF THE PEOPLE WEARING MASKS WERE INFECTED. Read the article, it’s very detailed, with a schematic of exactly where individuals were sitting on the bus.
So let’s say you’re convinced, and now you’re thinking of some sort of face covering. What are your options?
First, please don’t buy masks commercially, if by some miracle you could find them now. Commercially made PPE needs to be reserved for medical personnel at this time. Unfortunately, the scarcity of commercially made PPE, and the lack of foresight that caused us to be in such a place of shortage, is probably why we initially received this messaging of “Masks don’t work!” They do, people just didn’t want you to comprehend it for a while, to avoid a run on masks. Think of the empty shelves in supermarkets across America where rest room paper used to live, and you perceive why.
The best thing you are able to do to masks NOW are to use materials across the house. Get inventive; anything that covers the mouth and nostril and stays in place will work.
While it’s best if the mask matches well and there are no gaps between your face and the outside air, don’t quit on your homemade masks if you can’t achieve that. Any face covering will hold you from touching the skin around your nose and mouth directly, which may turn out to be the most important mechanism by which masks block virus transmission. In case you inadvertently contact your face while you’re wearing a mask, you’ll just contact the masks, not your skin.
You can try to shape your face covering utilizing pipe cleaners or opened-up rubber-coated paper clips in the half that goes over your nose to make a tighter match — experiment. A very powerful thing is that you just wash your hands, put in your face covering, and exit of the house protected.
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