Post 25 - April 5, 2020
Day 25…
Masks. Should we be wearing them?
The World Health Organizations officially says that you only need to wear a mask under certain conditions:
If you are healthy, you only need to wear one if you are taking care of someone suspected of having it.
If you are coughing or sneezing.
They are only effective in conjunction with frequent hand washing and if worn and disposed of correctly. It should cover your nose and mouth and there should be no gaps between the mask and your face.
You should not touch the mask while it’s on. If you do you need to sanitize your hands.
Single use masks should not be re-used.
It should be removed from behind and disposed of in a closed bin. You should wash your hands immediately after disposing of it.
The CDC’s site is a bit more complicated to navigate.
Up until two days ago they did not recommend that the general public wear them.
What they now say is, “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 face masks they recommend are NOT surgical masks or N-95 respirators.
This change, according to the site, came from recent studies that suggest that a significant portion of people with the virus lack symptoms or are pre-symptomatic but can still transmit the virus at the same level as those who do have the obvious symptoms.
They are quick to add that anything that they say complements and does not replace anything under the President’s Coronavirus Guidelines.
Our President’s recommendation is, and I quote, “You can do it - you don’t have to do it. It’s only a recommendation. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”
Great.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said of the issue, “The thing that has inhibited that (recommending that the public wear masks) a bit is to make sure that we don’t take away the supply of masks from the health-care workers who need them, But when we get in a situation when we have enough masks, I believe there will be some very serious consideration about broadening this recommendation of using masks. We’re not there yet, but we’re close.”
Governor Cuomo said, “It couldn’t hurt from a public-health point of view. It could help if somebody has the virus. Unless the fabric has a certain density, the virus will get through. It couldn’t hurt unless it gives the person a false sense of security.”
Mayor DeBlasio said on Thursday, “We’re advising New Yorkers to wear a face covering when you go outside and will be near other people. Let’s be clear, this is a face covering. It could be a scarf, it could be a bandana, something you create yourself.”
So, taking all of that together, should we be wearing masks?
Yes, I think so.
At the very worst, it couldn’t hurt. At best it could help hinder the spread of COVID-19.
We do need to make sure that we don’t keep hospital-grade supplies from getting to where they are needed most - our hospitals.
Just from a commonsense point of view, anything that we can do to shield ourselves from both GETTING the virus and, maybe more importantly, GIVING the virus, is something that we should do.
The Japanese have been wearing masks when they are ill for years and the rest of us have all rolled our eyes.
New York City has a population of 8.6 million people in a very small physical area. If you include the greater metropolitan area that number goes up to 20.1 people.
Tokyo proper has a population of 13.9 million and when you add in their metropolitan area that number goes up to over 38 million people - almost twice as many people as we have here.
The Japanese have learned that they HAVE to take care of each other. They are just too close together.
That’s a lesson we should probably learn too.
Last week, I wasn’t wearing a mask. This week, I am.
I have been taking long walks for exercise - avoiding streets with people on them, avoiding lines of people waiting to get into stores and not touching ANYTHING.
I’ve started wearing a mask even when I’m completely by myself out on the street.
A couple of weeks ago we were talking to friends who have friends in Italy who had reported that despite recommendations to the contrary that Italians had started wearing masks out on the streets.
At the time, we thought that was over-kill.
The Italians said that’s what they all had thought a couple of weeks before, too.
Yesterday I watched two guys, standing in line, at Trader Joes. The line went from the front of the store, down Columbus to 90th street, all the way down 90th Street and around the corner on Amsterdam, halfway back to 91st Street. (It took Michael over an hour and a half to get in the other day) These two guys were chatting from 6’ away from each other. No masks, but they were keeping their distance from each other. As I passed them (from across the street) I saw one of them lean in to say something (clearly so those around them wouldn’t hear.) The other guy leaned in as well so that their heads were now only a foot apart. A second later, they laughed and went back to their original positions.
In that one moment, if one of them had the virus, he passed it to the other one.
We need to keep physical distance from each other all the time.
Not most of the time.
ALL the time.
That’s the only way this works.
It goes against every pre-virus instinctual impulse that we have.
It is really hard to do and to monitor 24/7.
But that’s the gig.
If not for ourselves then for everybody else.
Let’s love each other and keep our distance - and wear a mask.
For now.