Replenishing the supply of masks, handing them out, and making them mandatory to wear in public places would go a long way to reducing the rate of spread, simply by changing people's behavior. I went out Tuesday for some errands (wearing a respirator of course), and it seemed to be business as usual for most people - very little distancing or concern about crowding.
When I went out for groceries this week (weekday late evening to avoid crowding) I was the only one in the store wearing a mask. Rationally I knew it was reducing risk for others but I still felt deeply uncomfortable being the odd one out.
Contrast this with places like Taiwan where a mask isn’t considered abnormal, and becomes a matter of course during times like this.
Same experience. I heard a few folks tell their kids "don't touch him" and kids ask why. I endure it because I consider it education to wake people up that the virus is here.
A respiration device is complete overkill unless you are medically examining the person or in a confined space with people and highly vulnerable.
Catching a Corina virus with less than 15 minutes personal contact is very unlikely and it's extraordinary unlikely to be able to acquire a virion and get it to a host cell just walking past an infected perso on the street.
It's not even clear how infectious the surface to face vector is.
Italians and Spaniards running around kissing each other and rubbing cheeks as is their ancient custom likely has more to do with the issues there than anything
Yes, of course you remove and trash gloves to avoid contamination. I did biochemistry for years. We wore gloves to protect proteins in samples from our proteases, and to protect ourselves from radionuclides. When I labeled stuff with mCi levels of I-125, I worked in a fume hood, behind lead bricks, wearing a lead apron, and three layers of PVC gloves.
But I always tossed the gloves before leaving the work area. And usually I'd put on fresh gloves before removing the lead apron.
That wouldn't be workable day to day. You'd probably go through 50-100 gloves per day, doing it right.
I know these aren't as good, but they probably improve my chances of avoiding SARS-CoV-2 by at least 10% when I have to go outside. I plan on using them once, then leaving them in a bucket in the garage. Once I've used them all up, I'll wash them and by that time (and hopefully the detergent + bleach action), the virus will be dead.
> Eventually you'll need to interact to some degree with others when getting groceries etc.
The main risk when getting groceries, unless people are coughing or sneezing in your face, is transfers from your hands, which a surgical or n95/r95/p95 mask does roughly zero to help with. (Now, getting everyone else to wear such a mask would reduce the odds of them contaminating something that would get on your hands, but that's not a benefit of you wearing mask.)
I disagree with gloves. Gloves may serve as a psychological signal, and they can be put on and taken off, but I haven't heard of hands being an infection route.
Several states fairly recently passed laws requiring food preparers to wear gloves. Then they backtracked when they realized that they actually decreased safety.
Hands are absolutely an infection route, by acting as a transport vehicle to your nose and eyes. Gloves don't change that fact though, unless it reminds you to not touch your face. (It does to me: I work with gloves and epoxy resin a lot, and I've developed a pretty strong reflex to not touch myself with gloved hands even though I do it all the time with bare hands.)
It was on NBC news two nights ago that the virus does not infect you through eyes or blood. It can only infect and replicate in the lungs. So only nose and mouth if that report was correct.
A mask does far more, comparatively, used by high-exposure or critical-service workers: medical staff and responders, retail workers. Those highly exposed and hard to replace.
For the average person, a mask likely is an individual benefit. But in a world with insufficient masks and asymmetric risks, social benefit, literally the health of the public, benefits most by limited and targeted use.
Distinguishing between personal and communal risk is critical here. That message has been poorly conveyed, even by ordinarily excellent communicators -- Zynep Tufekci comes to mind.
Yes, but fundamentally that's still just bargaining with the problem. If spread is supercritical, the hospitals fill up regardless of how protected healthcare workers are.
My comment was in the context of "what can time fix", which would mean supplying healthcare workers and everybody else with masks before letting up. Retail workers wearing masks would go a long way to creating some peer pressure to act differently.
Are you saying the masks are helpful to prevent contraction of the virus, or to stop the spreading of it from those who are contagious, but don't know about it yet?
There is a very succinct explanation by Michael Osterholm [1][2] where he says that the virus is spread both by droplets & aerosols, and that sharing the same air with another person is the primary vector (that isn't intended to sound as alarmist as it probably does).
From what I understand the best prevention is to reduce face-to-face contact with other people where possible, but an N95 mask would definitely help prevent contraction in public spaces.
Of course, these measures seem extreme since ~80% of people will barely notice they are infected / have mild symptoms, but it's all about peak-load reduction.
Wearing a mask to prevent contracting it is like wearing medieval platemail to protect yourself against an M16.
It gives you very limited protection. There's no replacement for just avoiding people, 15 feet away from everyone.
They're mainly good for people who are infected to not transmit pathogens.
When doctors operate on infectious people, they wear hazmat suits. Full face mask, air filter and body condom. You can get a virus through your ears, eyes, mouth, nose, or microabrasions on your skin.
You can wear a mask, but I fear that people will start thinking it's anywhere near full protection. False sense of security is probably not worth even encouraging in a situation this dire.
Masks definitely helpful to stop spreading it from those who are contagious. If they help prevent contracting it depends a lot on how disciplined you are at using them. If fiddling with a mask, you're more likely to contaminate it and yourself.
