A while back, I posted my breakdown of the categories of reactions to COVID-19:
The current masking requirements (or peer pressure, depending on your location) is a little bit of all three categories.
There is some protection offered by some masks and some protection of others as well (Cat. 1), but a lot of the semi-hysterical reaction is arrived at by assuming all masks offer significant protection and that the slightest exposure to the virus will result in almost certain infection and death (Cat 2).
Finally, there is a huge dollop of category three in the governmental edicts on masks in public. They ,make you feel a lot safer than you actually are (sort of like TSA at the airports )
Me? I take a mask with me whenever I leave the house and wear them when 1) I’m going to be in places where decent physical distancing is likely to breakdown or 2) where everyone else will be wearing masks.
There appear to be a number of fabric masks on Etsy. I’ve ordered for family members from Decent Exposures, which seems like a good company. Their masks are comfortable and fit well.
Yes, I wear a mask when I’m going to the grocery or the pharmacy, or anywhere else where people congregate. Here in Maryland, it’s the law, but I’d do it anyway.
I don’t wear a mask in the car, but I put one on when I get out to go into the grocery etc.
I don’t wear a mask when I’m out on a walk or a run or a bike ride. For the latter two, I need to breathe without interference. If I see someone and we stop to talk, we do so from a safe distance.
Your mask doesn’t protect you. It protects everyone else. Hasn’t this been said a million times already?
No, it isn’t perfect. But if you cough or sneeze, it’ll catch a great deal of the minuscule droplets that the virus could hitch a ride on, reducing the likelihood of someone else getting the virus from you if you’ve got it.
I bought a dozen bandanas and some elastic hair loops and make my own. It took some practice to make them so the ends don’t come loose when I put the loops over my ears. I’m required to wear a mask to dialysis and I’m saving their masks for the staff and the other clients. I wear it on the van that takes me to dialysis, too. It’s not mandatory, but I consider it good practice.
They do have plastic shields, which are basically just sneeze guards. The shields don’t do anything about aerosolized germs. And the shields don’t stop the customers in the lane behind her from spreading germs, either.
For anyone still in doubt: Everybody entering an indoor space with other humans should be wearing a face covering. Don’t wait for it to be a requirement. Do it because it’s the right thing to do.
While spring cleaning during lockdown, i was pleasantly surprised to find 2 N95 masks under the kitchen sink. They were unused but may have been left there when the house was built in 2007.
Wife prefered to wear a handmade clothe mask because the ER staff only gets surgical masks. She works at an EKG monitoring station.
— No one appears on the radio, TV, or any social media platforms to be saying that the greatest way to spread the virus is from the saliva that comes out of the mouth onto people or surfaces from simply talking. … Coughing makes it project further, but the simple transmission from talking or yelling contaminates everything it falls upon for hours or days. … Good masking is the only deterrent from this. The bottom of your shoes should be contaminated before you enter your house or office because of the spittal you have stepped on. … The revolutionary battle-cry “Live free or die” does not mean “Live foolish because it is my lifestyle or die.” — The Coronavirus/flu has not yet spread to the majority of small towns or rural areas of the county. … In 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic that killed 7 members of my maternal grandmother’s family in our small southern town, the virus was spread from town to town via the mail carriers and their cargo. Any packages or mail that come to should be treated as if they are carriers of doom. … The virus did not get to our town until 7 months after it was mass killing people in the large cities. … Most of us have only been given an opportunity before this epidemic fully becomes full-blown in our town/area to practice/rehearse how to save ourselves — or the people in our world who are highly susceptible to death from us getting it and passing it on to them. The wisdoms of the ages must not be discounted in such times … “Pray for the best, but prepare for the worst.” & “Err on the side of caution.” … My grandmother who lost her family but survived because she was unwittingly quarantined on a farm outside of town during the middle of the week when the virus hit our town and she, as most farm people of that time did not usually venture into town until the weekend was spared. … Until her dying day in 1974, she taught me and all her large family that there were two things she feared America would experience again maybe in our lifetime, a flue pandemic and a second “Great (economic) depression” which meant a time of starvation to her. … Learning how to prepare and adapt to such events were her wish for each of her decendants.
Mask usage seems common around here in large stores, but not at gas stations or small concerns like 7-11s. I have a store of N95 respirator masks and grab one of them when headed anywhere near crowds. Last time I went to the store with my daughter, she pointed out we were getting a lot of notice, as everyone else had DIY masks and we kinda stood out using the real thing. Being my normal oblivious self, I hadn’t noticed until then.
I decided to take a digital/city detox day Thursday, and anchored in a cove for the night. Up until nightfall there were tons of boaters nearby and even on the crowded ones I saw zero masks. Weirdly enough, there was one lone mask user on a waverunner by himself. I wondered whether he was at risk somehow, or maybe used it in a crowded launch area and had no where to put it once out on the water.
I returned from grocery shopping a bit ago. (There was toilet paper!) Moderately busy store for 8am compared to before, and except for one guy, everybody there had a face covering of some kind.
I agree with the categories. But like you say it’s hard to distinguish them, 1 from 2 because there still just isn’t solid data about lots of important aspects of the disease. And for 3 it tends pretty much by definition to be an attempt to ascribe thoughts and motives to other people who say their thoughts/motives are something else.
I don’t wear a mask except when going inside ‘essential’ businesses which by state order here (NJ) must require you to have face covering to enter.
I agree the evolution of expert instruction on this looks more like ‘do something’ than solid new information changing their view of how much masks/face coverings help compared to their previous ambivalence. Also the previous lack of official enthusiasm for masks was partly a function of worry that ordinary people would step up their competition with health orgs and govt to buy N95 masks if told to wear any mask. That’s been admitted.
But it’s still a pretty thick fog. It seems to me entirely possible your risk if staying 6’ from people and limiting the time you’re anywhere near them to briefest possible store visits (plus hand washing) is pretty much 100% protection, especially from a heavy viral load more likely to make you really sick or kill you, and the disease is still spreading, to the extent it is, mainly via people who either choose not to or can’t in particular situations come anywhere close to following those basic guidelines. Rather than it being the authorities giving people a false sense of security. But I don’t know for sure, and I doubt anyone does yet including the public experts.
If I go inside anywhere, yes, I wear one that my wife sewed from a pattern provided by a large local hospital. When I’m outside and maintaining social distancing, no.
I realize I communicated poorly. What I did while sick was stay in a “sick room” (i.e. my bedroom), where I would not wear a mask, but no one else is allowed to come in. Whenever I went out of my room, I would wear a mask, but I set it up where that was not something I had to do all that often.
As I’ve been without even a low grade fever for 3-days (finally, after 4 weeks and two rounds of antibiotics), I don’t wear it as much now, and that is a relief, but I can’t say it ever hurt to wear. I do keep up the sanitizing and stuff, and do maintain more distance than I would before all this, as I still don’t quite feel right. Doc says it might actually be allergies, but I’m being extra careful, since allergies have never felt like this for me before.
Same here (in fact a couple of Dopers ordered from them after I touted them on another thread).
I went to the mailbox today and did not wear one, but I’d have made very sure to keep my distance had anyone else been nearby. Aside from that: yes, if I’m going to pick up my weekly CSA box, or get takeout from a local restaurant, I’ll wear a mask while in / around the store. It hangs from my car’s rearview mirror, I put it on before I get out of the car, and I hang it back up when I get back in the car. A walk around the block, I’ll have it in my pocket in case it’s needed but I won’t wear it routinely.
I also have a pair of gardening gloves in the car. I figure they’re unlikely to transmit any pathogens, from surface to face or vice versa; they may or may not really do much but at least they remind me to avoid touching things unnecessarily.
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