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Do not wear medical-grade masks, folks. Every mask you wear is taking an essential piece of equipment from someone who both knows how to use it, and desperatel
by timr 7y ago
Do not wear medical-grade masks, folks. Every mask you wear is taking an essential piece of equipment from someone who both knows how to use it, and desperately needs it.
I can tell you that I see lots of people walking around the streets of my city with medical grade masks, worn improperly. Even if they are wearing them properly, I routinely see people pull the mask down with their bare hands to talk, use the phone, etc. Those masks are wasted.
As someone who has spent years working in a lab environment: you don't know how to wear a mask. You don't. It won't protect you. This guidance here is explicit that the reason they're asking people to wear masks is to protect other people. You can do that with a t-shirt wrapped around your face.
- cameldrv 7y agoThis is yet more propaganda. If you want to know how to wear a medical mask, you can find out on YouTube. It's not rocket science. Yes, without a professional fit test, you may not get an absolutely perfect seal, but you can do a quick pressure check by exhaling and feeling whether the mask is holding pressure. If you do this pressure check you will be getting very substantial protection from the mask. You wearing a mask is not taking anything away from anyone. It is rational protection. Many people have (non medical, but N95 or similar) masks sitting in their garage. Those masks are not doing anyone any good sitting around. If you have masks and are going out not wearing them, you are putting healthcare workers lives at risk, because you could be spreading or contracting the virus. You or someone else will then go to the hospital and potentially infect a healthcare worker. The best way to protect that healthcare worker is not to give them a mask, it's not to expose them in the first place. If you want to donate them, that's a great thing, but the main thing is that masks should be worn, not gathering dust. If everyone had been wearing masks for the past month, we wouldn't be in this situation. Let's not perpetuate the nonsense.
- timr 7y ago"This is yet more propaganda." Exactly who am I propagandizing? Doctors? "You wearing a mask is not taking anything away from anyone." We have a mask shortage in hospitals. You are literally taking masks from people who need them more. "It is rational protection." For the medical professionals who need them, yes. For you, it's overkill. "Many people have (non medical, but N95 or similar) masks sitting in their garage." They should be donating those to hospitals, ASAP. *"The best way to protect that healthcare worker is not to give them a mask, it's not to expose them in the first place." The best way to protect health care workers who do not have masks, today, is to give them masks. The second best way is to stay home. The third best way is to wash your hands. The fourth best way is to not touch your face. Way, way down the list is "wear a mask", and like the guidelines say, not a medical one.
- redwall_hp 7y agoI'm going to add that retail workers should have adequate PPE as well. Not only is it an unreasonable personal risk otherwise, but it's a major means of spread.
- cameldrv 7y agoYes, retail workers are the unsung heroes of this crisis. They should all have as much protection as a physician. A cashier deals with 200+ customers per shift. With the current infection rate, they have a very real chance of being infected every single day they show up to work. They're being rewarded with, if they're lucky, an extra $16 per shift. If you have extra masks, leave one as a tip to your cashier if he/she is unmasked. You might save their life.
- cameldrv 7y agoNo. This is more propaganda. Research studies on SARS show that wearing an N95 mask reduces your chances of contracting SARS by 91%. In March, 1 of every 1000 Americans had a confirmed case of COVID. In April, it might be 1 out of 40. For confirmed cases, given that testing is mostly restricted to people appearing at the hospital, I estimate the fatality rate is 7%. That means that in April, you may have a 0.2% chance of dying from COVID. If you wear a mask consistently, that goes down to 0.02%. If you assume you have 40 years left to live, if you're maskless, COVID will reduce your life expectancy by 1 month. If you have an N95 mask that you wear consistently, COVID will reduce your life expectancy by 3 days. Wearing an N95 mask in April increases your life expectancy by 27 days. By contrast, wearing a seatbelt over the next month, statistically increases your life expectancy by about 0.2 days. Over the next month, wearing an N95 mask is about 130x more important than wearing a seatbelt. All of this discounts the massive other benefits from not being infected: No long-term lung damage. All of the people you don't infect because you didn't get infected. No infecting healthcare workers. No contributing to the overload of the healthcare system. Plus, wearing a mask, even if you do get infected, you're much less likely to infect other people, which has a cascading effect. The point is: If you have access to a mask, it's vitally important that you start wearing it if you go out. Still, don't go out unless absolutely necessary! Minimize contact! Especially for essential workers though like grocery store employees, delivery workers, etc, wear a mask!
- DanBC 7y ago> It's not rocket science. Tell us how to correctly don and doff a surgical mask, or a filter, and we can tell you how many steps you got wrong.
- exolymph 7y agoDo you sincerely believe that people are so stupid that even if you give them instructions, wearing masks will be a net negative?
- DanBC 7y agoIt's not about whether people are stupid or not. It's that donning and doffing PPE is difficult. We know that qualified, registered, trained, healthcare professionals struggle with it. Already in this thread we've seen someone post a link to a video about putting on and taking off a face mask and that video had incorrect, dangerous, procedure. This video shows him using bare hands to touch the front of his mask to take it off. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22776002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22776002 Literature suggests that 80% of HCP infection is caused by incorrect doffing https://twitter.com/drbencb/status/1236635924274057216?s=20 https://twitter.com/drbencb/status/1236635924274057216?s=20 https://twitter.com/cmac_evans/status/1236689340123754496?s=20 https://twitter.com/cmac_evans/status/1236689340123754496?s=... Because it's so hard we see healthcare settings strongly encouraging "dofficers" / "spotters" -- a second person to watch you taking off your PPE to make sure you're doing it right. https://twitter.com/heatherevansmd/status/1244432369622417410?s=20 https://twitter.com/heatherevansmd/status/124443236962241741... https://twitter.com/Dolores_McKeen/status/1244327891430707202?s=20 https://twitter.com/Dolores_McKeen/status/124432789143070720...
- wavepruner 7y agoPeople who do not work in healthcare are perfectly capable of learning how to doff properly. Qualifications and training in ancillary issues does not matter. Training in mask donning/doffing is what matters, and anyone can be trained in this. Most people have someone in their life they can ask to spot them as they practice removing their mask. Also, wouldn't washing/disinfecting your hands after improper doffing prevent self-contamination?
- exolymph 7y agoFucking lol. Do you think that medical workers use some ultra special procedure to get a seal, when they use N95s? This is bog-standard PPE that construction workers and hobbyists have been using effectively for years and years.
- bootlooped 7y agoI worked in a factory with horrible indoor air pollution for years, and wore N95 masks frequently. It's not rocket science. 3M has a 3 minute video up on how to wear one properly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOnZFhxuw44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOnZFhxuw44 Is there anything in this video that requires an advanced degree to understand?
- timr 7y agoViruses aren't anything like indoor air pollution. A partial reduction in air pollution is useful, but it's useless for preventing viral infection. You only need a few hundred viral particles to get sick (if that). Viruses are still infective after being captured in the mask. Touched the outside of your mask? Go wash your hands. Mess with the mask? Go wash your hands. Does the mask make you touch your face more? That's a huge risk. Does it unseal a little when you talk or move your mouth? Air will go in that way, and virus will come with it. Moreover, if you are like most people I see on the street, and you push the mask down below your nose or mouth to talk, you are literally putting a super-concentrated source of virus right in front of your face. Most people, most of the time aren't exposed to enough virus to get sick. Breathe through a mask all day long, and then yank it down below your nose, and you're creating a problem. You have to be careful about how you put it on and take it off, especially if you're re-using a mask. None of this is rocket science, but almost nobody gets it right without training. Even then, it's hard. Half of the reason medical staff wear face shields is to prevent them from screwing with their masks or touching their face. It isn't trivial.
- cameldrv 7y agoViruses are actually quite a bit like indoor air pollution. If you inhale less virus, you're less likely to get infected. Even if you get infected, you're likely to get a milder case with a lower dose of virus. Viruses may still be infective if captured by the mask, but they're much less likely to infect you. If they're captured by an intermediate layer of the mask, they pose no threat. Even on the surface of the mask, the chance of you being infected by a virus particle that you touch on the surface of a mask when you take it off are overwhelmingly less likely to infect you than virus particles that you breathe in. Of course, when removing a mask, you should sanitize your hands afterwards, which nearly eliminates the risk from virus particles you may have picked up by touching your mask. You should not pull your mask below your nose. If you do however, the chance of a virus particle coming off the mask and then going into your nose is dramatically less than if you had been breathing in these particles directly.