Are you in the USA? If so, it is not the POLICY that is to blame, however shifty it might be. It is the LEADERS who HAVE no policy and instead have brought an avalanche of LIES every day and the MEDIA who go along with it.
The USA is overflowing with a campaign of misinformation and lies. It’s not policy. It’s the myth of freedom vs. oppression and all that other total fuckin’ bullshit that a loud, ignorant, unscientific minority is foisting on everyone else.
THAT’S our problem. It’s not policy. It’s lack of policy or leadership and the lies that have filled that void.
I very much agree with you. (And I do live in the USA.)
This last weekend, I was in two grocery stores. One was a rural Krogers, the other one was an Asian Grocer’s. The rural Krogers had 90%+ non-compliance with social distancing guidelines. Most people were shopping without a mask, not keeping distances, and I got a lot of odd looks wearing a mask. (I haven’t gone bare-faced in public since March.)
At the Asian Grocer’s, every single person in the store was effectively using a mask - no noses peeking out, no wearing it to protect the beard, no letting it flap from one ear. Everyone was being very careful to not close within 6’, except to cross in the aisle and then they would retreat to a safe distance and let you move out if you were standing within 6’ of what they wanted. The store had a strict mask policy, and reserved the right to take a temp and refuse entry - posted at the door and enforced.
They meant business. If we all handled this like the management, employees, and customers of that store did, we’d be fine until we can get this thing beat.
This is going to rip through that Kroger’s like a cyclone, leaving a stack of dead bodies in it’s wake.
This perfect-or-nothing attitude towards PPEs is part of why public health officials in the US were so slow to recommend mask-wearing for the general public. That attitude toward PPE is appropriate in an ICU, but the purpose of mask use at a population level is quite different and applying the same standards doesn’t necessarily make sense.
In an ICU you really do want to make sure that your mask is 100% effective, or as near as possible, because you’re getting directly up in the faces of people who are known to be infected. In the general case, an ill-fitting or makeshift mask which reduces respiratory droplet spread by 50% is still going to help reduce transmission, and telling people masks are useless unless they go through an extensive and complicated checklist every time they put one on will just mean fewer people wearing masks.
Like most algorithmically blessed 3D printer products, this is probably harmless because no one who needs it will ever print it. However, the technique for removing gloves safely was taught on day one of my EMT course, and takes all of 30 seconds to learn. Pinch, slide.
Well the general public isn’t supposed to use medical PPE. And while the standard PPE rules for masks are a good idea with non-medical cloth masks they aren’t that important to the primary goal of source control. Touch your mask all you like, never wash it and don’t bother washing your hands when taking it off and it will still reduce the germs you spew all over when you talk.
Of course it’s better if you do all that stuff. It might help keep you from getting sick as well as keep you from infecting others.
As long as it covers your mouth and nose and you actually wear it, that is the main point.
You would think so (I was taught in undergrad microbiology)- but according to a 2017 study:
For 100 residents, fellows and attending physicians representing 67 different medical schools, only 53% reported receiving training in use of PPE and only 39% selected correct donning and doffing sequence.
Do we have any actual data on that yet? “of course” and “it might” don’t sound very reassuring.
What we do know is that between skin and glove is an ideal environment to bacteria to multiply, ■■■■■ and warm. That - and the skin problems gloves cause - is why it’s not recommended to wear gloves for extended periods of time unless absolutely necessary.
My comment was mostly about mask wearing, I don’t know the research on gloves since they aren’t recommended for general use.
So AFAIK we don’t have a lot of rigorous epidemeological data on whether mask wearing by the general public reduces spread of viruses in general or coronavirus in particular. It is almost impossible to test that in a controlled fashion. There is reasonable evidence that areas that adopt mask wearing also are more successful at preventing spread, but that could be due to greater compliance with other measures. However, what we can do is have people wear masks and measure the spread of respiratory droplets with and without, and that shows that even crappy masks dramatically reduce the amount of droplets expelled, and the speed and range of those droplets. And we know that specifically for SARS-COV-2, respiratory droplets are a major mechanism for spread, and that they can come from not just coughing and sneezing, but also talking, shouting, and even breathing. So we don’t know for sure how that reduction in droplets translates to reduced risk of infection, but if you look at the costs/risks vs. the potential benefits, masks are a very high value mitigation.
In terms of protecting yourself, it is more of a mixed bag, for a number of reasons. First off, respiratory droplets leave the humid environment of your mouth and nose fairly large and easily filtered. However, they quickly evaporate down to much smaller sizes that are harder to filter. So filtering them at the destination is harder to begin with and more strongly depends on the mask construction – type of fabric, fit, etc. It is also lot more highly dependent on the use. If your mask is successful at catching inbound pathogens but you touch it while adjusting or removing the mask and don’t wash your hands, you could transfer that back to your face and negate some of that benefit. That doesn’t really matter for source control: if you are sick and contaminate your own mask, handling it yourself isn’t going to do anything.
There is clinical research on the effectiveness of cloth masks as PPE for healthcare workers, and it shows they are not particularly effective. It isn’t clear why this is – it could be improper use, poor materials choice in the existing trials, or simply that the types of airborne particles encountered in a hospital setting which can include very fine aerosols resulting from medical procedures like intubation are impractical to filter with a cloth mask.
Which is why I said there is very strong evidence to support mask wearing by the general public for source control but it is less clearly effective for personal protection – since it depends on the type of mask, how well it is worn, and how well other protocols such as handwashing are followed. It seems logical that wearing a mask and following good mask hygiene might protect you, but there isn’t a lot of data to support that since generally people don’t follow those protocols consistently.
So it isn’t completely settled. I would also note that the studies showing poor effectiveness of cloth masks also cite their “very low” filtration efficiency. However, that strongly depends on the type of fabric, as studies just measuring the filtration efficiency of fabric have found that they can vary between 9% (single layer low threadcount cotton) to 97% (one layer of cotton + 1 layer of chiffon or silk).
One other interesting point: almost anything is better than a poorly fit N95 respirator. Presumably that is because the flow resistance of the respirator is so high that if there is a gap nearly all the air goes around it rather than through the filter. Less effective but less restrictive masks may filter a substantial fraction of the air even when not perfectly fit.
This is a cool epidemiology report from contact tracing a covid19 positive busrider who wore a mask on one trip and not on another - the mask kept the other busriders safe.
Surgical masks and the tested hand-made masks were found to limit the forward flow of a breath out, but also generate far-reaching leakage jets to the side, behind, above and below. Heavy breathing and coughing, in particular, were shown to generate intense backward jets.
Only masks that form a tight seal with the face were found to prevent the escape of virus-laden fluid particles, the team says.
If stuff gets out, it would also get in, I’d assume.
