There are no masks available to the public now. Realistically if you don't already have a mask your only option is to make one, which is not hard. Go to YouTube and find a video. A couple layers of cotton can work and is much better than nothing, at stopping your droplets from spreading if you sneeze or cough.
If you already have a mask wear it when you go out. No health care worker wants your mask. Wear goggles too.
And yes masks help prevent respiratory infection which is why health care workers wear them.
Stop with the "you shouldn't be wearing one" nonsense. It is false and dangerous.
Many of them are wearing surgical masks. Not N95 masks, true, but not home-made masks either. I don't know where they're getting the masks, but clearly they have some.
Every time I see this, I honestly kind of want to scream at them.
If you want to wrap a piece of fabric around your nose and mouth, by all means, it certainly can't hurt. But if you have a supply of real masks somewhere, you should donate them.
I apologize if you’ve already explored this but I figure it could help others.
AFAIK locally (Czech Republic) hospitals have accepted donations of respirators and even hand made cloth masks. Maybe something similar is possible with hospitals in your are as well ?
I bought in 2014 100 chirurgical masks => they're now expired (and I have ~15 left after giving all others to friends and colleagues after warning them about this) but from what I read the statements were that they can still be effective (not anymore 100% but at least more than 0%, which is more than not wearing anything).
And I don't mean this in an abstract way. There are numerous places accepting mask donations right now. If you have a mask, you should donate it. Stat.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes
There are professionals willing to jump into the water to try and patch the hull so it sinks more slowly, giving everyone time to get airlifted off by helicopter. Unfortunately, they're drowning while attempting the repairs because they're not wearing proper scuba diving gear. Meanwhile, normals are keeping the gear for themselves in the hope it might be easier to swim to safety once the ship goes under.
This isn't a very good analogy—but I hope my point comes through. It's not every person for themselves. We need to help the people trying to help everyone.
Personally, given the vastly greater risk of exposure for them, I don't think it's a zero-sum game at all, which is precisely why all available supplies should go to them first.
So make 10 masks, donate 9, and keep the 10th for yourself.
If for some reason I had to spend a lot of time in close proximity to other people, that might merit a homemade mask, but otherwise I think I'd be doing a far better job protecting both of us and everyone else we interact with (in the process of obtaining food and essential supplies) by giving it to my wife before she heads out for her next shift at the hospital.
^[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/sars-cov-2-viral-load-and-the-...
Remember—your job is to stay six feet away from everyone else, on the off chance they might have the Coranavirus. Doctors and nurses are getting up close with people they know for sure have the Coronavirus, all day, every day.
But more importantly, the masks are disposable! It's not like you can keep one and use it indefinitely.
> if everyone does this, there's 10% fewer masks for doctors than there'd be otherwise
Right, but the point is to make as many as possible, hopefully with a better ratio.
It's also possible—likely, even—that the severity of the disease in an individual is correlated with the magnitude of the initial infectious dose, and healthcare workers without effective PPE are going to be most at risk for high doses, which will act as a multiplier on the benefits of PPE usage for them. In the analogy, one might compare this to the chance that a stray, tumbling bullet fired in a high arc by the enemy will hit you while you're trying to buy groceries, vs. the chance that a soldier on the front lines will be lethally wounded by a deliberate shot. Who needs the vest more?
As noted here^[1], this is all very much up in the air, but the more I think about it, the more my brain rejects the marginal benefit argument as an illusion. Healthcare workers are on the front lines, and by most accounts it's their labors that'll cut the mortality rate from 10+% to ~1-5%. They need all the help they can get, and the rest of us need them to stay healthy and able to do their jobs.
^[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/sars-cov-2-viral-load-and-the-...
see: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/czechs-get-to-...
https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1242894378441506816
I went out today in the second biggest city here in Czech Republic and you can see most people with self made cloth masks, a couple with simple single use disposable masks and just a single person with something looking like a respirator. And zero people without a mask.
We've been donating some of our N95 masks to the local hospital, but I'm not donating all of them. My family is important too.
As for age, I have noticed that the older ones had crumbly rubber foam and the straps are more delicate, but the melt-blown fabric itself seems perfectly fine. We've re-strapped some with new elastic and replaced the foam with closed-cell foam.
First, when testing their masks for their effectiveness, the manufacturers of these masks were certainly not testing them against SARS-CoV-2, as it didn't exist five years ago. Even now, it's very unlikely any manufacturers are testing their masks against SARS-Cov-2. What they were probably testing them against is various toxic fumes and smoke -- the things they're actually rated to be effective against, not viruses.
Second, some filters used in respirator-style masks have charcoal in them, and that charcoal will absorb fumes from the environment while in storage, so depending on what environment a filter is stored in and for how long the charcoal may not be as effective at absorbing various toxic fumes and smoke that these filters were tested for, but for all we know they may still be quite effective against filtering out SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
Third, it's well known that some manufacturers put bogus expiration dates on their products, and the products are good well past the expiry date. This is a phenomenon well known in the food industry. I'm not sure how widespread it is among mask manufacturers, but I wouldn't put it past them to also have unreliable expiry dates.
The CDC has some guidelines regarding the use of expired masks: [1][2] and they approve of the use of some such expired masks. However, it's not clear what tests they actually used to decide on the suitability of such masks, and if these masks were actually tested against SARS-CoV-2. It is pretty unlikely that they had randomized, double-blind trials of hundreds of people wearing masks and hundreds not and exposing them all to SARS-CoV-2 to see which got infected. Their tests were probably much more imperfect, and so their results less reliable.
All in all, there's just too little information to know how effective expired masks are against infection by SARS-CoV-2, but they're probably better than nothing.. especially the ones the CDC has blessed in their research.
[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/release-stockpiled...
[2] - https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/FAQ-N95.aspx
It's been hugged to death.
Here is a cached copy:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oC-tOJ...
and here is a direct link to the embedded video:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/coronavirus-mask...
To be fair the article does suggest making your own and then helpfully links to this [1] dead website.
[1] https://www.consumer.org.hk/ws_en/news/specials/2020/mask-di...
Edit: fixed a typo