Showing posts with label masks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label masks. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

The Bottom Line

While the emphasis thus far has been on the fact that wearing a mask protects others from contracting Covid-19, new research suggests that they are also effective in protecting the wearer.

The Journal of General Internal Medicine reports that there
are two likely reasons for the effectiveness of facial masks: The first—to prevent the spread of viral particles from asymptomatic individuals to others—has received a great deal of attention. However, the second theory—that reducing the inoculum of virus to which a mask-wearer is exposed will result in milder disease [italics added]...has received less attention and is the focus of our perspective which compiles virologic, epidemiologic and ecologic evidence.

Masks, depending on the material and design, filter out a majority of viral particles, but not all. The theory that exposure to a lower inoculum or dose of any virus (whether respiratory, gastrointestinal or sexually transmitted) can make subsequent illness far less likely to be severe... has been propounded for some time. Indeed, the concept of the 50% lethal dose (LD50), the virus dose at which 50% of exposed hosts die, determined via controlled experiments in which a range of exposure doses are administered to animals to calculate a dose-mortality curve, was first described in 1938. Other studies have examined the LD50—or the dose that leads to severe disease or death—for a variety of viruses in hosts or animal models.



The bottom line: Wear a mask.



Tuesday, July 7, 2020

UPDATED: Mask Madness



With increasing evidence that small, potentially infectious airborne particles of Covid-19 can remain in the air for hours, you would think that the use of masks in enclosed spaces would be one of the sanest and safest practices that people would readily and enthusiastically adopt.

Yet it remains a contentious issue for some, even in Canada.

You have likely heard of the hapless Letitia Montana, the Toronto woman who somehow thought she would garner sympathy and support by posting online her denial of service at a city hospital because she stoutly refused to obey the mask rule.


Rightfully, her misbegotten ploy backfired, earning her worldwide contempt from people like George Takei and model Chrissy Teigen:
“This is a new level of moronic and entitled,” actor George Takei tweeted.

“Proud of the healthcare workers who threw her out!,” tweeted model Chrissy Teigen.
Putting things into perspective, as I indicated in a recent post, it is my sense that the vast majority of Canadians are behaving responsibly during this pandemic. Nonetheless, this must be asked: What are we to do with those who are too selfish or benighted to act as responsible citizens in this pandemic?

The fact that this question even has to be posed irks me to no end and, quite honestly, does little to reduce my innate cynicism about our species. My own feeling is that simply refusing service to the selfish is the best response, but unfortunately, that does not address how to stop such individuals from spreading the virus.

The Toronto Star offers this from sexologist Jill McDevitt:
Scrolling through Instagram recently, she saw post after post raging against people not wearing masks. She found herself shaking her head. Public shaming didn’t make people practise safer sex, either, she said.

“We’ve already tried this with condoms, and it’s going to fail,” she said. “They might deserve to be shamed, I don’t know. But if we’re talking strategy, (shame) doesn’t work.”

While condoms in some form have been around for thousands of years, it wasn’t until HIV began to spread in the early 1980s that they became a matter of urgent public health policy, and advocates have learned a lot of lessons since then, she says.

The big one is that you can’t judge people into changing their behaviour, she said. “It’s going to make them feel more and more validated that people don’t understand whatever they feel is their particular reason why they don’t want to wear one or feel like they can’t wear one,” she said.
McDevitt also suggests some empathy is warranted here:
Much of the messaging has been “like, ‘Wear it and deal with it, otherwise, you’re rude and you don’t care about other people,’” McDevitt said. “But, can we acknowledge and have some empathy for the fact that this is not pleasant for people?” She notes that condom companies have made major strides in fit and comfort in recent decades, which has helped.
Peer pressure clearly has a role to play as well:
... a recent trip to the post office gave her hope.

Although the office had a sign encouraging everyone to wear masks, it wasn’t required. When McDevitt walked in, the lineup was a sea of masks. But while she was waiting a man entered without one.

“He’s standing there and more people come in line behind him wearing masks, and he finally says, ‘Can you hold my spot so I can go and get a mask on? I don’t want to be the only one with out one.’”
Were I more magnanimous of spirit, I probably could readily endorse all of the above advice. As it is now, I feel more like giving those mask-refusing ninnies a good slap across the face.

Guess I need to work on my anger issues, eh?

UPDATE: Apparently, Letitia Montana is still defiant. As a Canadian, this makes me feel deeply ashamed:

Friday, July 3, 2020

An Unwanted Visit, But Something Heartening Was Revealed



Since the pandemic began, my wife and I have been very cautious. Because she has an underlying lung condition, we limit our exposure to outside influences as much as possible. For example, I shop for groceries once every two weeks at the seniors' hour, and even that, when I first started, was nerve-wracking, especially fearful was I of the contagion I might inadvertently bring home to her. And quite honestly, as we learned more about the horrible ravages this virus can inflict, I have also worried about my own safety.

Our purchase of masks have gone a long way toward assuaging anxiety, and I shall return to their use in a moment. But first, I'd like to recount a trip we had to take yesterday to Toronto, a city about an hour from where we live, and a place I have never enjoyed visiting. My wife had to see her respirologist at Toronto Western Hospital for an appointment we thought had been cancelled. Getting ready for it took on an aura of military planning and precision.

Hand sanitizers: check

Masks: Check

A list of washrooms open to the public (because I would not e permitted into the hospital with her): check

Lunches: check

My initial plan was to find the nearby washroom, have lunch at the adjacent park, and then just read until her chest x-ray and appointment were over, which we anticipated would take over two hours. However, despite the heat, after having lunch I decided to go for a walk.

Now where we live, wearing a mask outside is unnecessary, as crowding is almost non-existent. But by the time I got to Kensington Market, I donned the mask because the area was fairly busy, and I wore it for the rest of my peregrinations, which saw me go as far as Queen Street West, well past Spadina. What I saw on my walk heartened me. The vast majority of people wore masks, even though it was quite hot and humid, but I think everyone felt that the moderate discomfort of wearing one was nothing to what it must be like to experience Covid-induced shortness of breath or intubation.

It made me proud as a Canadian to see so many acting responsibly.

Which brings me to the report below. While there is undoubtedly some wistful exaggeration in it, I think it captures the Canadian spirit and ethos rather well:



Quite unlike this nonsense, eh?

Friday, June 26, 2020

UPDATED:Theirs Is Not To Reason

Owen's blog post today discusses how the world sees the United States as a nation to be shunned, one of the reasons being its entirely inept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Clearly, its refusal to confront this peril in a responsible, mature manner means that its citizens have become a deadly threat to other countries. My hope is that our country keeps our border closed to them indefinitely.

Last night, NBC Nightly News devoted the first six minutes to the surge of cases in various states. To say the least, the situation is dire. That was followed, as you will see at the 5:50 mark below, by a report on how the wearing of masks, an effective method of reducing transmission of the virus, is still a highly contentious, highly politicized matter in the Benighted States of America.



UPDATE: If this unmasked woman were infected, I wonder how far her viral droplets would travel, given her highly agitated state: