Time to put on a mask..

[Heaney31]

When virus can travel in aerosol , It is really the time to wear a mask.

Is this new advice from public health?

Only a reason to wear a mask if you have coronavirus and are trying to minimise passing it on. They arent particularly good for anything else

It is revealed that the virus holder can have the virus without any symptom. What if the virus travels from the healthy host in the air ? When we are advised not to wear a mask without any symptom?

Agree @dementedpixie, I listened to a infectious disease expert on the radio yesterday and they said that a mask will help stop you spreading the virus, but won't stop you getting it. Also, they said the majority of people they'd seen wearing masks were wearing them completely incorrectly, rendering them useless.

Ditto dementedpixie - all official organisations advise that masks, the basic kind, are useless against the virus. As the virus, when sneezed, can reach mouth and nose, what's it to stop entering the eyes where it can also infect a person. You need to be wearing a heavy duty medical face mask and visor!

Masks don’t reduce your risk of getting it. Once the mask has been on for a while it gets damp which is a lovely environment for viruses to live in. Also putting on and taking off a mask involves touching your face with your hands when the virus is more likely to be on your hands in the first place.

Yes nothing I have read has convinced me masks are of any use at this point.

Where do you get a mask if you want one? Everywhere near me is sold out. Can you get them online?

Wearing a mask when you have a cold is pretty standard where I live and as a result of the virus it is compulsory to wear one when out.
One of the few positives of wearing one is that you don’t touch your face as much so probably some benefit.
I wore one the whole time I was a HK airport as to do otherwise would have indicated that I was completely mad and should be prepared to die!

They don’t work 100 percent but do help. The nhs don’t want you knowing that as they don’t want to issue them.

They are only (very very marginally) helpful if you are following strict doctor-type rules about how to use them (not easy if you are wearing them throughout the course of an ordinary day). If you use them like the average person tends to use them, you are probably increasing your risk. I live in Japan where masks are common at all times. I see people pushing masks up and down with hands they have just touched dirty surfaces with and then using the same hands to eat and drink and then the mask goes back on...masks riding up and touching eyelashes...people putting masks on any old how so that a big handful of hand germs is getting plastered SMACK all over your face. I think they can also create a sense of complacency---I see people carefully masked up but then not washing hands properly, using their fingers to touch everything, having long glitter-covered nails etc. etc.

I was in my local pharmacy yesterday and the pharmacist told me that they really won’t stop anybody from getting the virus .
If you are on public transport and you sneeze or cough then of course they will be of help but only if your wearing it correctly and so many people are not.

It would be very alarming for some of the population if people start walking about with masks on - children, some elderly people.

Thankfully there are none to be had so it won't become commonplace.

Purplewhitelie

If masks worked then it would be a cheap and efficient way of delaying the spread which would benefit the NHS hugely. The logical conclusion of your statement is that the NHS is conspiring against us and itself by ensuring transmission rates are unnecessarily high.

Do you think that is really more credible than the alternative version that non sterile masks used improperly are not protective.

I started wearing it today as I was taking train. Lots of people coughing sneezing, glad I did it.