Masks

[petalseaside]

Take a look at the data for all the “masks are useless for this Airborne virus, just wash your hands” countries vs. Mask-wearing countries...

There was one idiot in Tesco yesterday, mask and gloves on but he pushed past people who were queuing to pay ,including me, and inserted himself in the queue standing so close to the person in front his trolley was almost touching the person in front of him. This is the main problem with masks, people don't keep their distance.

@petalseaside

The UK government is saying that because they don't want people to start trying to buy surgical or ffp2/ffp3 masks, because there is a worldwide demand for them atm and they are struggling to keep up with demand for PPE in health and care settings. We've had people steal our supplies masks and hand sanitiser in the hospital.

A mask can be dangerous if it is used incorrectly: I've seen plenty of people wearing them without covering their nose, or frequently pull it up and down their chin, or touch the mask to readjust it, which risks contamination and increases the risk of infection if their hands aren't clean (and these are also the same people who wear the same set of gloves round the supermarket). It could also give people a false sense of security and they might forget about the need for social distancing.

Saying that, yes I think we should all be wearing masks. Ideally surgical masks, but we don't have enough of those, so homemade ones it is. I'll post a study from Cambridge University in a min, that shows that even just covering your mouth with a cotton t- shirt is effective in significantly reducing the amount of virus particles that a person releases into the environment. So it doesn't really protect the wearer, but if EVERYONE wore one, then it would make a difference.

The slogan in the Czech Republic is "I protect you, you protect me", which is a good way of summing it up.

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/testing-the-efficacy-of-homemade-masks-would-they-protect-in-an-influenza-pandemic/0921A05A69A9419C862FA2F35F819D55/core-reader

If you want to wear one then wear one you don't need to wait to be told

I'm not keen on the idea but have brought some just incase but just cotton ones as I wouldn't want to buy ones that actual healthcare workers / carers need who are much greater risk

...I am not advising people to wear a surgical mask, please leave them for healthcare workers who need them to look after sick people. But this demonstrates why masks could actually increase someone's chance of infection if they don't use it correctly, or reuse the same one repeatedly to go to the supermarket etc.

gloves are just another contaminated surface which will spread infection from item to item.

Exactly. I can’t believe people are so ignorant about this.

Is it ok to re-use a mask if you leave it for 10 days between supermarket shops? So the virus would be dead? A paper type mask.

@Uygop the problem with paper masks is they don't last that long when worn. As soon as they become damp inside, the effectiveness drops hugely. It doesn't take long for that to happen. That's why HCP should be changing them regularly. So after a whole supermarket shop, it's going to be past it's best already.

If masks become ineffective so quickly, that must mean that children at school and people at work will have to wear several masks a day?!

I'm re-using gloves, by leaving a week between each use.

@Uygop well yes they should. And gloves, as I've said in my previous post, are completely pointless unless you're changing then every task. You are must safer using hand sanitiser when you're out and don't have access to soap and water.

Just use gloves for the padlock to the allotments. Then store in a plastic bag in the car and use again a week later.

I imagine that when schools go back children will be required to wear masks. Hard to imagine that parents will send them to school with several masks for each day.

@Uygop

Surgical masks are ideally changed (as on thrown away and a new one used) every hour. Atm we're being told to change them every four hours (to save supply). Their effectiveness decreases once they get damp from your own breath like darcey said.

Gloves are also meant to be single use, and actually have teeny tiny little holes in them that get worse the more you wear them so don't fully protect your hands anyway...

"Myth #2: Gloves Remain Safe Throughout Use

Throughout use, gloves can develop holes due to degradation and wear. According to one study, after only 12 minutes of simulated clinical use, natural latex and vinyl glove defect rates increased to 9 percent and 35 percent, respectively. Without proper curing and cross-linking, nitrile can swell and develop holes or defects over time. Failure is commonly observed in the crotch between the thumb and forefinger."

ohsonline.com/Articles/2010/04/01/Nine-Myths-About-Disposable-Safety-Gloves.aspx?m=1&Page=4

...you'd be better off just going without any gloves, and washing your hands before and after shopping. Or wearing some marigolds if you really want to, you could clean those in between use and they're sturdier. But wearing gloves is pointless for cross contamination unless you're regularly changing them and washing your hands in between changes.

I wear a mask when I go to the shops

I have no illusions that it will protect me, I wear a mask to protect others

Ebay has lots of hand made cotton masks from a variety of sellers. I would suggest perusing them carefully as some are much better than others.

I have also bought some pillowcases that are 1,000 tc Egyptian cotton with a view to making my own masks. According to one reputable source I found (will post later if I can find it) high tc 100% cotton masks offer the wearer some protection against viruses.

When I make my own I will probably add a copper wire attachment to the top (and possibly the bottom) edge, along the seam.

Copper wire inexpensive, easy to buy online, is felxible and the virus starts to become inert very quickly when in contact with copper.

I would suggest to anyone considering making their own masks to

experiement with cheaper fabrics until you get a size and design that suits you

use seams big enough that you can insert elastic and / or copper wire and remove them easily. Copper wire and elastic can be replaced and are likely to wear out before the cotton. I have bought a lot of elastic and will just replace the elastic each time I wash the mask. if the seams are big enough you can push the elastic through using a thick needle or a tiny safety pin.

Use the highest cotton tc you can find, make a double layered mask and leave space for a filter (can be kitchen roll, coffee filter or washable filter bought online). Very high tc cotton is lighter and more effective than lower tcs. This is extremely important if you are doing anything strenuous. I wore a mask to the shops recently, don't have a car so was carrying very heavy shoppping bags. The mask was so hot that I was sweating and exhausted by the time I got home.

Check out online videos and instructions and use them , here's one example

masks4all.co/how-to-make-a-homemade-mask/

If you find a good, novel solution then maybe post it here so we can all check it out

:)

You can tell on these threads the people who actually wear PPE for work and know how to use it. You wouldn’t remove a sanitary towel and then keep it and use it again another day. (I hope!) Its done its job, it’s now less effective and dirty, so throw it away carefully. Same for masks and gloves. Just because you can’t see the contamination on mask and gloves, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

@Raccoon2020vision - when you say "the seam needs to go on the outside" can you explain a bit more?
I thought about this when I was looking at mask patterns which involved a central seam down the middle of both the outer part and the lining. I wondered about the gap being created by the stitching (although some are top-stitched too).

I'm planning to make some that allow for a filter insert, so at least that will add something I guess!

@Pebbles574 that's according to a couple of nurse friends (one trained in South Africa so was used to having to improvise kit, she also nursed Ebola and Dengue fever patients, albeit with full PPE). It might be specific to the particular masks I was able to get eventually which are the little black ones with the slightly spongy consistency but will double check. I'll see if I can find some recent CDC or WHO or EU guidance to post as back up. The NHS guidance seems a bit confused at the moment....

Oh and should add the seam on the outside is to protect others from anything I might be carrying and not know about. The Lancet has a good article on masks in general from the last few days including the current stance in South Korea.

You can tell on these threads the people who actually wear PPE for work and know how to use it. You wouldn’t remove a sanitary towel and then keep it and use it again another day. (I hope!) Its done its job, it’s now less effective and dirty, so throw it away carefully. Same for masks and gloves. Just because you can’t see the contamination on mask and gloves, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Which is why disposable masks are not recommended for ordinary citizens going to the shops. There is a shortage and should be reserved for NHS staff, carers and anyone else on the front line.

Washable, reusable masks are not there to protect us from others they are there to protect others from us.

Given the incubation period and the fact that people can be infectious before they are symptomatic the masks are to reduce the risk of transmission in situations where social distancing is compromised - which is any situation where you might encounter someone who does not comply with it. Which is in any supermarket or public place.

I don’t know if masks are solely responsible for Japan’s low death rate but it’s true to say that although they are not compulsory, at least 90% of adults walking around outside are wearing masks. These are usually disposable paper masks but recently homemade cotton ones are becoming more prevalent.

I suspect, as a previous poster mentioned, it is a combination of mask-wearing, a slim and healthy population, very high hygiene standards and probably the BCG strain.

Every staff member in supermarkets in Tokyo wears a mask and is protected by a plastic screen at the till. There is alcohol spray for customers to use at the entrance (nobody steals that kind of thing here!) and surfaces are cleaned regularly.

The figures in the graph are either wildly inaccurate or totally out of date. Not sure how many people believe China’s figures, either.

If I were in a clinical/medical setting (which I'm not, I'm looking at it from a "domestic" setting, but having taken advice from 2 clinical professionals each with over 20 years' experience, 1 in South Africa/the NHS, the other primarily in an ITU setting in the UK) then I'd obviously abide by whatever rules were in place there.

Having enough PPE to change in between every patient is also assuming that that whacking great unicorn warehouse of Hancock's is actually finally able to dispense enough single-use PPE to allow for changes between every patient/resident. Which several clinical professionals in NHS and other settings will be able to confirm is, sadly, not the case, or certainly hasn't been recently.

I'm also inclined to trust MOST of what I read in the Lancet. And yes, I do recall they published the initial MMR paper back in the late 1990s, which had a tiny, tiny sample size before you even start on whether the data was true or not.

Going back to home-made masks, Cambridge University ran a study in 2013 which looked at the effectiveness of ordinary materials as masks in the case of a pandemic (in this case influenza). There's a more recent article at pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.0c03252 and there are plenty of others out there too, but relatively few for the UK.

Or maybe we've got a "special" strain of COVID-19??

Masks are still voluntary in Japan

They may as well be mandatory here. Nearly everyone wears one, and has done since early on in the year.