COVID-19 Why Everyone Should Wear a Mask!

So last week I finally flew home to Michigan from my extended trip to Arizona. The Governor had just implemented a lock down in the state. I’d been following this whole virus thing for some time, concerned I wouldn’t be able to get home. Thankfully for me my flight wasn’t cancelled, and was only about 1/4 to 1/3 full, so we all had plenty of space. I had a whole aisle to myself! I doubt I’ll ever have that luxury when flying again!

Being a metalsmith I often enough find myself grinding metal, making lots of dust. Due to foolish things done in my youth I’m also now highly allergic to copper dust. So I always keep a few N95 masks around as part of my normal studio supplies. Thus when I heard they were selling out all over back in January I didn’t worry too much. When it came time to pack for my month long trip to AZ I decided it would be wise to toss one in my carry on just in case. I’m happy I did as things got a whole lot worse here in the US between the time I left home and when I was ready to return as far as the virus was concerned.

I decided for my flight home it would be wise to break out that mask and wear it the whole time! I was pleased to see about 1/3 of the other passengers were also wearing some sort of mask, be they N95 types like I had, or homemade ones down to a simple bandana. It would have been nice if more wore them, but prior to getting on the plane I had seen almost no one wearing a mask out in public.

Once back I was driving from the airport to home, still wearing my mask, and decided to stop at a gas station to get something to eat. Sadly, gas station food was about all I could get at that late hour with the lock down causing the normal 24 hour grocery stores to close for the night, and restaurants being closed already. Anyway, there was a sign on the door basically saying that if you were sick don’t come in. Not being sick I went in.

A young guy was working the night shift there alone. He looked at me wearing my mask a bit funny initially but didn’t say anything. I perused my junk food options, making my selections of crap that would certainly not be boosting my health but would at least ease my hunger until I could get out grocery shopping the next day.

While checking out the guy finally did ask why I was wearing a mask. I admit to being baffled at first as to why he would ask that. Was he living under a rock? I think I responded something like, “Well, to help stop the spread of this disease.” He responded, “Are you sick?” (I realize in hindsight this was probably his real concern.) I said, “No, not that I’m aware of.” His next comment left me dumbfounded.

He told me that the virus was only spread by physical contact and wasn’t air born so I shouldn’t be wearing a mask. What I needed was gloves like he had, showing me the cheap plastic food service type gloves his employer was likely providing. He seemed earnest and sincere, while also conveying a nervous undertone of fear. I really wasn’t ready for this sort of reaction and no doubt fumbled in my attempts to convey what I hope to clearly explain in this blog post. This being the 3 reasons why we should all be wearing masks, even crappy homemade masks, when out in public during this epidemic.

I have since come to understand there are still authorities who are even at this late date spreading the idea that face masks are not useful for the general public, so I can’t blame the gas station worker for thinking he had good information. He was earnestly trying to share what he thought was true. In that vain I will now try to share with you the reasons why I think we should all be wearing masks. You can evaluate the info and decide for yourself if what I’m saying makes sense or not.

Reason number 1: A mask of any sort helps keep you from touching your nose and mouth with potentially contaminated hands! It acts as a physical barrier and constant reminder to not touch your face. Even better would be to also wear glasses or goggles so you can’t easily rub your eyes too. The problem with the attendant thinking that gloves protected him is that as far as I know the virus doesn’t burrow through your skin to infect you. Rather the issue is bringing your contaminated hands into contact with mucosal surfaces of your body, ie. your mouth, nose, and eyes. It is here that the virus finds its entry points INTO your body. The virus really doesn’t care if it rides to these entry points on bare hands or on gloves!

It is very hard to not touch your face automatically without thinking. In fact for most people as soon as you start thinking that you shouldn’t touch your face you’re going to develop an itch, and then focus more and more on that itch and your desire to scratch it! This seems to be human nature. A mask helps stop this, or at least stop you from unconsciously scratching that itch.

Reason number 2: This COVID-19 virus tends to develop in people over a long period of time where they are asymptomatic. In other words they are infected but are showing no signs of any symptoms, yet are still contagious! Put another way, you or anyone around you could have it and be spreading the disease. Unless we are doing constant daily tests you just can’t tell. When you are wearing a mask it plays a huge role in containing the natural and normal spread of droplets we exude from our mouths. These droplets are the prime source of spreading the virus from what I can tell. I’m not even talking about just when you cough or sneeze. Simply normal breathing and talking (esp. those forceful “P” type sounds) sends a cascade of small droplets out into the air. (I’ll direct you to a video showing this later.)

Initially there was some question as to whether or not asymptomatic people were really all that contagious, or if it was just a rare thing that they would spread the disease. Recent studies have apparently shown this to not be the case. In fact they conclude that asymptomatic people are the MAJOR factor in its spread. So when we wear a mask we are helping to prevent this spread, because again, we functionally have no way of knowing whether or not we are infected. If everyone was wearing a mask we would crush the rate of infection, likely to a very small amount. Wearing a mask, even a simple bandana, is an act that protects those around you. You could consider it an act of altruism.

Reason number 3: This is the reason I hear very little about, but I think may in fact become the most important thing in helping us get through this. Wearing a mask can reduce your viral load if you do get infected.

This is slightly more complicated that the previous two reasons, but not that much more complicated. So often in our culture we think in binaries, either on or off, one or the other with nothing in between. With the virus this sort of thinking has again become the default, either you are infected or you aren’t. We just don’t think about the idea of a viral load, but it can play a huge factor in how sick you get. It’s not just whether or not you become infected with the virus, it’s how much of it you get infected with.

Let’s say for example that you are out at the grocery store wearing your mask and someone infected (and not wearing a mask) suddenly sneezes on you. Is the mask going to keep you from becoming infected? Probably not. However, it is going to filter out a substantial portion of the viral particles so only a few get through. Thus your initial viral load is small.

Once inside you that virus is going to happily go to work doing what it does, trying to replicate and spread, however, since the initial load was small it is going to take longer before it reaches an amount that can overwhelm you. This is fantastic for your immune system which then has more time to asses the situation, develop its antibodies, and ramp up production in an effort to overwhelm the invading and growing virus.

On the other hand, let’s say you were not wearing a mask when sneezed upon. Now you are absolutely swimming in the viral load sprayed across your face! A huge amount invades your body all at once to begin replicating. In this scenario your immune system has almost no time to react and develop defenses. It is much more likely to get overwhelmed by the virus before it can effectively fight back. Thus you become one of the seriously ill patients needing hospital care, and being far more likely to die!

It’s sort of a race against time. Does the virus win and overwhelm your immune system, or does your immune system win and overwhelm the virus. Naturally the initial health of your immune system would play a role in this, but wearing a mask is a fantastic way to reduce that initial viral load. You don’t really want to give the virus a head start in this sort of race!

Again, there have now been studies supporting the idea that a lower initial viral load generally leads to better health outcomes. In other words you don’t get as sick! You might even remain asymptomatic the whole time. This is why I think this might become so very important in the long run. I’m not recommending you try this now, but it may be that once we better understand how to treat this disease and help the body combat it, the best approach will be to deliberately get infected with a very minor load where our immune systems will have the best chance of winning the battle and developing the antibodies needed for later immunity.

Like I said, I’m not ready to deliberately infect myself yet. I want our entire health care system better developed to understand and handle this first. However, if I do happen to get infected now I most certainly want that initial viral load to be as small as possible, and so I am going to be wearing a mask whenever I’m out in public!!

I’d like to end this post here, but based on what I’m reading in comment threads online right now I feel I should address a few other things. Some people are trying to shame others into NOT wearing a mask in public. The thinking is that if you are sick you shouldn’t be out and if you aren’t sick you don’t need a mask. The whole asymptomatic spread of this disease should put an end to that argument. The real reason for shaming others into not wearing them is likely because manufactured masks are in woefully short supply, and many rightly feel that they should be allocated to the health care workers, not sold to the public. Until we can get new factories manufacturing masks in much larger quantities I don’t think they should be sold in the general marketplace either. Instead they should go to the health care system, whose workers are at serious risk of being contaminated with huge viral loads without them on a daily basis.

That said, I also feel that if you already have a few of these high quality manufactured masks on hand to protect yourself and your family it is fine and appropriate to use them. However, even if you don’t have any you should still find a way to wear some sort of mask when out in public. As I noted before, it could be as simple as a bandana wrapped around your nose and mouth. There are now many people starting to make homemade masks, and lots of plans on how to make them are out there on the internet. From what I’m reading most hospitals won’t even accept these homemade masks for their employees to use due to liability issues so by wearing one you aren’t denying one to a health care worker. You do have a right to protect yourself and your family. If we all started wearing masks tomorrow then the burden on those health care workers would surly reduce as well. This is a major way we can get better control over this pandemic.

The question of how to sterilize a mask allowing for reuse also comes up. Based on what I’ve read there are a few ways. One is simply time. The virus can live on different surfaces for different lengths of time. My understanding is that the ideal length of time to wait to be sure it’s safe is 9 days. So you could just have a few masks and wait at least 9 days before wearing one of them again. We shouldn’t be going out in public too often anyway right?

Another way is UV light, though I’m feeling a bit fuzzy on just how long or how strong it needs to be. Combining natural sunlight with waiting several days seems like a nice approach to me.

Finally, it would seem that baking a mask in the oven on the lowest setting for 30 minutes or so does the trick too. The risk here is going too hot and melting or burning your mask.

I learned all this over the past few weeks from the excellent, near daily updates being produced over at Peak Prosperity. They have been on top of this nearly from the start with the best solid factual data they can find. In a case of excellent timing, just as I was thinking about writing this blog post the other day they produced one of their best reports to date which essentially goes into everything I’ve presented here in more detail with references to the studies that back it all up. I promised earlier that I would direct you to a video showing just how many particles we regularly project out of our mouths in the normal course of talking and breathing. That video is part of this same report too. I would strongly recommend watching it!

One final, but important other thing I’ve been doing normally but especially since this virus started raging through our population is working to keep my body and immune system healthy through the food I eat. That junk food I mentioned getting at the gas station was a serious deviation from my norm. As I’ve mentioned previously in this blog I’m not going to try and tell anyone what the best diet for them is. All I can tell you is what I’m doing. Right now I’m predominately eating whole plant foods like lots of fruits and vegetables. I’ve also begun supplementing with vitamin C, D, and since I eat very little meat, B12. I decided to use this virus as motivation to really get serious about the quality of my diet. Now I just have to get more serious about daily exercise!

Ok, I believe that is all I have to say at this point. These are the 3 reasons I am going to be wearing a mask when I am out in public, and why I feel everyone else should too. Even if they are homemade masks they help protect you, they help protect others, and they could significantly reduce your viral load should you get infected which should reduce the severity of the disease. If these reasons make sense to you as well then I encourage you to be a trend setter and start wearing a mask in public!

Studio Snippet

I’ve been a bit slow getting back to studio work since returning home because I was catching up on all sorts of household and business stuff. Thankfully today I did finally sit down and set up my chasing station again, laying out all my tools in their spots so I can find them. Then I did the final bits of chasing work on this vessel which I began as an example for my vessel chasing workshop. It feels like I’ve been picking away at this one forever, so I’m happy to have it done at last.

I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my old website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.