Face Masks

Just heard on the news they are asking volunteers to make face masks. Some places are handing out kits to make them.They evensaid there was a shortage of elastic bands.

One question that needs to be asked, why are the hospitals going through so many masks? My wife is a retired nurse with working 30 plus years in all various aspects of patient care. She told me if they are disposing masks after each use they are being wasted. The hospitals that she worked at had policies that one mask per person was needed per shift. Even in the cases where she took care of people in isolation. Only time a mask was changed if it was soiled. I can see changing a mask if a patient were to cough or sneeze in your face. Also, a mask can be sanitized by merely wiping with a sanitized wipe.

We have 12 masks in the house and that should be enough if we don't leave unless we need more supplies.
Gus

My daughter was just talking about this last night. She works in the ER at a local hospital and they were indeed told to change masks after every patient but have now been told to just use the one all shift unless it becomes damaged or soiled. I'm guessing that in the beginning, this was an effort to contain any possible virus contact and not transmit it to another patient. Now with the shortage they are stopping it.



Tim

So a mask is supposed to trap the COVID virus when a wearer breathes in, to protect the wearer, but the same virus ( that survives 24 hrs on cardboard?) is assumed to not be blown back into the face of the next patient when the wearer exhales?

I would agree ... changing masks every patient but DO NOT throw those masks out .....purify them with heat or gas THEN reuse them !

Quick wipe with a sanitized wipe

Brookville Glove has switched over to making washable masks - http://www.brookvilleglove.com/
Scroll down to the bottom right of the page to see their FaceBook post.

It's my understanding that the virus is transmitted in water droplets which are trapped in the mask. Transmission by touch is where you touch a surface that has been sneezed, coughed, whatever, on and then touch your eyes, nose, or mouth hence the wash your hands often protocol. Seems to me also that it would be easy enough to sanitize a mask but I am not a doctor nor do I play one on tv. Daughter comes in exhausted (on top of which she is 6 1/2 mos. pregnant) so I try not to quiz her too much about work. I did ask if they had gotten better on their supplies and she said they have to draw a mask from a supply room now by showing their ID and were still limited to one mask. One good thing is that she is a CT tech and has less contact with people in the ER waiting area. Her biggest complaint mirrors the news in that it's clogged up with people simply wanting to be tested and not exhibiting any symptoms.



Tim

I heard on the radio that a lot of the harder-hit areas are going exactly this way. They are telling people if think you might have it, but you only have mild symptoms (sore throat, low-grade fever, etc) just to stay home and self quarantine as though you have it.

The transmission risk to stand in line and get tested is greater than the benefit of knowing "for sure" that you have it, or whether it is just regular flu or another virus. Either way the treatment is the same. And testing a gazillion people with mild or no symptoms is just overloading the labs for no benefit.

Only if you start having trouble breathing are you to come in.

Well you have to look back to the initial outbreak. If people thought they might have it they would go and get tested. The volume soon got out of hand and the benefit of a test was pointless.

I went to our basement and dug around in the paint dept. and found an unopened pack of 3 masks that we've had for years. Luckily, they are N95 masks. We wear them if we have to go out to the store for something, but we have been mostly here at the house. My wife has gotten several online patterns to make some masks, and most of them go over the type of N95 masks I found in the basement. I want one of the wider ones like they wear in the hospitals, so she found a pattern to make those also. Plain ol cotton fabric won't help much as far as keeping you safe, so I went down to Home Depot and bought a furnace filter that is the highest rated type that filters out bacteria, allergens, mold, and all the other bad cooties. She is going to cut it up to make replaceable filters for our masks. My job is deemed "essential" so I still have to go out and work, even though I do the computer stuff at home. There are no masks to be found, and even if I found some I refuse to be a hoarder. Sadly, our hospital won't allow the nurses or other personnel to wear masks like the ones my wife is making us. I can kinda see why, but the furnace filter media is rated higher than the N95 masks.

"It's my understanding that the virus is transmitted in water droplets which are trapped in the mask."

The key word there is "trapped".

Not sure how much confidence I put there in that whatever enters the mask upon breathing in cannot be just blown back out when exhaling.

Maybe I need to drink more Koolaid.

Eyes can absorb viruses as well so even a mask might not be enough.

Yes, there are early unconfirmed reports red irritated watery eyes might indicate first onset of COVID symptoms

I thought it was the loss of taste and smell.

Yes the list is growing.
I think what the watery eyes symptom was suggesting also, it might be the location of the initial infection.

So, if you have allergies, you have covid?

I thought that was the reason for the face mask(to block coughs and sneezes)

"might" was intentionally included.

I heard waking up in the morning might indicate the onset of the virus !!!

If they are wearing face shields there's really no reason to change the mask for every patient.



That's what they've been doing here all along. If you weren't recently back from a country with problems or don't have severe symptoms you weren't tested and they were turning something like 3/4 of the people away. In the meantime they were standing in line almost touching eachother. Then it seems like the people who test negative seem to think that they are immune to it. Pretty simple.. if you've got the symptoms and think you have it self isolate.

When there's no medicine and they say even more people have it with little to no symptoms there's almost no point in testing unless someone is having a severe issue to confirm if it's from that or something else or people high at risk with other medical issues.

I heard not waking up in the morning might be confirmation of having the virus.

Touche!