Thought of the Day - Wear a Mask

Hi All,

It is interesting to look back on reports from the Spanish Flu pandemic. Indeed, when you get around to it other than: improved communication (that we ignored), available testing (that we did not scale) and improved heath-care (that we are looking to as a backstop), how Covid-19 is unfolding is not very much different than 102 years ago. The main reason to look back is to see what we can learn from how this was tackled all those years ago.

If you look at all the pictures there is one thing we in Vancouver are missing, one thing that much of the rest of the world has now embraced - we are not all wearing masks in public. Yes, yes there is the debate about what type is most effective. Should it be N95, maybe a full respirator, but to be honest in comparison to no mask the conversation is moot.

Masks do four things:

1) They dramatically stop the spread if you are sick – this of obvious is you have a hacking cough – but we are hearing more and more about asymptomatic cases meaning that a good percentage of folk do not even know they have Covid-19, in this case you may be shouting at people from 2 meters away and still be spreading;

2) They remind you not to touch your face;

3) They act as a visual reinforcement to remind people to keep physical distance;

4) They decrease (to a greater or lesser extent) the chance of you getting infection from droplets.

So whether it is a bandana, a surgical mask, a dusk mask or a full respirator, anything is far better than nothing

Cheers

Cliff

P.S. I have not been wearing one ‘till this point, but will now start when in a public place.