If Mandatory Masks In Public Work, Why Do We Need #StayAtHome Lockdown???
Even as the coronavirus pandemic was spreading for months, American and European health experts, along with the CDC and WHO, were insisting that masks in public were ineffective to prevent people from spreading and catching the coronavirus. Grudgingly, towards the middle of March they started allowing that it might be a good idea only for infected people to wear masks in public, to protect others. Finally, on April 1, 2020 the CDC and WHO officially recommended that everyone wear masks in public, the infected in order to prevent them from spreading the virus, and the healthy in order to protect themselves from the infected they might cross paths with. This delayed realization, due to massively flawed logic by the health experts, has allowed the coronavirus to reach pandemic proportions in the United States and Europe, instead of being nipped in the bud by the end of January.
Finally, today, April 15, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated that he would issue an executive order mandating masks in public. It’s about time! What about the rest of the nation, and the rest of the world? What about the media? When will editors wake up and strongly recommend mandatory masks in public??
Logically, if face masks prevent the outward passage of virus-containing droplets from sneezes and coughs, they alsoprevent the inward passage. Masks prevent an infected person from spreading the virus by trapping the infected droplets, and they protect a healthy person from contagion by blocking the infected droplets from reaching the nose and mouth. (Since eyes are also vulnerable entry points, glasses or goggles are an additional requirement for protection when in the presence of an infected person not wearing a mask. Clearly, if masks are mandatory in public, glasses are not needed since all droplets will be trapped in a sneezer/cougher’s mask.) Incredibly, the health experts are still minimizing the protective nature of masks blocking droplets from reaching a healthy person’s nose and mouth, while emphasizing masks’ ability to trap droplets from an infected sneezer/cougher.
Many argue that mandatory face masks in public would not be 100% effective since they have not proven 100% effective in hospitals where quite a few doctors and nurses have been infected. That line of reasoning is flawed, because the viral load in hospitals treating coronavirus patients is extremely heavy and concentrated in small areas, whereas in public it is very light since asymptomatic infected people well enough to be walking about don’t have a heavy viral load, otherwise they’d be bedridden. Furthermore, the hospital contagions mostly derive from instances of the virus aerosolizing during certain procedures and escaping patients’ masks. There would be no aerosolizing in public with everyone wearing a face mask.
The reason masks in public should be mandatory during a pandemic is that no one knows who is contagious, since even asymptomatic people are contagious. Even if everyone were tested, that would not be a solution: a person could be tested negative on day one, and catch the virus a day later. Tests, furthermore, may not reveal infection when contagion is in the incipient stage. Testing makes sense only for those having symptoms and not feeling well, since treatment with the antibiotic Zithromax seems particularly effective when taken before a bad cough reaches the lungs, preventing a serious pneumonia, hospitalization, and even death.
Logically, if it is acknowledged that masks both trap and block infected droplets of sneezes and coughs, then mandatory masks in public mean that extreme social distancing including #StayAtHome can be dispensed with. With mandatory masks and proper spacing, people can keep going to work, to theaters, to stadiums, to convention halls, to supermarkets, to stores/shopping malls, even to restaurants while the pandemic is still ongoing. But from the date masks in public are mandated, the spread of the virus (i.e., new contagions) will logically end immediately. That requires families to wear masks at home for 14 days, to ensure no member is infected. In fact, it is well known that many contagions have happened within households. One month from the date of mandatory #MasksForAll, the pandemic will end, without any #StayAtHome policy which wrecks the economy.
It follows that it has been a tragic mistake not to mandate masks in public months ago, as soon as the coronavirus pandemic was identified, since that would have nipped the pandemic in the bud. It is a tragic mistake to recommend or require #StayAtHome which wrecks the economy, drives up bankruptcies, unemployment and poverty, when mandatory masks in public is the solution.
(Meanwhile, pneumonia vaccines should be tested for efficacy against Covid-19. What could and should be quickly determined is the percentage of coronavirus patients ending up on ventilators who had been vaccinated against pneumonia. It may turn out that pneumonia vaccines prevent the virus from causing disastrous lung damage and the need for ventilators. Similarly, it could and should be quickly determined what percentage of patients ending up on ventilators had taken the antibiotic Zithromax before their cough reached their lungs. It may turn out that Zithromax taken before the lungs are affected avoids serious pneumonia and the need for ventilators. It seems entirely logical to urgently determine whether the seriously ill and deceased had had pneumonia vaccines and had been treated with Zithromax before their cough reached down to their lungs. It’s possible that combination would prevent the coronavirus from causing serious illness and even death.)
© Edward Sonnino 2020
April 15, 2020
