‘Normalize Face Masks And Fast’: Make Them As Common As Condoms, Virus Researcher Urges
Face coverings might be the barrier needed to prevent transmission of the disease even for kids as they head back to school. Some groups are already capitalizing on the concept, including the NBA and WNBA who will be selling team-branded ones. News on face masks is also on facial clues that are lost and people who say they will never wear them.
Are face masks going to become like condoms ubiquitous, sometimes fashionable, promoted with public service announcements? They should be, one virus researcher says, if early indications are correct in suggesting that Covid-19 is often spread by people who feel healthy and show no symptoms. David OConnor, who studies viral disease at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: If a substantial amount of transmission occurs before people feel sick, how do you stop that? By the time people feel sick and seek care, all the testing and isolation in the world would be too little, too late. (Gorman, 4/18)
On Saturday afternoons, the Strip District neighborhood of Pittsburgh becomes a jam-packed hub of old-fashioned shopping. People stride along Penn Avenue, hopping from greengrocer to butcher to fishmonger to Italian market, smiling and gesturing and jabbering as they go. Not this weekend. As strange, spaced-out lines formed outside favorite establishments, the chatting was muted, the sidewalk sidesteps were awkward and tentative, and the facial expressions were, well, not really facial expressions at all. Just like much of the planet during these jumbled coronavirus days. (Anthony, 4/20)
In a city already locked up and hidden away behind lowered gates and darkened doors, its people now walk behind their own personal barriers. A population known for big mouths now must speak up so as to be heard by a neighbor, a cashier, the deli counterman, gesturing to the brink of pantomime to be understood. From surgeon-quality personal protection to the home-stitched square and the bandits bandanna, New Yorkers pulled on a newly essential accessory and ventured into a landscape that changed yet again on Friday, as of 8 p.m., with the mandated wearing of masks in public. (Wilson, 4/17)
Kevin Krannawitter wont wear a mask because he just doesnt think its necessary, whatever the scientists say. Marilyn Singleton wont wear one either and shes a physician because she says its un-American for the government to force people to cover their faces. You wont see Ricardo Thornton in a mask because it reminds him of a time when he wasnt free to make his own decisions about his life. (Fisher, Williams and Rozsa, 4/18)
