Making a Case for Mask-Wearing

The caption of this photo is: On the Plane Back to China. It’s probably not a joke or sarcasm. Ironically, most of the recent cases in China are people returning to China from other hot zones in the world. One of the reasons for these people to go back is that they want to be surrounded by others who wear masks.

I was watching CTV news, ABC news and Inside Edition for 1.5 hours last night. I counted it, aside from frontline health care workers, there were less than 10 civilians wearing masks. A woman in wheelchair was wearing a mask, so was the person who was pushing her. Demi Lavato was wearing a mask and a pair of gloves. The rest were people who got off the plane from a hot zone. Some of them were wearing a see-through mask. Some didn’t have their nose covered. When being interviewed, one man took off his mask. None of the big-shot politicians and doctors wore a mask! But if you watch an Asian news program, the only people who don’t wear mask are commentators and news anchors inside a studio.

The health experts in the West have mentioned several times that, “there is no scientific evidence that wearing a mask would protect you from getting Covid-19.” Is it really true though? Do we really need to involve science in this? If a mask can effectively prevent a sick person’s spit from spraying into their surroundings, it can also protect a healthy person from being sprayed on. We have all seen demonstrations of how far a person’s spit can reach when they sneeze, if we have our nose, mouth and even our eyes covered before these viral spits blowing toward us like a hurricane, we can definitely be spared during that fateful moment. Isn’t this more of a common sense than a science experiment? And if you want some scientific proof, there was a previous case where people who were in the same elevator with an infected person, only the ones that wore a mask didn’t come down with the infection. By wearing a mask, the control over our own safety is in our court, we don’t have to rely on the mercy of a sick person to put on a mask.

I think that the professionals are not pushing for mask wearing is because we simply don’t have enough masks for everyone. And it’s true that we do have to put the safety of our frontline health care workers first. The shortage of masks and protective gears for them would paralyze the health care system. Therefore, for us regular people, we have to come up with creative ways to make our own masks. And really, the function of a mask is to cover our nose and mouth yet still giving us the ability to breath. Here are some examples by Chinese people who were dealing with the same problem a few months ago. 

Plastic bottle, pomelo peel, grapefruit peel, pads, diapers, etc, etc. WHO CARES?! The plastic bottle also prevents you from touching your face! We are trying to survive; no one judges our appearance now. Besides, no one knows who’s actually behind the “masks”. Be inspired by that man who put on a menstrual pad on his face, put down our dignity and pride. At this day and age, I’d rather be in the same elevator with a weirdo looking like that than a mask-less and shirtless Chris Hemsworth. But all jokes aside, you can search for "how to make your own mask" on YouTube for DYI masks that are pretty damn close to the real thing. Bottom line is, it's better than nothing!

Going back to the first photo on that airplane. What else do you notice? People also DYI their protective eye wears and gowns. Apparently, spits can also get into people’s eyes. We went insane after toilet papers. Let’s use the same enthusiasm, passion and aggression to take care of other holes by covering them up in public, if you must go out in public. They are the holes that actually matter in combatting Covid-19.