Do you wear a mask in stores?

[mountainsoft]

If SHTF I'm wondering if I can use my CPAP machine as a portable respirator (not ventilator) system.

Worst case I suppose I could use my paint respirator with charcoal vapor cartridges and protective goggles. My entire face would be covered and protected, but it would take an extreme situation before I would resort to those measures.

 

[jimbee]

Never mind.

 

[DektolMan]

Just got back from BJ's and we wore disposable gloves as did many others. We did see one person wear a mask. We arrived 10 minutes before they opened and the lineup to get in was long. They had no toilet paper, napkins or paper towels. Meat section was picked bare.



We are all set now and are going to hunker down for two weeks, maybe it'll help.

 

[Fermion]

I still have this from our painting days. It protects eyes too and makes it impossible to touch your face while still giving pretty good visibility.

Much better than a N95 mask but would it panic people?

 

[garyt]

I see masks everytime I go out. Not many, but one or two. Usually older women.

 

[fh2000]

This is what I think.

Just a few days ago, many said this is just like a flu. Flu killed a lot more people, so what is the big deal. I doubt anyone is saying that now.

The same with wearing a mask to protect yourself. Sooner or later you have to go out of your home to buy more food, medicine, or even go to your doctor's appointment. I see from news many Europeans begin to wear one. As the cases rise in US, more will start to wear.

When your community is overrun, do you still want to say to yourself, masks won't protect me so why bother, or you will take that as a precaution no matter how small the possibility is, say just 1%, and put one on?

I know I am getting myself ready to put one on. I just hope people stop ridiculing others who chose to wear.

 

[Kwirk]

Even a scarf may be helpful, if only to reduce touching your face.

 

[sengsational]

If SHTF I'm wondering if I can use my CPAP machine as a portable respirator (not ventilator) system. I have a battery, the machine is relatively light, and I have inline bacteria/virus filters. I can put it all in a backpack. The only catch, so far, is that I can't find any any actual specifications for the "bacteria virus" filters. Probably better than no mask in any case. Combined with eye protection and gloves I'll be ready to go.

I read or heard somewhere a theory (maybe it was somewhat uninformed speculation, but was, as I recall, a clinical practitioner MD talking about a hospital setting) that mechanically moving air around might aerosolize droplets (make a big droplet, which normally would fall to the ground, into lots of little things that would go through filter masks). The setting was highly infectious patients on some kind of ventilation, so I imagine that carrying your CPAP device wouldn't be a problem.

Even a scarf may be helpful, if only to reduce touching your face.

Anything that does that helps. I wonder if periodic scratching of your face offered some kind of survival advantage, because we all do it so much. As kids, we all also put everything we picked up into our mouth. Again, must be a survival advantage to that activity too (ugh!).

 

[big-papa]

I saw a mask on the floor last week in Costco, I told DW the person probably dropped dead and that is all that's left

I saw a lady in Costco last week with a mask, sunglasses, a hoodie, rubber gloves and a workout suit. I guess nobody told her that her outfit didn't really constitute a full hazmat outfit.

 

[tmm99]

I saw a lady in Costco last week with a mask, sunglasses, a hoodie, rubber gloves and a workout suit. I guess nobody told her that her outfit didn't really constitute a full hazmat outfit.

Maybe she wanted to conceal her identify by wearing sunglasses and a hoodie as she knew she looked ridiculous with her mask and her gloves.

Actually, I watched a video of a guy going grocery shopping in Wuhan during the lockdown and he said he wore an extra layer of clothes over his normal clothes and when he got back from shopping, took them off at the front door, into a bag and put them straight into the washer. Maybe she's thinking of doing the same thing with her workout suit... Just a thought.

 

[Kwirk]

...mechanically moving air around might aerosolize droplets (make a big droplet, which normally would fall to the ground, into lots of little things that would go through filter masks). The setting was highly infectious patients on some kind of ventilation...

Yes, as I understand it, the problem is not the ventilator but the associated procedures such as suction.

Powered personal respirators may help protect the user from others but it isn’t clear that they protect others from the user. This is a problem because we now seem to need to assume that anybody may be infected and spreading virus. Hopefully, the powered respirators don’t produce an aerosol.

 

[Rianne]

Our hospital system just got testing kits last Tuesday. C-U is waiting for the results of 50 tests, which makes me think that's all the kits they got. For some reason, I think we had a bad flu year a couple of years ago, I bought N99 military grade masks made in the UK. Cambridge is the company. Yes, I will wear mine next trip to grocery store. And wear plastic surgical gloves, I have a case of those.

 

[Telly]

Masks wasted by wearers

From what I have seen in person, on TV, or in any pictures on internet, almost every mask is wasted. Because they are not wearing them right. NIOSH 95 masks, and many other masks, have a formable metal strip near the top of the mask. In only ONE picture, did I see someone who formed that strip onto each side of their nose to block off the sneak path.

All the others, you can clearly see the metal strip as unformed, as straight out of the package. Worthless, as it leaves a significant sneak path on each side of the nose. Yes, those little areas matter. The mask's filter media has resistance to airflow. Which creates a backpressure situation allowing air to seek the path of least resistance.

For people who wear them when cutting plywood, treated lumber, hardboard, etc. in larger quantities, the outside of the mask starts to fill up with material - good! But take it off and look inside the mask in the nose area. If the metal strip is not formed to your particular nose shape on each side, the leak there will show by seeing the material you were trying to avoid breathing show up INSIDE the mask, below the strip.

Another way to see this effect clearly and immediately, is to install fiberglass insulation in an attic in cold weather, while wearing glasses. The glasses will start to fog on the lens near the nose on exhaling, as air is being expelled past the mask right onto the cold glass/plastic lens. Visual proof.

What a waste.

People wearing masks on the Hoarders TV show series were all guilty of it. Never saw a one formed!

 

[Sunset]

Who knows what it will be like in 2 weeks,
I might break the social norm and wear a mask, gloves and I have a cheap face shield from years ago. Turns out harbor frieght still sells them, I clicked through and it never said sold out !!

 

[Calico]

I haven't seen any yet. I was text chatting with my cousin in Santa Fe yesterday and she says her and hubby plan to wear them on their next grocery store visit. I'm going to play it by ear and see how it goes in my area. No reported cases here and being a smallish town where there are not a lot of global travelers, hopefully there won't be any. But my city is a good stopping off point for road travelers so it could easily spread that way.

I've got a dr appt in a week so not sure if I'm keeping it or not. It's pretty much routine but I do have a couple of follow questions from my previous blood work. Now may be the best time to go since there are no reported cases. Postpone for later and there may be a lot then.

Do you have the option of doing a tele-medicine appointment in lieu of going to the doctor's office? My insurance company is encouraging this alternative whenever possible, to cut down on traffic in the medical offices, in the interest of protecting everyone, but especially vulnerable populations.

 

[mountainsoft]

For people who wear them when cutting plywood, treated lumber, hardboard, etc. in larger quantities, the outside of the mask starts to fill up with material - good! But take it off and look inside the mask in the nose area. If the metal strip is not formed to your particular nose shape on each side, the leak there will show by seeing the material you were trying to avoid breathing show up INSIDE the mask, below the strip.

That's one of the reasons I don't like wearing simple masks. To get them to seal around the nose you have to press those strips to form them tightly. But this also causes pressure on the nostrils making it harder to breathe. It's already hard enough to breathe with a mask on. I've had better luck with the masks that have vents on the front, but still not perfect. As you mentioned, if you're wearing a mask and safety glasses the glasses tend to fog up. That's a bigger safety hazard than dust when you're working with spinning blades.

In general, I prefer to capture dust at the source with dust collectors and vacuums. I'd like to add an air filter to the shop, but haven't done that yet.

If I'm working with something that is really dusty or toxic like paint fumes I'm more likely to wear a real respirator with rubber seals fitting tightly around the nose and face.

As far as COVID is concerned, I think the masks serve more as a splash shield than filtering the air. COVID isn't airborne, it's droplets from an infected person sneezing or coughing that are the risk. If the droplets are able to land on your nose and run down that gap behind the mask, they're probably in your eye already too. That kind of defeats the purpose of the mask. A face shield would probably be more effective.

That's the point of social distancing, being far enough apart to prevent droplets from one person contacting another person. No need for a mask if the droplets can't reach you. You're far more likely to come in contact with the virus by touching things then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth.

 

[CoolRich59]

Nope.

 

[fh2000]

That's the point of social distancing, being far enough apart to prevent droplets from one person contacting another person. No need for a mask if the droplets can't reach you. You're far more likely to come in contact with the virus by touching things then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth.

China reported a case of transmission on a bus where the distance is as far out as 4.5 meters. Now this is in a closed off bus and the droplets can suspend in air and gradually flow down to a long distance. I can believe that since you can see some magicians or performers blow smoke circles and that can really fly out very far.

 

[tmm99]

I ended up going to two grocery stores today. I went to two because the first one was out of eggs. I went to another store two days ago, but they were out of eggs also. I guess milk and eggs sell out very quickly.

Anyway, I didn't bring my mask to the first store, thinking it won't be busy (It usually never is), but it was sort of busy. I saw about 5 separate people talking on their cell phones while walking. I stood far from them and waited. No one but one person (Asian) was wearing a mask. They all seemed to have no care in the world.

Then, I ventured into an Asian supermarket, this time, with a N95 mask on. OMG, it was so hard to breathe with that on! After reading Telly's post, I made sure and closed the gap around the nose bridge area, and it had a very good fit, but that made breathing very difficult. I think I may do better with two layers of surgical masks or something, just as a droplet shield. Most of the people (over 90% Asians in the store) were wearing masks (some people were wearing black fabric type masks and some were wearing surgical masks.) But one white guy had a full face mask with two cartridges (Not sure what that's called...) Although I felt like I just got transported into the film Contagion and he looked rather intense, IMHO, his mask was the clear winner. The Asian supermarket wasn't busy, and they had plenty of eggs. I bought 4 12-packs. I should be good for a few weeks...

The mask the guy was wearing looked something like this....

 

[fh2000]

CDC said if the masks ran out, use scarf, bandanna, handkerchief...
Sigh

 

[brewer12345]

We are having a snowstorm today so I decided it would be a good time to fire up the 4X4 and hit the store at a time when most people would be staying home (and the roads were very slippery). I had not been to a grocery store in a couple weeks, and definitely before the panic started. Holy cow! That store has been raped and pillaged. Fortunately there were few customers and lots of produce, so I loaded up. They would only let me buy one gallon of milk, so the dairy home delivery I signed up for will still be worth it.

I don't plan on hitting the store again in the foreseeable future. If I am lucky, by the time I start needing veggies again stuff will be coming up in the garden and there will be wild greens, violets and other edibles to forage. Don't have a solution to getting fruit without hitting the store, unfortunately.

 

[powerplay]

I haven't been wearing a mask to grocery shop, but see a few people who do maybe 10% of the shoppers.


It is very interesting when I started chemotherapy a big deal was made about being immune compromised. At the first infusion I was given a box of masks and told to wear one if I was going to be around other people, but it was best to limit those activities. Also when I would go to urgent care and check in as soon as they looked me up the triage nurse would bring a mask over and tell me to wear it. I never had any kind of respiratory issue during this time, but the mask was supposed to protect me from others.
NOW with the COVID 19 threat the story about masks is completely opposite, very very interesting.

 

[kgtest]

Yes. Wore one today. I was near but > 6ft from the hardware store clerk who visibly had the counters wet from bleach and had gloves on. Here I thought bleach had to dry before it activated its effectiveness... anywho he said he hated the fact he was working...the other was to throw a UPS drop off package 6ft to where the millennial chick could catch it. She had no gloves on.

DW is pregnant, Sis has stage 4 and on the decline, DM has COPD. Just too many people to risk someone coughing on me... trying to reduce my exposure. I did the math if we level off in terms of deaths, which today will top 10,000 than in another year almost 305,000 people would have died from this COVID-19. Let's hope its far less.

 

[oldtrig]

I don't wear them. I just run in quick while I hold my breath and close my eyes People get out of my way when they see me running with my eyes closed.

 

[tmm99]

I haven't been wearing a mask to grocery shop, but see a few people who do maybe 10% of the shoppers.


It is very interesting when I started chemotherapy a big deal was made about being immune compromised. At the first infusion I was given a box of masks and told to wear one if I was going to be around other people, but it was best to limit those activities. Also when I would go to urgent care and check in as soon as they looked me up the triage nurse would bring a mask over and tell me to wear it. I never had any kind of respiratory issue during this time, but the mask was supposed to protect me from others.
NOW with the COVID 19 threat the story about masks is completely opposite, very very interesting.

Very interesting indeed!!

I don't care what people say, if someone sneezed right in front of me (6ft away), I'd rather have something over my mouth like a mask than not, for sure! (I need safety goggles or something as well, instead of my regular glasses.)