Asians have long known the benefits of wearing masks in public. Chinese scientists were aghast that Americans would not take this simple step to protect themselves.
For those of us who live in or near large U.S. cities it is common to see tourists from Asia wearing masks as they walk around site seeing and shopping. If you travel to Asia it is rare to get on an airplane and not see many if not the majority of the passengers wearing masks. Asians know a few things about contagious diseases, like for example, masks filter germs. And they have been on the forefront and know the consequences of epidemics such as SARS and MERS. Quarantines aren’t much fun as we now know.
Back in January I was traveling in southeast Asia. On January 27th I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Phnom Penh Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in that region. All of the Asian passengers wore masks. There were only a couple of us not wearing a mask. Arriving at the entrance to my hotel, a serious young man (wearing a mask) took my temperature and handed me a pamphlet on safety and contagious diseases. No one entered this hotel without having their temperature taken. At the time I thought this was a bit of an overreaction. My cavalier attitude which I related to friends was that I had already survived much worse, and wasn’t about to succumb to this flu-like disease. The information at the time was that the coronavirus had a death rate slightly higher than the flu and most of the deaths were in people already suffering from poor health.
I rarely get sick. Last year at my annual physical my new doctor convinced me to get a flu shot, something my prior physician had long given up on. He convinced me by telling me that even though I wasn’t very susceptible to the flu, I could pass it along to others. Ok it’s not about me. I could buy into that rationale, as many of us have now, that the reason for wearing masks is to protect others. But who in their right mind would think that wearing a mask wouldn’t offer some protection against disease transmission, or are all those careful Asians just being paranoid and reactionary.
After months of telling us that we should not buy or wear masks the CDC reversed course and issued guidance that we should all be wearing masks in public. Now over a month later we aren’t even allowed in public without a mask in my neighborhood. Those of us who have lived and traveled in Asia knew that the policy telling us not to wear masks was not only asinine but stupid. Hospital personnel wear masks to protect themselves. No one enters a room with a coronavirus patient without protective gear..
My earlier cavalier attitude has given way to a man with so many mask options, I have trouble deciding which one to wear. I have surgical masks, variants of the N-95’s, neck scarves with filters, specialty masks, regular scarves and bandanas. I’m in contact with a Chinese manufactured about producing bandanas because I am convinced that face coverings will continue to be required, something the CDC and disease control should have been telling us all along.
Now I’m just plain angry. What if all those people who were at the greatest risk had been issued or told to wear masks from the very beginning? How many less deaths would we have if health officials had recommended that all of us wear masks? How many less transmissions would have occurred? Could this have slowed the spread especially in those plants deemed as an essential industry?
Masks not only capture our coughs and sneezes but filter germs from the air. Now we are being told to wear cloth masks to save the clinical masks for the health professionals. Perhaps if we all wore clinical masks the health care workers wouldn’t need so many. I understand the terror that was created from a lack of protective gear, but to tell us that masks were not beneficial is criminal. Once the air clears (pun intended) and everyone is wearing the appropriate face covering, we will be able to look back and understand that we should pay attention to what other cultures tell us. We will realize that those Asian cultures knew what they were doing and not only were they protecting themselves from us, they were protecting us from them.