The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending people wear face masks in public
Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels
Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels
I’ve never seen anything like this in my lifetime. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic disrupting life as we know it.
It’s like someone hit the pause button and life suddenly came to a halt. All but the most essential stores are closed (now slowly reopening). Thousands of people are laid off from work. There are record-high unemployment claims and strangely there’s no traffic on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles.
We only realized this was a novel coronavirus when people in Wuhan, China started getting seriously ill in late November 2019 and nothing in our medical arsenal was working to cure patients.
Now, as I write this, over 250 million people worldwide have tested positive for COVID-19 according to the data at https://ncov2019.live/ and about 2% of those have died from the respiratory illness.
Out of every 100 people who contract the disease, on average, 2 will die. That’s a daunting statistic.
So how do we prevent getting sick and slow the spread of infection?
We all need to make some massive changes to our daily routine and rapidly adopt healthy habits in an effort to avoid getting sick and potentially dying from the virus.
The following measures are only temporary until the virus is no longer a threat. These suggestions will help lower the speed at which the virus can spread from person to person.
When you wear a mask, you protect others as well as you. Masks work best when everyone wears one.
COVID-19 virus spreads mainly from person to person through respiratory droplets over short distances. This is known as droplet transmission. Respiratory droplets are released into the air when people breathe, speak, sing, cough, shout, or sneeze. It is thought that most infections are spread through large respiratory droplets that travel less than 6 feet before falling out of the air. These droplets can infect other people if they are breathed in or land in the mouths or noses of others who are nearby. People who are close to a person with COVID-19 are at the greatest risk of infection.
Under certain conditions, the virus may be spread through smaller respiratory droplets or particles that can remain suspended in the air and travel a longer distance to infect people who are further away or who entered an enclosed space after the infected person left. This is known as airborne transmission. Conditions that make airborne transmission more likely include being in an enclosed space or a space with poor ventilation, especially when people are singing, shouting, or breathing heavily (like with exercise). These conditions can allow for the build-up of smaller droplets or particles in the space that can remain in the air over longer distances (usually more than 6 feet) and for a longer time (minutes to hours). See How COVID-19 Spreads.
Everyone needs to wear a mask even when they feel well. This is because people with COVID-19 can spread the virus to others before they get symptoms or without ever getting symptoms.
For masks to work best, everyone should be wearing them:
That’s where we come in. It’s clear we have to adjust our lifestyle for a while until we get past this pandemic. While we can’t make you stay indoors (please do when possible) to stay safe and stop the spread of the virus, we can offer a safe, reliable, disposable, breathable, inexpensive, FDA approved Level 3 face mask with greater than 98% filtration protection against particles as small as 0.1 microns in size. (A grain of dust is 5-1000 microns.)
Our masks are not surgical grade N95 masks (with 99.9% filtration) that doctors and healthcare workers require to interact with infected patients. Let’s save those for the brave healthcare workers on the front line. Our masks are the next best option – and highly recommended protection for the rest of us when going outside.
We are making them affordable because we want to get them in every household. Together we can beat this pandemic. Stay safe! #wearamask
Surgical masks on sale with 98% Filtration as low as $0.15/ea.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels