• Question: Under the circumstances we are now, do you believe wearing a mask is as useful as they say to be?

    Asked by anon-256593 on 8 Jun 2020. This question was also asked by anon-256607.
    • Photo: Alex Holmes

      Alex Holmes answered on 8 Jun 2020:

      Hi Javier, I do think wearing a mask is helpful and saw a cartoon that helped explain why that I’ll try to summarise here!
      If nobody wore pants and someone had a wee in a group, the urine is more likely to get on other people right? Maybe even at 2 m distance. Well what if you were wearing pants and someone else had a wee? Well maybe your pants would get a bit damp but you’d be more protected! If everyone was wearing pants, the wee would be contained with just that person.
      Masks are just the same, you wear them to protect other people from getting your breath on them and potentially making them ill. They might not be fool proof but they definitely help.

    • Photo: Sarah Montgomery

      Sarah Montgomery answered on 8 Jun 2020:

      This is a big question at the moment. I think if I had to be in a room with a person with coronavirus I’d definitely choose to wear a mask, so by extension, it would be good to have everyone wearing masks all the time right? But the security guards at shops might not be too comfortable with everyone having their faces covered all the time, and we’ve also had problems getting enough supply of PPE to people who work in hospitals. There are also potential problems with people wearing masks but not covering their noses, or people feeling a false sense of security and taking more risks as a result.

      In my view, wearing a mask on a packed bus or train is a bit like putting on a helmet and then driving a racing car – yes it helps, but not nearly as much as avoiding the risky activity. So we should make sure we get our priorities right.

      I’m currently volunteering in the covid-19 sample testing lab in Milton Keynes, working in one big lab with about 30 other people, and interestingly enough we actually stopped wearing masks because we couldn’t hear each other properly over all the robots and vented cabinets! Also, our safety glasses kept steaming up which was really annoying.

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