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Face Shields
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Published: Jul 15, 2020
Category:
Health
EDITOR”S NOTE: Face shields may be a good thing for you. For almost everyone, however, they are NOT a substitute for a mask. Simply, MASKS ARE ESSENTIAL. To buy a pack of 15 disposable masks from Amazon, click here.
Let’s start with a Facebook post by “NY, NJ, CT & the rest of the NE.”
Dear America,
I live in a part of the country that was once the epicenter of the coronavirus. To stem the spread, we sheltered in place for three months. We didn’t go anywhere. At all. We wore masks, bandanas, neck gaiters, anything we had on hand to keep each other safe. We sewed homemade masks, held bake sales and fundraisers to buy others, and donated our own supply — because there weren’t enough for our healthcare workers and EMTs, Firefighters and police officers. We wore gardening gloves to the supermarket when we ran out of latex ones.
We crossed the street to avoid each other and kept a six foot distance. We washed our hands constantly, opened door knobs with our elbows and closed car doors with our toes, made homemade hand sanitizer, wiped down everything with Clorox and Lysol and bleach.
We isolated ourselves from each other, even though it cost us companionship and intimacy and socialization and the comfort of touch and hugs and kisses, and quite possibly, our sanity.
We stayed put because you were afraid that we would bring the virus to other states. We were terrified, and acted like we weren’t for the sake of our children.
We stayed at home even though we were furloughed, lost our jobs, had to close down businesses, and went bankrupt.
We taught our kids at home while trying to be productive as we worked from home – often in the same room, and at the same table.
Our friends and family, coworkers, neighbors and front-line workers died in staggering numbers. We couldn’t gather together to bury them, or to mourn.
We missed weddings, funerals, births, bar mitzvahs, 50th anniversary parties and babies’ first birthdays, graduations, Easter, Passover, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. We cancelled the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City for the first time in its 150-year existence. We watched Broadway go dark, Times Square sit empty, Fifth Avenue go silent. We closed down all sporting events, missed spring training and a day at the ballpark with our dads and our kids.
We put up caution tape around neighborhood playgrounds. We had to visit our 95 year-old mothers and fathers in nursing homes with a cold, hard pane of tempered glass between us.
We didn’t sleep for days. We cried, raged and bargained into our pillows at 3 a.m. We developed headaches, muscle tension, anxiety and depression.
We made wills, wrote down funeral plans. We couldn’t be with our loved ones when they died alone in hospitals. We asked nurses and doctors to bend down towards their hallowed ears and whisper our children’s names and our pet names for our spouses and our everlasting love and our thankfulness that it had been them and that they had chosen us and our steadfast promises that we would be alright and that they would never be forgotten and that it was ok to let go even though it wasn’t ok at all.
We did this while you said it was just like the flu and that we were overreacting. We did this while you mocked our precautions and said it wasn’t that bad. We did this while you drank shoulder-to-shoulder in bars, swam in crowded pools, ignored data and doctors and science for a beer and a burger. We did this while you disputed our infection numbers and death tolls, as hazmatted men wheeled body after body into refrigerated white trucks discreetly hidden from sight in hospital parking lots. We did this while you protested about your right to get a mani-pedi and a haircut. We did this while you booked cruise vacations en masse, and boarded planes to take advantage of cheap fares. We did this while you criticized our governors for their “overaggressive” approach.
We did this while you sent death threats to Dr. Fauci and others in the medical field, skilled professionals who have literally taken an oath to do no harm, and who have made it their life’s work.
We did this while you coughed and spit on Starbucks and Home Depot workers getting paid by the hour. We did this while you banged on shopping mall doors, screamed at its workers, and demanded that they open for you. Because you need to shop.
And all you had to do was wear a mask.
Is that last sentence overstated? Not at all.
Yesterday, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and two colleagues wrote an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Because cloth face coverings can also allow states to more safely ease stay-at-home orders and business closings, Redfield said, “If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really think in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.”
That editorial concludes:
In an unpublished analysis of 194 countries, those that did not recommend face masks saw per-capita Covid-19 mortality increase 54% every week after the first case appeared; in countries with masking policies, the weekly increase was only 8%.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the President didn’t disappoint. His latest effort to keep you uninformed:
The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, beginning tomorrow, send all cororavirus patient information to a central database in Washington. Officials say the change will streamline data gathering at the Department of Health and Human Services, and help the White House coronavirus task force track the virus and allocate scarce supplies like personal protective gear and the drug remdesivir.
I’m sure not the only reader who thinks this is a desire to control information — to minimize the seriousness of the virus and to advance the President’s re-election agenda, which is to create a completely insane Hunger Games survival contest for students and teachers.
And I do mean insane. In the afternoon, the President gave a press conference so unhinged that observers could picture him raving in a straightjacket. A few hours later, this exchange went viral:
Anderson Cooper: “Jim, is there *anyone* left in the administration who shakes their head when they hear the president rambling in the Rose Garden?”
Jim Acosta: “No, Anderson, we are down to Kool-Aid drinkers and next of kin.”
Which brings us to the clear plastic masks I’ve been seeing in my neighborhood the last few weeks. I understand the impulse. It’s hot in New York, and on a humid day, it can feel like San Juan. A mask is tiresome. As David Sedaris has noted, “Everywhere I go it smells the same, and it smells like my breath.”
I asked Butler readers about their experience with shields. Patty wrote:
I own a retail musical instrument store in Canada. All of our staff must wear masks or face shields while they work. Our customers must also wear them. Starting Friday here anyone indoors in a public space must wear one.
Our staff have 8 hour shifts. That is a long time to wear a mask. Many of them have hipster beards which stops them from getting any type of a seal on their face with a mask. They have chosen to wear shields. Shields are easier to wear – not as exhausting. Shields, with other safety measures such as hand washing, hand sanitizer, plexiglass in front of our counter and social distancing, allow them to function safely 40 hours a week.
Our customers primarily are 40 – 60 year old males. There seems to be some issue amongst middle aged men regarding the wearing of masks. I find they can more easily be persuaded to put a face shield on. Maskulinity.
Turner volunteers in a cancer hospital:
I wear both a mask and a face shield to protect the very vulnerable. The shield is necessary (along with the mask) in that setting, but absurd to wear IN PLACE OF A MASK.
Another advantage of shields — they protect the eyes.
An international research team, which was supported by the WHO, analyzed 44 studies across 26 countries and six continents from March through May 2020. Physical distancing plays the greatest role in reducing the spread of COVID-19, they wrote, and eye protection could reduce the risk of infection from 16% to 6% compared to those without eye protection.
Eli Perencevich, M.D., a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine:
Face shields appear to significantly reduce the amount of inhalation exposure to influenza virus, another droplet-spread respiratory virus. In a simulation study, face shields were shown to reduce immediate viral exposure by 96 percent when worn by a simulated health care worker within 18 inches of a cough. Biggest benefit of face shields would be inside crowded office situations where air exchanges aren’t ideal.
Lauren Lek, head of school at Academy of Our Lady of Peace, in San Diego:
I plan to have 750 returning faculty and students wear face shields at school rather than masks this August. As soon as we saw from the CDC and our local public health office that face shields would be an acceptable alternative to face masks, we knew this was a direction we wanted to move in.
If you’re buying a face shield, which one to buy? You may want to look on Etsy — homemade shields can’t be worse than the crap they sell on Amazon. I’ve been able to identify only two on Amazon that are better than what your elementary school kid can make at home. Some Amazon reviewers say they fog up. Others say they’re flimsy. I don’t disagree. But the worst of the summer is ahead. As with so many things now, we make do.
To buy Face Shields with Anti-Fog Coating and Hypoallergenic Foam from Amazon, click here.
To buy Anti-fog,Thickness Non-Medical Use Visors from Amazon, click here.
REMINDER: Shields are not a substitute for masks.
