Hello My Fellow Californians:
“Once 80% of the population wears a mask, the spread of a virus during a pandemic can be stopped almost immediately.”
~ From a 2019 Research Paper on Stopping an Influenza Outbreak, cited on Masks4all
IF MOST OF US WORE MASKS, WE COULD STOP THE VIRUS.
On Friday, an all-star roster of public health researchers from UCLA, Stanford, San Francisco, MIT, UNC, Hong Kong, China, and various European institutions published an evidence review of the effectiveness of home-made masks in stopping the virus. The recommendation they made is as clear as you will find in a research publication.
“The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of non-medical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures could successfully reduce effective-R to below 1.0, thereby stopping community spread. Economic analysis suggests that the impact of mask wearing could be thousands of US dollars saved per person per mask.”
~Face Masks Against Covid-19: An Evidence Review.
The researchers have found that masks are equally effective regardless of the activity of the wearer, such as talking, singing, exercising. That is significant to me in light of the stories of contagion spreading among choirs, where virus-laden droplets are propelled more forcefully than they are among speakers. And the joggers and bicyclists who zoom past with no warning and not the slightest attempt at social distancing.
Masks, along with hand washing, distancing, testing, and contact tracing of infected people can stop the spread quickly. One astonishing study done last year found that in influenza, In a study done last year before Covid-19 was on the scene, researchers concluded that the spread of a virus during a pandemic can be stopped almost immediately once 80% of the population wears a mask. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30229968/
This is a real “we’re in it together” moment: it only works when you get up to 80% compliance. The list of California cities and counties requiring masks in public increases every day There’s no time to wait: Wear a mask. And insist (cajole, beg, inspire) that other people do the same.
BY THE NUMBERS:
As of Sunday 4 pm:
- Total California Cases: 23287 (+1913 Weekend)
- Total Deaths: 681 (+83 Weekend)
- Bay Area Cases: 4991 (+ 346 Weekend)
- Deaths: 139 (+10 Weekend)
- Los Angeles Cases: 9192 (+739 Weekend)
- Deaths: 296 (+ 52 Weekend)
- 10% of hospitalized middle-aged patients don’t survive, the Chronicle reports, quoting a story from the Washington Post. Male patients are 1.3 times more likely to die than women, even when controlling for age and chronic disease burden.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-live-updates-news-bay-area-15192855.php
TESTING:
- Numbers continue to increase, up to 203,400 tests with about 14k results pending. California has now moved up to 45th worst in tests per million population, at 5196 per million people. https://www.worldometers.info.
- In the Wild West of Testing Department: Antibody testing, the new holy Grail of getting us all back to work, is being hawked at the moment by 70 different companies which have signed up with the FDA to sell the tests. No one has any idea which ones are any good. There is NO FDA oversight of the tests. You can launch your product as long as you notify the FDA of your intent and include disclaimers that your test is not “FDA Approved”.
Fraud is already surfacing, promotional emails are arriving without the required disclaimers, some are claiming they are FDA approved for home testing (there are zero such tests at the moment).
https://apnews.com/6f918ac77eefa34beaa381003a7663f9
PREPARING (OR NOT) FOR THE TSUNAMI
- Will the peak hit California on Wednesday? The University of Washington model says yes: predicting that 5200 Californians will be hospitalized and 66 people will die in California that day, and numbers will decrease after that. The California models are predicting mid May. Stay tuned. They all agree: stay put for at least a few more weeks.
- Prisons and homeless shelters are the next danger areas for the state.
IN THE NEWS
- Homeless tent cities have exploded on sidewalks across San Francisco, and the city is letting this happen. Since the city’s shelters can’t provide social distancing, and with contagion raging through some of them, the city has apparently decided that these tent cities are acceptable.
NEWS YOU CAN USE
HOW YOU CAN HELP
- Sew those masks! Do like my neighbor and put them on your car when u r done to encourage people to wear them. There are a zillion sources of instructions, but www.masks4all is a good place to start.
If you’re making masks, here’s an interesting twist.
AND FINALLY …
Now this is uber-impressive. 12 year old Ashlyn So of the Peninsula is evidently quite the fashion designer. She also is designing and sewing masks for our health care heroes. Not just that: she has a website. You can donate materials. or dough re mi. For 20 bucks you get 2 masks and the hospital gets 4. You get to pick your design. I mean, that’s amazin’.
I end with the quote from Anne Frank that Ms. Ashlyn has on her website:
“No one has ever become poor by giving.” ― Anne Frank