Good Advice About Wearing A Mask (Or Not) From An Accomplished Nurse Practitioner Friend

Christian Minister Rob: What is your position on masks?

Nurse Nancy: The thing about masks is that so many non medical people do not know how to wear and use them properly and therefore may make it even worse, for example, they tug at it, touch it, move it around with their hands and this may make it worse as in general, virus thrive on a moist host and closed to the air.

In the hospital, before the shortage, the mask, gown gloves are put on right out side the pt's room where they have not been previously touched and there are different sizes so it fits right and then you don't touch it once you are gloved, gowned and masked and nurses and doctors were even fitted for occasions like this before shortage. I see people in the grocery store pick something off the shelf with their bare hands, then adjust their mask getting that hand near the closed, moist, warm area of the mouth where now, if there was the virus on the can or shelf, they have now introduced it closer to their mouth, nose than if they had just taken it off the shelf and put it in their cart, not touched their face till they had washed their hands. It gives them a false sense of security.

Anthony Fauci says the masks will prevent the wearer's droplets from infecting the person they are talking to, if they are less than 6 ft from them, it really protects the other person, more than you, but if everyone wore one correctly, and that was properly fitted, it would make a difference, now that they have discovered that there is so much asymptomatic transmission vs the flu, colds, where one's greatest transmission is from a projected cough, sneeze infected droplet getting into mouth, nose of the other person. Here we have the ability to transmit when not even sick at all or sneezing, coughing, but singing, talking. This they did not know at first, as colds, flu virus do not behave that way.

Since I have an N95 mask from the time of the fires in CA, I am going to wear that in public starting today at grocery store, although it doesn't fit the way I was once fitted in hospital and, of course, we changed masks, gowns, gloves between each patient, did not wear the same mask all day !

Just listen to Anthony Fauci, MD. He was on PBS NewHour last night for a long time, interviewed by Judy Woodruff, and I'm sure you see him w/ Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta, MD on CNN.

This whole thing reminds me of the scare we nurses had taking care of patients here in SF during the early 80's, before I went to grad school and was doing RN bedside nursing when we didn't have any idea how AIDS was transmitted, didn't even know if it was air borne or even have the name AIDS or HIV yet, calling it "Gay cancer" I remember one high powered attorney pt of mine who got up and instead of using the urinal peed in the corner and we didn't know then that the virus had gone to his brain, no vocabulary/ term for  HIV dementia yet.  We nurese took the bed pans and gave injections without even being given gloves in early 80s !

In the early 90's,when we did know by then that it was transmitted in blood and semen, I got a needle stick before Clinton was President. It was really Hillary's urging that the hospitals got retractable needles for injections, as the hospital management fought it since they are so much more expensive than the type I was using, when I ran the long acting neuroleptic clinic at Strong Ties.  

The Republicans fought that. 

The first medical person to convert to AIDS was an RN at SFGH from a needle stick when she was on the night shift, tired, she was a "Jane Doe" as she was afraid it would affect her health insurance if they knew she had HIV. This happened before testing and she didn't know till she developed symptoms. later she testified and I have heard her speak at Nursing Conferences in SF, she worships Bill and Hillary Clinton. She has to take all those meds every day, the HIV meds and it affected her marriage intimacy, but she is grateful to be alive as when she first contracted it there were no meds and she was ill, but survived long enough to get on the meds and probably did not have as big a viral load from the needle stick as an active gay guy or recipient of blood transfusion would have.

I had to be tested for one full year holding my breath as the "donor" refused to be tested at the time I got the needle stick from him, a paranoid schizophrenic. 

In SF it was already mandatory that the "donor" be tested, but not in Rochester, so I was tested and had to sweat it out at employee health for a full 12 months then I believe it was in 1990, before the real efficacious meds, not that there is a cure even now, but it is managed much better, AZT didn't always work and it made people so sick too. 

Love,

Nan

Alan: My physician friend Ed adds: Most of the virus  (infinitesimally small)  is on the droplets, so only need to stop droplets, not easy breathing.