COVID-19: Are We Kidding Ourselves When We choose to wear or not wear Face Masks???

Greetings,

There continues to be more things to talk about in healthcare now, primarily because the covid pandemic has magnified all the negative issues in healthcare but also some of the positive issues. One of the potential positive issues relates to something that we all have an opinion about—face masks!! Some say it’s political and others say “no, it’s all healthcare related”. Some won’t wear them and others wear them over their mouths but not their noses. There are all kinds of face masks, surgical, non-surgical, large, small, pattern masks, bandannas, shields, you can think of others as well.what are we overlooking here when we talk about face masks?

But are we kidding ourselves when we talk about wearing/not wearing face masks?

I think Dr. Gawande, surgeon at Boston Mass General Brigham Health System and New Yorker reporter, has helped me get answers to questions I have not only about face masks but other elements of protection as well. See below:

1. Are face masks by themselves effective to prevent me from spreading or getting the covid virus?
2. Is there one kind of material better than another for a face mask? How should the face masks fit?
3. If not by themselves, what else should I do when I go out of my house, office or car?
4. What experiences have hospitals had protecting their healthcare providers and other employees from getting the covid virus?

In an article by Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon at Mass General Brigham and reporter for The New Yorker, May article on reopening, he talks about the “combination therapy” —-hygiene measures, screening, distancing, and masks. Skip one and the treatment won’t work. But if taken together, and done seriously, they shut down the virus!

If you click on the link above to Dr. Gawande’s article, you’ll find out a lot of things that will be helpful to understand these elements properly—what their strengths and limitations are—if they are going to work for you.

Don’t go on what others say about the various elements of combination therapy, read the article by one of the experts, Dr. Gawande, and you’ll begin to function better without fear when you are out in the public.

May you be safe in your daily activities and in your strategy to protect not only yourself but other family members and friends as well.

One day at a time

 

 

 

Chris Hadley
President & Founder
Denver Medical Study Group