Americans may start using masks to battle spread of Covid-19
WASHINGTON - As the United States stares down the barrel of a pandemic death toll of up to 240,000 even in a good scenario, opinion may be shifting in favour of the use of face masks by the general public.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has long recommended against the use of face masks by the public, saying that only people who are ill should wear them. Thus, in obvious contrast to most of South-east Asia and East Asia, almost nobody out and about in America wears a mask.
This has resulted in bizarre and racially tinged incidents of Asians in face masks being taunted and attacked. This week in Georgia, a man was arrested after pulling a gun and telling two people wearing masks to stay away from him.
And given that the US' Covid-19 case and mortality rates have rocketed, some are wondering if, apart from the administration's failure to gear up in time to contain the coronavirus, the fact that most of the general public in a leaky lockdown don't wear masks is a factor.
The CDC's guidance has not changed, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and easily the real pandemic expert in the White House Coronavirus Task Force, told MSNBC on Tuesday (March 31).
"What is being actively discussed... is given the fact that there is a degree of transmission from asymptomatic individuals who may not know they are infected, we need to at least examine the possibility - as long as we are absolutely certain we won't take these masks away from individuals who need them - of some sort of facial covering," he said.
"It doesn't have to be a classical mask, but something that will prevent them from infecting others. This is actively being looked at."
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