Tag: face masks

Coronavirus: Face masks could increase risk of infection, medical chief warns

Members of the public could be putting themselves more at risk from contracting coronavirus by wearing face masks, one of England’s most senior doctors has warned.

Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer, said the masks could “actually trap the virus” and cause the person wearing it to breathe it in.

“For the average member of the public walking down a street, it is not a good idea” to wear a face mask in the hope of preventing infection, she added.

Sales of the masks have sky-rocketed since the Covid-19 outbreak began, with retailers including Boots and Amazon selling out of the products before the virus had even taken hold in the UK.

Asked about their effectiveness, Dr Harries told BBC News: “What tends to happen is people will have one mask. They won’t wear it all the time, they will take it off when they get home, they will put it down on a surface they haven’t cleaned.

“Or they will be out and they haven’t washed their hands, they will have a cup of coffee somewhere, they half hook it off, they wipe something over it.

“In fact, you can actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in.”

Asked if people are putting themselves more at risk by wearing masks, Dr Harries added: “Because of these behavioural issues, people can adversely put themselves at more risk than less.”

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Power-Tripping Maskless Cop Rips Man’s Mask Off, Get in His Face for Filming

Filming the police is entirely legal, in every state. However, all too often, we will see police officers overstep their authority and arrest, attack, and assault innocent people for the constitutionally protected act of documenting their behavior in public. As the following case out Nashville illustrates, many cops couldn’t care less about your First Amendment right to film them and will violate their oaths to the constitution to carry out their tyrannical hatred for police accountability.

Andrew Golden, a police accountability activist was practicing his constitutionally protected right to film in public this week when he was assaulted by Tennessee State Trooper Harvey Briggs.

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Employees need masks even for at-home Zoom calls, Wisconsin agency says. Here’s why

In an email to employees sent out on July 31, the head of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources not only reminded employees of Gov. Tony Evers’ mask order going into effect on Aug. 1, he also said that every DNR employee must wear a mask … even while on a teleconference.

“Also, wear your mask, even if you are home, to participate in a virtual meeting that involves being seen — such as on Zoom or another video-conferencing platform — by non-DNR staff,” Preston Cole said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Set the safety example which shows you as a DNR public service employee care about the safety and health of others.”

Evers’ executive order said that face coverings are required to be worn whenever a person is in an enclosed space — other than a private residence.

DNR spokeswoman Megan Sheridan spoke with McClatchy News and said that employees wearing masks while video conferencing with external partners sets a good example during the pandemic.

“By wearing a mask while video conferencing with the general public, we visually remind folks that masking is an important part of navigating the business of natural resources during this tumultuous time,” Sheridan said.

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Neck gaiters may actually increase COVID-19 transmission, study finds

The U.S. hit another grim milestone on Monday with more than 5 million Americans now infected with the coronavirus. Although there is a push to increase testing and develop a vaccine, experts continue to suggest that if all Americans wore masks, the pandemic could be brought under control “within weeks.” In the spirit of that mission, a new study published in Science Advances is shedding light on which masks are most effective — and which may actually be hurting the effort to curb COVID-19.

The analysis, carried out by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine, relied on an “optimal measurement method” that uses a laser beam and cellphone camera to track the number of droplets that emerged from an individual while he or she wore a mask. Of the 14 masks, the two that proved least effective were a bandanna and what the researchers refer to as a neck fleece, also known as a neck gaiter.

The most secure mask, the N95, led to a droplet transmission of below 0.1 percent. But handmade cotton and polypropylene masks, some of which were made from apron material, proved beneficial, showing a droplet transmission ranging from 10 to 40 percent. One mask, which was knitted, released a higher number of droplets, with up to 60 percent droplet transmission. But none of the masks compared with the neck fleece, which had 110 percent droplet transmission (10 percent higher than not wearing a mask).

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Americans will wear masks for ‘several years’ due to coronavirus: expert

“I think that mask wearing and some degree of social distancing, we will be living with — hopefully living with happily — for several years,” he said. “It’s actually pretty straightforward. If we cover our faces, and both you and anyone you’re interacting with are wearing a mask, the risk of transmission goes way down.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top official handling the US COVID-19 response, said recently he was cautiously optimistic that there could be a vaccine for the virus by 2021.

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Democrat calls for treating non-mask-wearers as murderers, while actual murderers are released from jail

I pine for a day when we will make Orwell fiction again. What we are seeing today with the COVID cult in this county is not just a disagreement over science and the role of government, but over basic morality. Democrats now believe that a man breathing free air without a mask is tantamount to murder, yet they are using the same virus as a pretext to release real murderers throughout the country. Breathing is now murder and murder is an act of grace?

During an August 5 committee hearing of the Nashville Metro Council, Councilwoman Sharon Hurt compared those who decline to wear masks to attempted murderers and suggested legislation treating them on that level.

So COVID-19 poses such a threat to human life that we must ban uncovered human lungs as murder, but because these very same leftists are concerned their chosen criminals will catch the virus, they are released. Here are a couple of stories you might have missed from the national news that demonstrate how far they are willing to go…

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Nashville Councilwoman: People Who Don’t Wear Masks Should Be Charged With Murder

A Nashville, Tennessee, councilwoman suggested last week that people who refuse to wear masks in public be charged with murder.

During a Wednesday virtual meeting of committees of the Nashville Metro Council, at-large member Sharon Hurt addressed some remarks to Mike Jameson, Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s director of legislative affairs, who was also in attendance.

“I work for an organization, that if they pass a virus, then they are tried for murder, or attempted murder, if they are not told,” said Hurt, “and this person who may very well pass this virus that’s out in the air because they’re not wearing a mask is basically doing the same thing to someone who contracts it and dies from it.”

Presumably Hurt was referring to her employment as executive director of Street Works, a Nashville HIV/AIDS nonprofit. But knowingly passing HIV on to another person is considerably different from passing the coronavirus. For one thing, the number of Americans with HIV is relatively small, and the disease is transmitted in very specific ways, primarily homosexual intercourse and intravenous drug use. One can easily avoid both getting and transmitting HIV by refraining from those activities. The coronavirus, by contrast, affects a large swath of the population, many of whom do not even know they have it, and we are still not entirely certain how it is transmitted or what measures will best prevent transmission. Masks, especially when used by amateurs, are almost certainly ineffective in preventing it.

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University Of Georgia Says Students Should ‘Consider Wearing A Mask During Sex’: Report

The University of Georgia is urging students to wear masks while having sex.

The university reportedly sent out notices to on-campus students that said they should “consider wearing a face mask during sex. Heavy breathing and panting can further spread the virus, and wearing a mask can reduce the risk,” according to OutKick.

“You are your safest sex partner. Practice solo sex, or limit the number of sexual partners you have,” said the University of Georgia recommendations, according to OutKick, which identifies itself on Twitter as “fearless, data-driven sports reporting.”

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