Well Well Well...
What do you know? Just now on NBC nightly news the Head of CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield is saying we should be wearing MASKS even though you're not showing symptoms WHO are saying still saying otherwise.
Too little too late?!?!?!
Now they're saying at lease wear cloth masks... LOL .. 3,000 deaths and nearly 200,000 cases too late IMO.
WHO is in a precarious situation. The Asian countries who have had experience with epidemics in the past all have a culture of wearing masks and quickly following up with recommended steps in case of an emergency situation. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapoore, Hong Kong... they are all countries that had SARS outbreaks in 2002-2003 and Korea had a MERS outbreak in 2015. This is NOT the only reason those places seem to be handling this epidemic very well and limiting cases now, but part of it is their wide-spread use of masks. WHO strongly recommends masks for medical personnel everywhere. It's interesting that WHO doesn't recommend it for the population in the western world but recommends it for South Korea for cultural reasons.
This sounds insidious in a way until you realize the reasons for it... the reasons are that they are afraid of panic buying of masks and hoarding by the population that will leave the medical workers unprotected in the western world(just look at the toilet paper hoarders, imagine what will happen if they told them the masks work very well and are mandatory), something that's not so present in those Asian countries where they seem to have experience with epidemics and culture about it that won't deplete their resources for medical workers.
There is no reason to think that masks don't help at least partially for the general population. Even if they are not 100% proof to stop you from getting the virus, there are several points where it helps:
1. small chance it will prevent a droplet from someone else infected talking around you landing on your face, mouth, nose.
2. it stops you from directly touching your face frequently, thus limiting the chance you will transfer it on your face if you've touched a surface that has the virus until you wash your hands
3. all the sick are mandated to wear masks, because they limit how much the sick contaminate the ones around them and the environment/surfaces around them. A ton of people who are infected don't know it, thus widespread mask use captures a lot of them in limiting spreading the disease.
With that said - masks are not a panacea. They don't protect perfectly. Even medical grade masks don't have 100% certainty, that's why a ton of medical workers become sick. BUT - if we had unlimited resources of masks I bet CDC, WHO and every health organization would be recommending using them, because they seem to be helping with lowering the spread. On a population level it's not that important whether this or that person gets it, it's important that the reproduction rate of the virus is brought down to a level where either you slow down the disease and flatten the curve or bring the reproduction rate below 1, in which case you can hope to stop it altogether. Masks are just one part of the measures that help lower that reproduction rate.
