Rinse & Repeat
Action: Make your own masks at home (TLDR: Two layers of cotton with an inner layer of tight weave polyester—chiffon—or silk. Make sure it fits tight to your face, especially between nose and cheeks. You don’t want to feel air rush out past your eyes when you exhale heavily. You can also use a thin paperclip, bend the ends into a circle so they don’t poke you, and sew that into the bridge of the nose to mold into a better fit to stop gapping). Figure out where you can get tested through Health & Human Services, CVS free testing locations, or other testing site locators. And remember, not everyone has the capacity to manage disaster and climate change in the same way, so find a local food bank to use or donate to depending on your circumstances, and help out our undocumented (1, 2), indigenous (1, 2, 3), and trans friends through mutual aid programs as they face these crises with fewer resources and less government support than should be the case.
Educate: Research the best materials to make your own mask, learn about why some people don’t wear masks, and how to make them more comfortable. If you want to learn more about infection control in a business setting, check out the CDC guide for infection control in food service, along with their video for businesses and general guidance resources, and OSHA’s guide for employers.
Source Material: Click through the links to the source material we used to research this week – take a deep dive into what was most interesting to you!
- COVID Testing Data from CDC
- COVID Case Numbers and Mapping from Worldometers
- Rural Case Mapping from Washington Post
- R-naught estimates: 5.7 per CDC from Epi data from china from CDC
- Early R0 estimates Diamond Princess = 2-2.5 from Business Insider
- R0 List from University of Michigan
- COVID Test Rates And Numbers Comparison from Johns Hopkins
- Recent Data on Usefulness of Mass Masking & Social Distancing from Eurekalert
- Early Mass Masking Concerns from NIH
- Early Evidence for Mass Masking Efforts—”Mechanistic Plausibility” Argument from NIH
- CO2 Poisoning from Face Masks? No. from Healthline
- Best Mask Materials for Homemade Masks, Original Study PublicationSchmoldt, Gregory D. Grant, Supratik Guha. Aerosol Filtration Efficiency of Common Fabrics Used in Respiratory Cloth Masks. ACS Nano, 2020; DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c03252