Pandemic Daze: Face Masks

Anybody else suffering from mental whiplash from all the contradictory advice we're getting in the time of covid-19?  Like how wearing face masks was utterly pointless and possibly socially irresponsible until it wasn't?

I am definitely NOT providing any medical advice in this post.  I also don't want to upset anyone at such a sensitive time.  But I will say that I am unconvinced by the utility of most people wearing face masks, especially of the DIY variety.  I'm willing to be persuaded to think otherwise, if anyone has evidence they'd like to share.  But the usual explanation I hear is that various Asian countries where face mask-wearing is widespread have had lower infection rates than the US.  I would argue that that evidence shows correlation, not causation, and that the countries in question also did other things differently.

Also, I worry about some of the wider implications of encouraging everyone to wear face masks.  Sure, they tell us to make our own and leave the "real" face masks for medical personnel.  But is it really that much of a leap in logic to think that if people are being told to wear face masks that they might try to get ahold of good ones to wear rather than, say, cut up a t-shirt for a no-sew DIY mask?  I also worry that people might put too much faith in the efficacy of face masks and become more lax about measures like physical distancing.

Also, to be honest, I'm just very upset at how this whole crisis has been managed.  With two months of warning time, I suspect lots of medical-grade face masks could have been manufactured, possibly enough for (gasp!) our medical personnel to have all the masks they need.  Maybe even enough for the rest of us to use them!

All of that being said, my county has started requiring people to wear a face mask in supermarkets, pharmacies, and various other establishments.  I'm not getting out all that much these days, but I'm still making weekly supermarket trips, so I finally broke down and sewed a few masks over the weekend.  We wore them to the supermarket for the first time today, and I thought they were fairly tolerable.  We could breathe through the fabric and they didn't slip much.  When we were standing in line to get in to the supermarket, the guy behind us complimented our masks very enthusiastically; he liked the fact that they wrapped around our faces to our ears.  Upon learning that I had made them, he told me I was the MVP. 

I wonder how it will feel, at some distant point in the future, when wearing a face mask in public becomes an anomaly again.  I remember when I left a job where it was absolutely essential to have my employee badge every day.  For months after I left, I kept having these brief spells of panic looking for it in my purse, only to remember that I didn't need it anymore and had turned it in on my last day.  I wonder if similar mask panic is in my future, and if so, when.