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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Open Thread: Face Masks Are The Hottest Accessory Of 2020 (sigh)

Open Thread: Face Masks Are The Hottest Accessory Of 2020 (sigh)

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Today Gov. Polis asked everyone to wear a mask when out in public.

I used these instructions to make a mask, though a friend of mine is sewing masks for family and friends and hers will be much more stylish, I’m sure.

Scout was not happy.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    Miss Bianca

    Oh, fuck me.

    That settles it – I gotta find a bandana or something. Or just pull up my turtleneck over my face Bazooka Joe-style.

    Or just not go out in public again like, ever.

  3. 3.

    Elizabelle

    Was out at Lidl this afternoon, and would say more than half of the shoppers (not many) were masked.

    Waiting in line, read the NYT breaking news that cloth masks were now recommended, but der Trump would not be wearing one himself.

    No chicken whatsoever in the case, not that I was shopping for it.

  4. 4.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Damn, New York had 690 people die today, that is more than the total virus deaths for New Jersey, the state with the next highest deaths.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    Ha! Governor DeWine said something about maybe requiring people to wear masks whenever they go out, so I went to etsy and got this. Faux élégante, non?

  6. 6.

    Kelly

    I wear a neck gaiter, sort of a stand alone turtleneck that I can cover my nose and mouth with, over a bandanna tied bandit style. The bandanna is doubled over which gives me 3 layers.  The neck gaiter is very stretchy, goes all the way around my head, tucks into my collar, sealing most of the gaps.

  10. 10.

    chris

    I put new filters in my industrial organic vapour mask and I’m good to go. It’s basically a reusable N95 and might even be overkill but I can’t sew worth a damn. Should be fun at the grocery store tomorrow.
    Looks like this.

  15. 15.

    Aleta

    Check this for Kushner’s fingerprints

    (Post) In September 2018, the Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic.

    The plans, submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by medical manufacturer O&M Halyard, were the culmination of a venture unveiled almost three years earlier by the Obama administration.
    But HHS did not proceed with making the machine.

    The project was one of two N95 mask ventures — totaling $9.8 million — that the federal government embarked on over the past five years to better prepare for pandemics.
    …

    An HHS spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Post that although Halyard’s plans were feasible, no funding was available to build the machine.

    HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, the department that solicited the Halyard design, had a budget of nearly $1.5 billion for 2020, according to an HHS report.

    More  at the link

  17. 17.

    WereBear

    I thought I was getting the Thunderdome with Tina Turner, not this clown with the baggy suit..

    That’s my new comeback around the house, “Forget it, Jake, it’s Thunderdome.”

  18. 18.

    raven

    My bride spent the day making them. We drove about 30 miles to get 10 years of elastic yesterday and she was off to the races.

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    I think I’ve decided to wear a full SCUBA set whenever I go out. Except the flippers of course; that would be absurd.

  28. 28.

    lgerard

    I was looking out the window this morning and saw a guy with a very realistic Planet of the Apes type mask amble by.

    I guess cosplay can save us

  33. 33.

    gbbalto

    Ig Nobel PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE 2009: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.

    REFERENCE: U.S. patent # 7255627, granted August 14, 2007 for a “Garment Device Convertible to One or More Facemasks.”

    WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Elena Bodnar.

  40. 40.

    geg6

    I have no sewing skills at all and don’t know anyone who does.  Guessing I might find a bandana somewhere around here.  Maybe.

  46. 46.

    Dan B

    @chris: That’s what I got from 35 years doing landscape contracting.  It was helpful back when we were doing drawings and spray fixing them – nasty stuff.

    Combined with Baud’s it could be “fun” shopping drama.

  47. 47.

    CaseyL

    *love* the jockstrap masks!

    I was looking at a video of all the improvised masks people have come up with.  A lot of ingenuity/insanity out there.

    Besides the horse-heads, dog heads, dinosaur body suits, movie character masks, and Carnivale bird masks, people have used plastic carboys, sanitary pads, tampons, vacuum bags, vacuum filters, things that I think are automotive air filters – one person had a one-litre soda bottle on his head, cut out across the face to admit an air filter – plus the very cheap and easy “plastic bags from head to toe, taped in place.”

    I have face masks from when I was worried about inhaling glass dust due to the art I do.  But none of my teachers use them, and they said that unless you’re dry-grinding glass, or dusting off work surfaces, a mask isn’t really necessary.  I still have a few, and can augment their filtering capability by stuffing them with something.

    But looking at all the wild and wacky masks, I wonder if ornamental masks will become an everyday, streetwear “thing.”  Masks as an expression of one’s personality; as a fashion statement… masks as the new T-shirts, with funny sayings and pictures.  I betcha anything this will happen, and fast.

  48. 48.

    Dan B

    @Aleta:  Kushner prints and/or Stephen Miller?  Probably were never allowed near the Boy Scouts.  “Be prepared? Ha, ha ha ha ha ha!…..Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Cackle, snort!!”

  50. 50.

    Another Scott

    TEAM ORWELL stumbles in, exhausted. They collapse.

    ORWELL 1: Well THAT was a charlie-fox.
    ORWELL 3: Why does a stockpile need so many web pages?
    ORWELL2: Thank God this week is over.
    TRUMP [on TV]: Actually FEMA's mission is to defend the borders!
    ORWELL 2: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

    — OURStockpileHat (@Popehat) April 3, 2020

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Geoduck

    It’s kinda ironic that those medieval beaked “plague doctor” masks might actually be helpful in this situation.

  56. 56.

    lamh36

    Hobby Lobby has always been a shit corporation. But as long as it was just gay folks I guess folks were ok. Guess what, if a corporation is willing to treat one group of folks like shit, it shouldn’t surprise you when they do it to their own employees!

    Hobby Lobby is closing all stores and furloughing ‘nearly all’ employees after it defied stay-at-home orders by quietly reopening locations around the nation

    twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/1246233476506025986

    I mean, I know Hobby Lobby is not “essential”, but

    This from the mgr…

    “The line our manager gave us [from corporate] was, ‘The employees got what the employees wanted; the stores were closed,'” the employee said in an interview shortly after he learned of the furloughs. “My question was, ‘Did God tell them they needed to close the stores and not pay us?'”

    But tell me this doesn’t sound a bit like retaliation.

    also..

    Beginning Friday, Hobby Lobby will be “ending emergency leave pay and suspending use of company provided paid time off benefits and vacation,” the statement said.

  57. 57.

    Miss Bianca

    @Geoduck: I had one of those come up in an ad on a site I was visiting. It says something about me, I think, that I actually paused and went, “hmmmm….”

  58. 58.

    Martin

    Data time.

    • Italy: +766. Day 15 at that level. So, stalling seems to be pretty straightforward, but declining is proving to be quite a bit harder.
    • US: +1161. This was actually slightly better than model, but things vary a fair bit from day to day depending on state reporting. We should still be hitting roughly 5k fatalities per day within a week.
    • NY: +562. Big number, but I’ve been seeing this steady improvement in the model and this continues even with this number. The NY trendline is now approaching the US one. I don’t know if that’s a result of an overly aggressive early model and it’ll settle out at the US trend, or if it’s a genuine response to social distancing (seems too soon, TBH). But NY is soon headed toward +1000/day just in-state. To put this in context, someone in NYC is now dying from Covid every 5 minutes, and that pace is increasing.
    • CA: +27. Just shows how much help NY needs. CA is slowly easing off of their trend. It looks like that’s the result of the Bay Area measures. Santa Clara is continuing to improve – it’s very consistent now. Still going up, but the rate slows consistently every day. LA is roughly half the state’s fatalities, which is about what you’d expect based on population. I’m hopeful LA will start to turn their trend downward within the week, and that CAs downward trend will turn more sharply downward as well.
    • FL: I have no idea what’s going on with their data. The last 4 days are +22, +2, +77, +6. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: But their trend, despite the nuttiness, is a bit shallower than CA but climbing. It’s the only place where I can see an accelerating trend (increasing 2nd derivative). I suspect that’s related to their data nuttiness and there were people dying of Covid but not being classified has having done so.
  59. 59.

    kindness

    You can usually trust what a dog tells you.  Do you wear your mask around your house?

  62. 62.

    Martin

    @Mike in DC: I’m using Johns Hopkins data set. Varies depending on when data snapshots are taken – it comes out in the wash so long as you’re consistent.

  63. 63.

    lgerard

    @CaseyL:

    But looking at all the wild and wacky masks, I wonder if ornamental masks will become an everyday, streetwear “thing.” Masks as an expression of one’s personality; as a fashion statement… masks as the new T-shirts, with funny sayings and pictures. I betcha anything this will happen, and fast.

    You mean like this?

  64. 64.

    Mike in DC

    @Martin:

    Yeah, I look at both of those with a regularity bordering on obsessive at this point.  The general trend is still up, up, up.  The peak could be the 15th or 16th like the administration is projecting, or it could be up to a month later.  So much we don’t know.  And Italy lingering that long at their peak is pretty discouraging.

  65. 65.

    Rich Webb

    I managed to put one of these together today on a decade’s old J.C.Penny brand sewing machine. Considering that the last thing I actually sewed — other than stuff like patching rips in jeans and repairing blown pant’s pockets — was a couple of ratty potholders sometime last century, it came out rather well.

    Patterns and instructions at the link. Do watch the video; she goes through step-by-step and it was pretty easy to follow along.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @Mike in DC:

    DC is predicting their case peak to be in July using the CHIME model.

    DC Health officials said the IHME model assumes social distancing and other recommendations are all followed well, while the CHIME model assumes more mixing of infected people.

    The number of total cases projected in DC is estimated at 93,676. That’s 13% of the city’s population. Mayor Bowser provided three scenarios for death totals based off of the CHIME model:

    Mild scenario: 220 deaths
    Moderate scenario: 440 deaths
    Severe scenario: More than 1,000 deaths

    For comparison, the IHME model predicts 218 deaths.

    The peak of people infected is expected to happen in late June or early July, according to the CHIME model.

    CHIME model at Penn State.

    There are still a lot of unknowns…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    columbusqueen

    Mike and I drove to my aunt’s house on Sunday & picked up two masks she left out for us from a big batch she made. Aunt Kathy sews professionally, so they look good with a nice music print from her days of leading our community chorus.

  68. 68.

    evodevo

    @chris: Yep.  Mr. Evodevo bought one at Lowe’s 3 weeks ago before all the feces hit the rotating device.  He was planning on using it when we clean the dirt out of our store basement, but it turned out to be a serendipitous purchase.  He wore it to WallyWorld last week, and our local denizens, who were only hoarding TP at that time, thought it was hilarious….he is having the last laugh now… our local yokels are finally getting with the program here in Ky.  There are a lot of recalcitrant libertarians/wingers still, though.

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    In other news, BlueVirginia.us:

    From the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN):

    Dominion Energy Abandons Gas Infrastructure Plans Due To Passage of Virginia Clean Economy Act

    Statement: Dominion’s IRP a “Snowball” in Forthcoming “Avalanche” of Companies Abandoning Gas Plans

    RICHMOND, VA — On Thursday, April 2, Dominion Energy signaled a shift away from its previous intentions to massively increase fracked-gas infrastructure in Virginia, and pointed to the passage of the Virginia Clean Economy Act (SB 851) as the impetus. The monopoly utility asked the State Corporation Commission for permission to change what it is required to model in its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). Dominion wrote in its request that “significant build-out of natural gas generation facilities is not currently viable, with the passage by the General Assembly of the Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020 (the ‘VCEA’).” The statement continues: “The VCEA establishes the objective of 100 percent clean energy by 2045, and permits the construction of carbon-emitting generating facilities only if there is a threat to reliability or security of electric service. For these reasons, the Company believes that the aforementioned requirements related to the development of those specific resources are no longer necessary.”

    Dominion’s previous IRP included 8-10 new combustion turbines and combined cycle facilities under various planning scenarios.

    […]

    Good, good.

    Elections, and good legislation, have consequences.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  73. 73.

    Lyrebird

    @Mary G: That’s awesome.  And downstairs I was thanking you for another great link, I just don’t remember what it was!  Sigh.

    This fellow is very cute.  Not sure if the rainbow lame’ jock strap can be washed in hot, though.  Lol.

  74. 74.

    Rich Webb

    @WaterGirl: My philosophy is that a sewing machine is just another power tool. It’s got a motor, cams, gears, and can make you bleed if you’re not careful. ?

  75. 75.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Rich Webb: that looks like the pattern I used which a local med center linked to. I made 14 of the kind with filter pockets for our tent setup crews this week. I’m planning on churning out more for our office staff & family & friends.

     

    The written directions I used were pretty good, and the finished mask look better than I expected with my minimal sewing skills. I used elastic headbands from the dollar store and it’s more comfy than plain elastic bands around my head.

  79. 79.

    PenAndKey

    @lamh36: “suspending use of company provided paid time off benefits and vacation”

    I’m sure the employment contract for benefits-qualifying Hobby Lobby employees suck as much as the rest of the company practices, but it floors me that companies can actually do that. PTO and vacation are earned compensation the same as salary. Telling people they can’t use it when they’re still employed by the company strikes me as fairly blatant wage theft, since they should have the funds “in the bank” for the employee to call on at basically any time.

    But then, this is America so… obviously not.

  80. 80.

    CaseyL

    @lgerard: Lordy, I remember that episode. They had to wear the masks for a year in order to inherit from the family patriarch.  He said the masks showed their inner selves.  By the end of the year, when they took off the masks, their faces had changed to match them.

    No, actually, I do not mean, like that.

  81. 81.

    Fair Economist

    @Martin: Worldometer lets you get an exact snap for the previous day so I’d consider it preferable for trend modeling.

  82. 82.

    Fair Economist

    @Mike in DC: Italy has distinct downtrends in both cases and deaths now, although they’re slow. Certainly not the near-symmetrical curves from the IHME model.

  85. 85.

    Mnemosyne

    @debbie:

    I bought a few cute ones on Etsy for myself, and some plain gray ones for G, because that’s how he rolls. ?

  86. 86.

    Cathie from Canada

    You can also cut a circular band from a nylon stocking or a sock, and use that instead of an elastic band or hair tie.  The nylon is more comfortable to wear around the ears.

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