The Unmasked

The current guidance here on PEI regarding masks is this:

The PEI Chief Public Health Officer recommends that individuals, who can wear a non-medical mask, should do so, especially indoors when physical distancing cannot always be maintained.

Picking up groceries at Sobeys this afternoon, an environment that clearly qualifies as one where “physical distancing cannot always be maintained,” only about a quarter of shoppers were wearing masks (and, additionally, any pretence of social distancing was abandoned by many).

I don’t understand this.

A month ago, sure, wearing a mask branded you a communist.

But today? It’s normal. It’s standard operating procedure. And the Chief Public Health Officer, much respected and not known for outlandish flights of fancy, has done everything but make it a rule.

Why isn’t everyone wearing a mask?

Comments

Michael Rukavina's picture
Michael Rukavina on July 15, 2020 - 20:18 Permalink

Finally we here in Burlington are ahead of PEI in one important area...we on on the verge of being required by way of by-law to wear masks in any indoor public space.

Oliver B's picture
Oliver B on July 17, 2020 - 01:52 Permalink

It's so disappointing you have this going on in even in (Oh) Canada. You're not watching Fox News up there, are you? Or were you exposed to the unfortunate initial advice to leave all the medical grade masks for the health workers and supporting misinformation that anyway they don't work?

Oliver B's picture
Oliver B on July 17, 2020 - 01:55 Permalink

A study reported in today's NYTimes illustrates they work:

‘By that point, however, the pair had come into close contact with 139 clients seeking haircuts, facial hair trimmings and perms — appointments that bring people within inches of each other for 15 to 45 minutes at a time, more than enough time for the virus to travel through the air from person to person.

‘And perhaps it would have, had it not been for the masks.

‘In the days after, health officials contact-traced all 139 people exposed to the stylists and asked them to self-quarantine for two weeks. None reported feeling sick during the 14 days that followed their salon appointments. The researchers also offered the clients free diagnostic tests for the coronavirus. Sixty-seven of them accepted; the rest declined. Of those tested, all turned up negative.’