So - now masks protect the wearer?

masks that protect the wearer are medical quality.

Please note, masks with valves are not suitable for stopping spread of virus. This is because valves open to let used air escape unfiltered.

Masks with valves are made to protect wearers against dust and other incoming substances, but do not protect others against what has been breathed out.

Luis at 28-Jan-21 12:10:30 will smell nicer than if he used bleach, but he will still catch it. Do they think our heads button up the back?

If the virus had targeted younger people it would have been taken far more seriously right from the start. The government, imo, are only just taking it seriously now that it seems to be more virulent. I’m obviously not saying that I want young people to be affected: one of the saving graces of the pandemic has been that I haven’t been worried sick about my children and grandchildren albeit still worrying that they’ll catch it.

Anybody under 60 felt it wasn’t their problem, while tragically we know how many younger people have died.

Many young people have not died. For under 50s COVID is fatal for less than 1 % of those catching it. For 45-64 year olds it is approximately 5%, and for over 75 year olds it is nearer 15%

Just common sense would tell you that masks protect both the wearer and other people. Saying different has caused a lot of harm, as well that the virus affects mainly the over ‘70s. Anybody under 60 felt it wasn’t their problem, while tragically we know how many younger people have died.

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which is exactly what I do.

After reading about using sanitiser on disposable gloves, I looked up some research on this.

According to the article (sorry, can’t remember where I found it) research shows that using sanitiser on gloves is effective. However, after several uses, the fabric starts to break down. If gloves worn while shopping are discarded after each shopping trip, I would think they are fine to use.

My skin is sensitive so I do sympathise with you MOnica.

I have bought some pricey but skin kind sanitiser, with 70% alcohol, in refillable glass bottles from Neals Yard. I like the fact that it is in reusable glass and they sell larger bottles for refilling.

Green-eyed girl I am not wearing them in clinical situations, but when shopping and I only, therefore wear them for short periods.

Either way wearing them is far less damaging and more protective to my hands than putting sanitiser and constant hot water and soap on my hands.

And, as you say, their integrity may be damaged by the alcohol, not is damaged. A fairly low risk, I am quite happy with.

This article was published on 29 December and summarises the most recent advice about wearing masks.

www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6625

Evidence is still quite sparse, but that's because there haven't been many trials. That's not surprising because the best way to trial masks would be to get an infected person to breath over some masked and unmasked people, which wouldn't be ethical. Evidence comes from outbreaks, where whole groups of people haven't worn masks (such as choirs and churches) and comparing infection rates when masks have been mandated.

The conclusion is that they should be worn to reduce transmission as there is increasing evidence that airborne transmission is a main source of infection.

We all should have been wearing masks right from the outset.

I understand why you have chosen to wear gloves MOnica but if they are of the disposable type their intactness (is that a word?) may be damaged by the alcohol in sanitisers. Reason why gloves arn’t used in clinical situations, ie by phlebotomists.

Wearing gloves is no different from going bare handed. At every opportunity going in and out of shops, you use the hand sanitiser. If it works for hands it works for gloves.

I started wearing gloves because I have very dry skin and found that constantly washing my hands or using sanitiser made my skin very sore and rough, so I put a pair of gloves between my hands and the soap and sanitiser.

In fact wearing gloves means I use far more sanitiser than I would without them because when I was worrying about my skin, I used as little sanitiser as possible.

growstuff yes it has

Wearing gloves does not protect you or anyone else unless you change them every time you touch anything!! Otherwise you are just spreading the virus from your gloves to everything you touch. (If its on them of course which is not always the case). Masks are a different thing altogether as long as you wear it correctly dispose of it correctly and don't touch the outside and then your face.

Biscuitmuncher

I'm so very sorry that covid has had such an awful effect on your family. Lockdown has done the same to my family

No, it hasn't.

A long read (especially wading through the first few paragraphs), but explains quite well why people listen to those who spread "fake news":

quillette.com/2021/01/16/rise-of-the-coronavirus-cranks/

An extract:

"The answer, I think, lies in despair. Since March, there has been a sense of living in a nightmare from which one cannot awake. The non-pharmaceutical interventions introduced to contain the virus—especially lockdowns—have been soul-destroying. The economy is battered beyond belief, redundancies have gone through the roof, and there are more grey weeks of a cold winter lockdown to endure. On the other hand, we also have a potentially lethal and frequently debilitating virus infecting at least 50,000 people a day, hospitalising 4,000, and killing close to a thousand. That, too, will go on for weeks and, assuming you believe in germ theory and exponential growth, these figures would be much worse if we resumed normal social contact.

It’s an awful situation to be in. It’s a zero-sum game in which disease and death is traded off against misery and poverty. Until the first vaccine arrived in December, COVID scepticism offered people a way out. If the dangers of the virus were being overhyped by fearmongers, and lockdowns were entirely ineffective, then societies could reopen secure in the knowledge that there was nothing that could be done to reduce the death toll (which would, in any case, be a fraction of what we were told). The comforting lie that trade-offs could be avoided has proved irresistible to those who have surrendered to confirmation bias and constructed a parallel and preferable version of reality."

Also surely we dont just believe in things we see personally. Nobody lives like that. I havent been to Norway but am pretty sure it exists.

I'm so very sorry that covid has had such an awful effect on your family. Lockdown has done the same to my family

I am sorry Biscuitmuncher you are obviously not in a good place just now and everyone’s experience is different. I am sure no one is enjoying the restrictions place upon us, or the worry about loved ones, but hey we have no choice.

We can only live in the present and cope in the best ways that we can. We can’t personally influence the future, and everything passes......eventually. I’m glad you can say how you feel on here, but please, for your own sanity, try and find ways of coping to enable you to get through this. I know it’s tough.

Biscuitmuncher I don't understand why you claim that other people are miserable, when it sounds like you are the one who isn't coping. Rather than resorting to all the lockdown sceptic hacks, try to accept the situation for what it is and make the best of it. The situation with your children isn't impossible. It's difficult, but not impossible.

I haven't known anybody personally who has died, which is maybe not surprising because I don't know many people older than I am and in at risk groups. However, the father of a friend died and I do know personally a number of people who have been infected and are still not well months later.

My friend and her husband both had Covid. She is still not fighting fit three months on. Another friend, one of the fittest people I know and only 52, had it in December as did her entire family,
Need I go on?

Biscuitmuncher

My whole point is, I don't know anyone who's been really ill with it, not even friends of friends. So it feels more than difficult to be so sad so miserable for the sake of people I don't know. I would never mention this in every day life. But it feels difficult to imprison myself for what feels nothing

My brother-in-law died back last Easter and a neighbour opposite was a mental health nurse, he died along with the other 4 people in the office