My opinion on face masks and face coverings.

I remember early on, President Trump, Governor Cuomo, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, Doctor Fauci, Deborah Birx, and many others, said that masks won’t help. They are only to protect front-line workers such as doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers. Bullshit.

I knew that wasn’t true, to me, it’s common-sense. I believe they were saying that simply because of the shortage on N95 masks and had they told people to wear masks, it would have created a panic, because you just could not get your hands on them.

Personally, I wore a mask since day one. Like everyone else, I could not find anything, but I came across a company called Training Mask, and I picked up their VENT Filtration Breathing Trainer, with as many filters as they would let me purchase, and started wearing it right away. I’ll post about this company separately.

As the weeks passed, the FDA approved KN95 face masks, they started to become available, and the above-mentioned shifted to wearing “face coverings”.

As of the 17th of April, Governor Cuomo made coverings mandatory within New York State for everyone, assuming you could not comply with social-distancing. Finally, it’s about time.

In late March prior to receiving my Training Mask, I happened to have a two pack of 3M™ N95 Particulate Respirator in my toolbox. I remember going out to shop the last two weeks of March, no one wore a mask, and I’d get a lot of looks. Very early April I received my Training Mask, I’d go shopping with it, and still, no one was wearing masks, and I’d get even more looks.

Little-by-little, more and more people started to wear masks, even before Cuomo made it mandatory. From my experience, I’d say about 10% of people were wearing masks and/or face coverings on the 4th and 5th of April, about 40% on the 11th and 12th of April, about 65% on the 18th and 19th of April, and finally last weekend on the 18th and 19th of April, which is following Cuomo’s mandate, 99% of people were wearing them.

I went to BJ’s Wholesale Club, which was not enforcing it, Target, which was enforcing it, and had security at the entrance, and Stew Leonard’s in Farmingdale, which I do not think were enforcing it. I don’t remember anything at the entrance, but, I do remember seeing shoppers without anything.

With that being said, in all three stores, ALL employees were in fact wearing something, so they were all enforcing that.

This is all very simple. If you look up some numbers on Countries that wear masks in general, the rate of spread of a disease is much lower.

Hopefully everything will open back up in New York by the 15th of May, we wear masks and/or face coverings until we have a vaccine, and get on with our lives.