Social media users share posts online about a baby mask and claim it is used to prevent COVID-19. This assertion is false; the mask is a design to protect babies from air pollution.
Examples can be seen here and here.
One post’s description reads: ‘We came to a place where we not only suffocate our own breathing and the breathing of our children, because we paralyze the fear of a virus with a survival rate of more than 99.5% , but now we’re moving to the marketing of training our babies for lifelong mask wear. Pollution of the mind is a much bigger problem than ‘fine dist’ [sic] particles. God help us. ”
Comments on the posts include: ‘UNLOCK OUR CHILDREN’, ‘I will never put it on my child. What happened to children under 2, should not wear it ?? People are just ridiculous now ”and“ It’s just disgusting. So a year ago [sic] would be considered child abuse 🙁 ”.
The photo shows a baby wearing a mask with pollution in the background. The text on the picture reads: “Fine dust is increasing worldwide and is especially deadly for babies. Furthermore, there is a shortage of baby mask and there is a lot of damage. The concept of pacifier has been proposed to prevent the habit of children taking out something troublesome. ”
From a reverse Google Image search, it appears that this image also appeared on the James Dyson Award website (although the link was apparently removed here). The mask was designed by Na Yeun Kim and Jin Ho Chae and selected as a national runner-up for 2018. This international design award is open to current and recent design engineering students, as explained at www.jamesdysonaward.org/en-US/.
The mask is also featured here on the iF World Design Guide website as an entry and was a platinum winner here at the Spark Design Awards for 2018.
The Spark Design Awards page here explains that most Asian cities have five times more fine dust than the World Health Organization’s standard for safety. The design was created because of the health effects on babies by coming into contact with dust and pollution, as well as the lack of a similar product on the market.
The mask does not claim to be COVID-19 and was designed before the COVID-19 was discovered here.
VERDICT
Missing context. The mask shown is designed to protect babies from contamination, but some users understand that it is a measure of COVID-19 prevention.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.