We can make better masks

• We wear masks for almost a year and still do not get it right.
• It can help to design better masks and create standards and labels for them.
• So too the imposition of fines, as South Korea did.
• This article is one of a four-part series on the simple ways to fix the biggest COVID-19 bugs in America. Click here to read more.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Over the past year, we have undergone at least four major cultural shifts as we wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19:

First we heard: do not wear a mask! Save it for healthcare professionals in the foreground who care for sick patients.

Then: OK, wear a mask, but make it yourself.

Next: nice, nice please wear a mask because it works really well. Healthcare workers, try to get an N95 if you can.

And now: wear a mask (or two!) That is most comfortable for you, and make sure it filters best and fits your face.

It was a painful learning curve, but during this pandemic we discovered that masks can help us keep our germs at bay if we are dealing with a virus that often spreads without symptoms. for ourselves in life-saving and yet simple ways.

The truth is that masks will be with us for many more months, especially in public spaces, indoors. Yet we are still largely left in the dark about how to dress a good person when we leave home. There is no way to test your mask, no one is forcing mask (which really) wears in public, and no clear guidance on the best masks for different purposes.

Researchers and health policy experts agree that there are three simple ways to make our masked lives better

Fix the mask

1. Copy NASA’s playbook

NASA often has to deal with difficult logistical problems when planning to get humans (and their digestive systems) into space.

Toilets in particular have been a challenge on the top line for decades. When the agency’s engineers arrive empty-handed, they create creative new solutions.

In 2020, NASA offered $ 20,000 to anyone who could design a toilet that could work on the moon. In 2017, the agency awarded $ 15,000 to an aviation surgeon who found a way for astronauts to relieve themselves while stuck in their spaceships.

Why could the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not use the same kind of crowd, challenge-based hack-a-thon for masks?

“There is a mask waiting to be invented,” said Dr. John Brooks, CDC’s medical chief for COVID-19 response, recently told Insider. “A mask that is easy and comfortable to wear, that filters nicely, that is easy to care for, and it is attractive.”

So, where is the prize money for that?

2. Make good, clear, evidence-based mask rules – and make it expensive to break them

Associated Press

You do not need the same kind of viral protection in a busy supermarket as you would in a quiet environment.

Virus expert and University of Maryland Professor Don Milton know it well: he wears a simple surgical mask as he walks around.

“But when I go to the grocery store, I put on my N95,” he told Insider.

In South Korea, it is expensive not to be properly masked in public, but only when it matters most. Masks are mandatory on public transportation, in buffalo lines and in the gym.

Scarves, valve masks and identification masks will not cut it, says the Korea Disease Control & Prevention Agency, which indicates that people should wear the country’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety approved models (but still allow any “cloth masks or disposables”). masks that completely cover both mouth and nose “to do the job.) Offenders can be fined about $ 85.

3. Give people better quality masks

Aldara Zarraoa / Getty Images

Early in the pandemic, David Rothamer, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, turned his home into a high-quality mask factory and named his partner as chief seamstress.

“I only wear the masks my wife makes,” he recently told Insider. “It’s kind of all for themselves.”

If he has to go to the hardware store quickly, he appears on a mask she made that was tested on small virus particles. He says it is ‘just three layers of polypropylene bonded and bonded’ that have been patterned together.

But he does not think everyone should create this kind of sophisticated, homemade mask-making operation.

‘The somewhat frustrating thing is that I think there was an opportunity to say,’ Okay, we can use scientists to design it, to use experts, to design something that is cheap to manufacture, to do it in large quantities. and get these things there, ‘”he said.” But instead you basically have an unregulated bunch of products, no one really knows how they perform unless you are someone like me who has a few hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment. to test it. ”

The government can set better mask standards (like South Korea has), label and label protocols that will keep us safe, while showing that different masks have different levels of performance. Then it could make hundreds of millions of good quality masks available to people in the US.