More or less what I already knew about the face masks. About as effective as wearing a plague-doctor mask stuffed with herbs .

Oh okay. I don’t watch Sky. The briefing I’m talking about was on Thursday so she may well have said it. She was quite adamant that nothing was going to change here

These are the ones we are wearing at work.



We have the option to wear cloth ones if we want. We can't get n95 masks, they are reserved for front line medical personnel.

I'm not confident at all in using them, and agree with a lot of the cons you posted Blondey. I also question how it effects a proper balance of oxygen intake? I noticed after wearing them for long periods of time I am slightly light headed and have more difficulty breathing.

Fortunately we only have to wear them when customers are at the register and if there are multiple people in the store, making the 6 feet social distancing difficult.

I've also noticed that those who are wearing masks of any type are not using proper mouth covering techniques when they cough. They seem to think coughing freely in the mask is not an issue.

Myself, I make sure I wash or sanitize my hands before removing the mask and I use the elastic band rather than touching the front of it. They are disposable, so I change it a couple times throughout the day and begin with a new one the next day.

Yes it was Thursday she changed.
Can't see why the whole country can't be as one. We are not the USA. That's huge.

Sturgeon explained at the time and her explanation was that England is slightly ahead than Scotland in that your numbers were falling more quickly whereas Scotland was just keeping more or less level. She wanted the ‘R’ rate to fall a bit more (as it was still closer to 1) before she felt easing of restrictions could happen. She also said that her main objective was to not allow a second wave to happen and with all the above mentioned, it would be safer to stay in lockdown as it is.

I'll have to look into it.
I've got major problems here at the moment.

I'm going to make apple crumble but I only have self raising flour

SR flour isn’t gonna matter. Go ahead and make it. What time will it be ready? Hope you’re having custard too or I ain’t gonna come

Oh ok
Yep sainsburys vanilla custard
And you can't come, you'll be on lockdown

Better start a thread

In australia, more people have died from suicide from loneliness than from corona.
More people have died from canceling of surgery and cancer treatments than from corona. ICU nurses are looking for work, with nothing to do at hospital.

I wonder how many of you saw the youtube feature video telling of medical manipulation, gag orders and incarceration with no charges on whistle blowers, and massive profits from medicine patents held by 'government officials', before the video was made unavailable. Several versions have been released from different outlets. Corruption, coverup, collusion.

I think so far I've seen 3 or 4 people with face masks. 1 was in Rotterdam, the others here on the island, one of which a cloth one. I that woman had it dangling under hear mouth

Here wearing one becomes mandatory in public transport as of June 1st as then the lockdown will ease again and they expect more to use public transport. Then it becomes impossible to keep 1,5m distance, hence the face masks.
Thank goodness I got a car again!

Yes, I reuse the N95 and am very familiar with how to put one on and take it off. There really is no way to check for a perfect seal, you can get a good idea by a forceful exhale and making sure it is not leaking around the seal. With a half face you can do a negative pressure check by covering the cartridges with your palm and inhaling. CDC reuse guidance on the N95s discusses how to sanitize the mask.

Some of the home made cloth designs provide for a pocket to put a filter between the fabric layers and some have the nose wire to fit better. It is my understanding that such a designed mask that fits decently is around 50% effective at protecting you and nearly 100% effective in protecting others around you. I recently watched some tests with forceful exhale and a good cloth face mask showing most of the moisture from the breath was either captured or exited from the seal area and only traveled a short distance. If I recall correctly, the 6' social distance was cut down to 18-24".

Thanks for your concern and Yes, I'm in a low risk location. I'll probably stay here until I see the infection rate where I need to go significantly reduced. FYI my career was in nuclear power often times working in a contaminated area. You learn a lot about protecting yourself. Radioactive contamination isn't that much different than viral contamination.

So our government has changed the slogan being used to "stay alert"
Obviously the opposition party or one of them has criticised it saying the public won't understand it ffs

Went to the store thursday & friday.
I wear the masks River posted.
Even tho lockdown has eased, I see more people out and about but also more people wearing masks. Most of them are cloth homemade ones.

Churches, bars and casinos remain closed.
Restaurants remain curbside/delivery only.
Nail salons, barbers, hair parlors still closed.
AT&T, Verizon and other phone stores still closed.

More traffic on the roads. Construction and maintenance crews are working.
I saw more cops. More than normal.
Gas is still low, stores are better stocked, more people on the beaches.

If memory serves these don't do much, probably stop droplets of spit, but not viruses.
They don't close off properly. But I guess it's one thing to stop droplets from flying round and inhaling them.

Here shop attendants don't wear them, they have plexiglas protection shield.
At petrol stations they just keep the registers glass / windows closed like they normally do at night. They scan token passes through the glass, except for bank cards as you use the payment thing to pay without contact and without pincode: normally you can only pay that way up to E25, government has increased it to E50 so people don't need to touch the payment apparatus in order to enter their pincode.

No, they don't do much, that's why I don't have any confidence in them. Neither do the cloth masks without any type of filter. We have a plexiglass shield in front of each register, but it's hanging from the ceiling and isn't closed in. Some customers hold their products for us to scan, but most of the time we have to pick the products up to scan. And we're still using money.

What we have set up in the store helps minimize the spread of the virus, but does not eliminate the possibility of it being spread.

The system you have works much better in my opinion, but would be very costly for businesses here to do, so they improvise and do the best they can with what is available and affordable.

Over here the plexiglass shields aren't closed off either and the stupid thing is that you automatically want to look around them, hihi. Just a natural instinct I guess to not have a barrier in between.
I do sometimes pay with cash. Then I put it down so our hands don't touch. Not fool-proof, but yeah.

That YouTube video presents one giant hoax. The video has been thoroughly debunked.

Haha, the customers do that here too. They peep around the glass to say hi or to point better to the cigarettes they want.

I actually only wear the masks because they are required. Before they required us to I just practiced universal precautions and the social distancing limits. I still do that with the mask too.

I'm working on making a few cloth masks that meet the requirements, those disposable ones are very uncomfortable. And I ordered a couple pretty hair thingies so I can at least be fashionable, haha.

hi river .. that looks like a single use dust mask ... looks too flimsy to be a surgical mask. Do you know what the specification. Number is ???