If someone asked you if you have the Corona virus, unless you were just tested negative, there are only two correct answers. Yes, I do. Or, I don’t know. Why don’t you know? Because you can be spewing the virus into the environment for up to five days before actual symptoms begin. That is, what’s called being asymptomatic.
Therefore, literally tens of thousands of Americans are walking around right now infecting others and neither party is aware it is happening. You just might be one of them?
We all know we need to balance health with opening the economy. To do so, we need every US citizen playing a role. I am not convinced we, either collectively as a nation or as individuals, are doing all we can/should to bring down the daily numbers of infected and defeat the pandemic.
From May 1st through the 20th, the US has averaged 22,000 new cases of COVID -19 each day. That’s too many. Can we do better? Yes we can but we all have to play a role.
I am intrigued by information floating around the internet recently written by Dr. Erin Bromage, Associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts. He provides some interesting information that can help us understand how the virus is most likely transmitted.
Dr. Bromage tells us that the virus can move from an infected person to another via airborne virus droplets. While this still needs to be confirmed experimentally, infection can occur, through 1000 infectious viral particles you receive in one breath or 100 viral particles inhaled with each breath over 10 breaths, or 10 viral particles with 100 breaths. Each of these situations can lead to an infection.
Dr. Bromage goes on to say, the droplets in a single cough or sneeze from an infected person may contain as many as two hundred million virus particles which can all be dispersed into the immediate environment. For you skeptics out there, let’s, for the sake of argument, assume he is 99% wrong, that it is 2 million virus particles, not 200 million. You only need to take in 1000 to become infected.
Additionally, note that the virus does not need a cough or sneeze to spread. A single breath releases 50 – 5000 droplets; and, again, you only need to take in 1000 to become infected.
Some of the smallest infected droplets can hang in the air for a few minutes, filling every corner of a modest sized room with infectious viral particles. All you have to do is enter that room within a few minutes, take a few breaths and you have potentially received enough virus to establish an infection.
The issue here is masks. While it is confirmed that most cloth face coverings will not filter out all the virus particles you breath IN, it is estimated that the amount of airborne virus particles EXPELLED by an infected individual is decreased by as much as 75% when masks are worn.
Just from my infrequent ventures into town, I have concluded that a very small percentage of our residents wear masks when in public. While recently in a national box hardware chain store, I noted that a small fraction of the customers and employees were masked up. Imagine if one of the employees who purpose is to roam the isles ready to answer (where can I find lock washers?) was in fact asymptomatic. That employee could fill the air (50-5000 virus droplets with each breath) while you are standing in that same air zone getting the answer, “lock washers are in isle 5.” That type of engagement could potentially happen hundreds of times over that employee’s five-day asymptomatic period.
Generally, those who choose not to wear masks say, “I’m being careful and ‘they’ (CDC for example) says a common cloth face covering won’t help much anyway”. These folks are completely missing the point. The cloth face covering is NOT principally a protection for you, its primary use is to keep you, a potential asymptomatic virus carrier, from infecting many other people.
In order to rapidly move forward in defeating the pandemic we have to convince the public that wearing a cloth covering of some type can perhaps cut down by 75% the number of infected virus droplets you are spewing out in public. This is simple. Everyone has access to a cloth mask.
One additional point on masks. Elderly folks and those with a variety of existing health issues are more “at risk” to contract the coronavirus. Now that stockpiles are being refurbished with critical health equipment, everyone in the most at-risk categories should be provided with N95 protective masks to further decrease their vulnerability to airborne virus particles.
We all want the stores, restaurants and bars to reopen. The unemployed want to and need to get back to work. Why not help out by wearing a mask? What do you have to lose?
There is a second issue that should be considered in countering this pandemic. Fact, because viruses are sensitive to temperature changes and cannot survive above normal body heat, your body uses fever to help destroy the virus. We have been told for the past three months that a fever is one of the Corona virus symptoms.
Let’s say you are generally feeling fine, you get up in the morning and stick a thermometer in your mouth and it reads something above 99 degrees. In this pandemic environment that becomes an OMG-moment. Do I have “it”?
What do you do? If you are smart you call your doctor and begin exploring how to get tested. You do not go to work. You isolate yourself from your family. You begin disinfecting everything you have touched that morning.
The point being, something as simple as routinely taking your temperature every single morning and insisting that everyone in your family does so can become a very effective first-line of defense.
President Trump’s pandemic task force should cause selected companies to immediately begin manufacturing hundreds of millions of thermometers just as they did with ventilators, masks and personal protective equipment. Then do a mass distribution across the country.
We need our leaders, President Trump, the governors, mayors, local health officials to better energize the entire population. Every day we hear them tell us to 1) wash your hands, 2) don’t touch your face and 3) use social distancing. Generally, we all get that and do our part. But that is not enough. They must add 4) EVERYONE SHOULD ALWAYS WEAR A MASK WHEN IN PUBLIC and 5) TAKE YOUR TEMPERATURE EVERY MORNING to the “must do” list.
If everyone will do all five of those things, It is reasonable to believe we can drastically reduce the number of daily new cases from the current 22,000 to a much lower numb.
Lieutenant General, US Army retired, Marvin L. Covault is the author of Vision to Execution, a book for leaders.