ℹ️ Day One B (Supplementary): Wear your Mask Properly
Can’t believe I have 2 write this one, but experience tells me I do🙈
No matter which style or material of mask 😷u choose, u need 2 wear it properly. That means:
✅ it has to cover both your mouth 👄AND your nose 👃🏻
and
✅ there should be no gaps for air to escape around the edges
Covid can live in your mouth and your nose, and because it’s airborne in small particles, they can escape around the sides of your mask too.
How do you achieve no 2? 🤷🏼♀️Lots of ways:
1. Use your nose wire and mould it to the shape of YOUR nose
2. Consider wearing two masks to double up on protection and to plug gaps in one with the other (this is what I do, a tight fitting cloth mask covered by an FFP2 respirator
3. With a surgical mask, there are many videos on how to twist or tie the ear loops and tuck in the mask to make a better seal and to keep it tight to your face
4. Slightly stretchy cloth masks like NEQIs are quite close fitting even without a nose wire, and are comfortable to
talk in, and they rate highly on Which Best Buys
5. Consider using micropore tape to tape around the edges of the mask to keep it flush to your face. Don’t worry, the mask is designed itself to be breathable. This is good for high risk or prolonged situations
6. ABSOLUTELY NO MASKS UNDER CHINS!
Again, calling on the expert @trishgreenhalgh to correct/amend/add anything I’ve missed!
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All masks provide a level of protection for both wearer and those around them, however for the best protection for yourself, it’s recommended to wear a well-fitting respirator (FFP2/3). The executive has been keen to point out that you need only
wear a ‘face covering’ but if you’re going to do it, why not do it right? Get yourself an FFP2 today and protect yourself never mind others.
These can be expensive tho, so if you’re just using for nipping in and out of the shop, as long as you store it properly (inside touching
inside) I may get hit for saying this but it’s okay to reuse a few times. I personally find that nose wires don’t fit well around my oddly shaped nose, so I actually wear a NEQI fabric mask underneath my FFP2 to get a better seal, however this is not the recommendation.
Little Women harks back to a time previously unfamiliar to us, when it was commonplace to lose the odd family member to a seemingly innocuous disease.
Also concerning #longcovid - Beth is
permanently 1/5
affected (and ultimately dies) by a disease her sisters completely recovered from. We do not know the true mortality cost of Covid yet, but we have a fair idea of its morbidity, which includes heart problems like Beth’s … & it doesn’t look good. This is my Christmas present 2/5
to you: don’t get Covid. Maybe in time we will develop drugs that will treat it well enuf that #longcovid & organ damage does not occur - maybe we’ll treat it so well that one doesn’t even get sick - maybe someday we’ll have vaccines that stop infection, maybe we’ll eliminate 3/5
Today I am asking the @niexecutive, the @UKgovcomms who fund them and the @IRE_Govt who we have a leaky border with to consider my mental health. And that of many others. Almost two years now of no normal life. You may say ‘but we opened up, you can do everything’ - but do I want
to do everything when it’s not safe? No. Therefore I’ve forgotten what it’s like to casually call into a friend’s house, to work in an office, to travel, to have hotel breaks, to nip into a shop without a mask and make a takeaway tea and sip through the lid without cleaning it!
To try clothes on in a changing room. To eat out in a restaurant, inside where it’s warm! To hold my baby nephews, to hug and comfort a good friend. To have my husband able to visit me after surgery. To have in person meetings and appointments and feel safe. To be a leader in