We can make better masks

• We’ve been wearing masks for almost a year and we’re still not getting it right.
• Designing better masks and creating patterns and labels for them can help.
• The same would happen with the imposition of fines, as South Korea did.
• This article is one of a four-part series on simple ways to fix America’s biggest COVID-19 mistakes. Click here to read more.
• See more stories on the Insider business page.

Over the past year, we have gone through at least four major cultural changes with regard to the use of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19:

First, we hear: don’t wear a mask! Save them for frontline healthcare professionals who care for sick patients.

So: OK, wear a mask, but do it yourself.

Next: beautiful, beautiful, please wear a mask because they really work very well. Health professionals, try to get your hands on an N95, if you can.

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

It was a painful learning curve, but we discovered during this pandemic that, when dealing with a virus that spreads without symptoms, and that people are generally more contagious before they know they are sick, masks can help us keep our germs for ourselves in ways that save lives and yet are simple.

The truth is that the masks will be with us for many months, mainly in public spaces, inside. However, we are still left in the dark on how to put on a good one when we leave the house. There is no way to test your mask, no one (really) forcing you to wear the mask in public and no clear guidance on the best masks for different purposes.

Researchers and health policy experts agree that there are 3 simple ways to make our lives masked better

Fix the Mask

1. Copy the NASA manual

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

Bathrooms, in particular, have been a first-rate challenge for decades. When the agency’s internal engineers appear empty-handed, it seeks new creative solutions.

In 2020, NASA offered $ 20,000 to anyone who could design a bathroom that works on the moon. In 2017, the agency awarded $ 15,000 to a flight surgeon who found a way for astronauts … to do their business while they were trapped in their space suits.

Why couldn’t the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention engage in the same type of challenge-based hack-a-thon and mask crowdsourcing?

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

So, where’s the cash prize for that?

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

Associated Press

You don’t need the same kind of viral protection in a crowded supermarket that you would need to go for a run in a quiet neighborhood.

Virus Specialist and University of Maryland teacher don milton you know this well: he wears a simple surgical mask if he goes for a walk.

“But when I go to the supermarket, 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 in public transport, in the buffet lines and in the gym.

Handkerchiefs, tube masks and chin masks will not work, says the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, suggesting that people continue to use the models approved by the country’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (but still allowing any “mask” of cloth or disposable masks that completely cover the mouth and nose “to do the job.) Violators can be fined about $ 85.

3. Give people better quality masks

Aldara Zarraoa / Getty Images

At the beginning of the pandemic, the professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, David Rothamer, transformed his home into a high-quality mask factory, recruiting his partner as the chief seamstress.

“I just wear the masks my wife makes,” he recently told Insider. “It’s kind of each one for itself.”

If he has to do a quick service for the hardware store, he puts on a mask that she made and that was tested in the laboratory for performance against tiny viral particles. He says they are “just three layers of spun polypropylene” that have been sewn together, using a pattern.

But he doesn’t think everyone should have to create this kind of sophisticated, in-house mask-making operation.

“What is somewhat frustrating is that I think there was an opportunity to say, ‘ok, we can use scientists to design this, use experts, design something that is cheap to produce, make in large quantities and distribute these things'” he said “But instead, you basically have a lot of unregulated products, nobody really knows how they work, unless you’re someone like me who has a few hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment to test them.”

The government could create better mask standards (as South Korea did), regulate and impose labeling protocols that would keep us safe, while demonstrating that different masks come with different levels of performance. Then, he could make hundreds of millions of good quality masks available to people in the United States.