Read on Twitter
Here in South Africa, we have been required to wear masks when leaving the house for about four months. So, in no particular order, here are some tips for NZers based on that experience. [A thread]
You need to wash you masks between uses, so you need spares.
We keep an ice cream container by the door so we can dump dirty masks there as soon as we come in.
Keep a spare mask in the car so that if you forget to grab one before you head out you don;t have to go all the way home.
Straps that go around the back of the head rather than over the ears tend to be more comfortable and the mask is much less likely to fall off.
You need a mask that fits, obviously. This is tough for kids. You need to find (or make) ones specifically for the little ones and there is no one size fits all.
The N95/N99 masks are fancy and may provide the best protection, but they are noticeably harder to breath through. To breath hard (eg exercise) I needed a looser mask.
Masks with glasses is a nightmare. A super tight mask works but is difficult to maintain. A super loose set up can work with your glasses perched on the end of your nose. Or experiencing life as if the world is covered in thick fog. Honestly, I haven& #39;t figured out this one.
Don& #39;t accidentally machine wash a fancy mask with a valve.
As with all the COVID advice, it is a numbers game. We don& #39;t all need to be wearing goggles and an airtight masks. The advice is that a looser mask catching droplets in both directions are effective to reduce transmission.
Speaking of spare masks, if you have a long day out with lots of mask wearing to do then it can be really nice to have a clean dry spare to put on.
Touching your mask continuously undermines the effectiveness of wearing one, so having a mask that is comfortable that you can put on and leave on without adjusting it is important.
For the same reason (no touching) my long lockdown hair became a problem and had to go [that& #39;s another thread].
Remember people cannot see your mouth. Some key body language is missing and has to be replaced with words.
You need to speak clearly and perhaps a bit louder as your voice is muffled by the mask.
Re the last one, I was coping OK with understanding the local accents and with being understood before lockdown. But conversing in a foreign country with strangers through two masks and maybe a face shield is hard.
There are a lot of ways to put together a makeshift masks. Saying you don& #39;t have one is not a good excuse. People use scarves. I have seen people just use a t-shirt with a knot to reduce the size of the neck hole.
But wearing a mask that covers too much of your face in a bank can make the staff rather nervous and is a bad idea. [Basing this tip on a sign on the door of a local bank].
Back to the little ones: it will depend on the temperament of your child, but there is an age under which good mask wearing etiquette is not achievable. See the advice above about a good fit, but don& #39;t expect too much.
In terms of washing cloth masks, the South African government has been telling everyone to always iron them between uses as part of the disinfecting process.
Wait until the end of your trip when you are about to get back into the car and take off your mask before buying your flat white.
One style of mask they sell here has a slot to place a piece of tissue paper as an extra disposable filter. Avoid. A real faff. You still need to clean the mask and I cannot count the number of pieces of tissue that went through the wash.
By "super tight" to stop glasses fogging I mean a mask that creates an air seal against your face. Apparently you can do this with tape (not tried this) or with wire in the top of the mask (tried this but couldn& #39;t get it to work well).
There is a difference between what is practical (or necessary) for a hospital doctor in an infectious disease ward and someone going down to the shops.
