I'm getting second thoughts about facemasks. I am sure they do indeed help contain the spread of the virus.
BUT THEY ARE BECOMING [...]
16-18 months ago, here, they were much more obvious, even slightly before it was mandated. In fact, it was the early-adopters who came along to the initial socially-distanced queue for the supermarket, winding its elongated way around a hastilly constructed set of barriers placed snaking-round the quiet end of the carpark, already blue-masked and
bluer-gloves. My favourites were the two young women who seemingly had dressed up for shopping (no kidding - short skirts, revealing top, uncomfortable footwear, at least one with a puffy faux-fur jacket pretty much falling off her shoulders, YGTI) who I'm gonna assume were care-home staff 'off-shift' in the middle of the day with no real evidence (especially their clothing) but for their easy and carefree use of the then rare-as-hen's-teeth 'PPE'.
...
anyway, however few there were of the blue-maskers, you'd see them all over the place around the supermarket carpark where their single-useness had been uncerimoniously ended, and even in country verges where wind and/or window-dumped had sent them drifting.
These days I don't see so many of these. Obviously all those not litterpicked/drifted under the hedges out of sight are still extant, they've been found in reefs and deep ocean and have spread out (apparently[1]), but the numbers visible are surprisingly low (still non-zero). What I do see are cloth-based masks. Still plastics-/polymers-heavy, even if as microplastic shedding, but Leviticus-defying mixed-fabric constructions. And, meaningfully, obviously
accidental discards, not one-use-then-bye-bye but ones with corporate logos, superheros, fashionable animal-stripes/spots, clearly a chosen and reusable mask that might even have its loss rued rather than just one in a long line of packaged single-trip ones.
(In my own pocket, if I check, I probably currently have three masks. Two of the 'spares' reusable but not fashionable ones that I dislike because they're particular difficult to prevent glasses-steaming with, seemingly forcing all air (not going through the dense filtering cloth) straight up the bridge of my nose; and a 'one use blue mask' I was forced to use at one of my jab visits, because I didn't want to just chuck it without thought (incidentally, it seems to filter much less and indiscriminately side-flow in all directions much more). As it was used for only around half an hour, it seemed to me that (with time enough to deprecate any actual pathogens it filtered in any given instance) it would act as a spare-spare. Though it probably looks a bit scrunched now so may not be accepted by another "you must use a blue mask!" venue, in future.
Also in my pocket I
should have another blue-mask (from the other jab-visit, with same issues and intents) and my 'old faithful' mask, hand-crafted in the early days and - for something made to a general pattern - very much comforting[2] and washed regularly (in cycle with the spares). But I've managed to lose both (adding to whatever verge/hedgerow/gutter-load there already was) at one or other post-pocket-delving time when I've been careless. (Though, in my early days, I kept my nice-mask in a sandwich bag for over-finnicky 'biosecure' extraction/re-envelopment, and at least I no longer had it in that, so the bag isn't causing trouble with the environment at the same time.)
[1] Alhough I'm betting the source of these are as likely
properly disposed masks then improperly packed in a 'garbage container' for transnational 'recycling' of the current controversial sort, then suffered the fate of many a shipped container of being lost in a storm and spilling out to be trapped in a plastics gyre or settling far from habitation but really not that far from shipping lanes.
[2] Triple-layered fabric and nicely face-hugging. It had a length of (I think) straightened paperclip in the 'top' edge (though only by feeling for it can you tell which way up it should be) that helps to crimp around the nose profile and prevents spectacle-steam quite convincingly. I miss it.
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Topic: Untamed Virus Containment Thread:COVID-19: Lurking Omni-Flu Edition (Read 423934 times)