Should you wear a face mask or not?

Initially during the outbreak of COVID-19, we were all told that wearing masks was unnecessary. That unless currently ill ourselves, masks could make infection more likely. New and emerging information, including that from other nations currently battling COVID-19 as well, is calling this into question.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who initially was on board with the concept that masks were not necessary, has since decided to reevaluate that position. In an interview with NBC News, Fauci said "Given the fact that there is a degree of transmission from asymptomatic individuals who may not know that they’re infected, we need to at least examine the possibility, as long as we’re absolutely certain we don’t take the masks away from who are health care providers who need them.”

With everyone looking for the best information to protect themselves, their families, and those working to keep communities safe, it’s important to have an honest conversation on whether or not masks could help minimize the spread of coronavirus.

Yet Canada’s Health Minister Theresa Tam is still pushing the idea that masks are not useful for the general public. She states that “Our position is that put a mask on someone with symptoms if they should need essential services… If you have symptoms you have to stay at home, you should not be wandering around the community. If you need to get to a medical facility... that mask may actually be useful because now you have infectious droplets. But the key is to keep people at a two metre distance. Masks have to be utilized appropriately too, and most people haven’t learned how to use masks… So our advice right now is there is no need to use a mask for well people.”

Masks should not be taken out of the hands of medical providers and first responders. To be clear, those on the front lines need all of the protection they can get to stay safe and healthy. Their lives are valuable and so are the lives of their families.

But we also need to honestly evaluate the evidence as it becomes available. There is no benefit in hiding information from the public, or being unwilling to change recommendations as more data makes new courses appear wiser.

Some of the early arguments against masks were that they made people touch their faces more frequently, increasing the potential for infection. This is a valid concern and people need to be aware of how much they are touching their faces, especially in public, whether they are wearing a mask or not. Rubbing your mouth, nose, or even eyes with hands with the coronavirus can lead to infection, and we are still trying to flatten the curve.

There is also a critical shortage of all PPE (personal protective equipment), including masks, so what consumers are currently able to buy on the market is often untested, unregulated, and potentially ineffective. Home based sewers are taking the shortage into their own hands, spending hours and hours carefully stitching masks for both home and hospital use. Patterns for these masks vary, and so do the supplies, but the goal is total unity: help protect those who need protection.

And this home sewing brings us full circle to home sewing in the past, with a similar goal—that of the women who made homespun dresses during the Revolutionary War. When the British began taxing goods, American women responded by holding spinning bees, or spinning groups at home, to produce their own cloth. These women and their time spent making items and doing without things they’d earlier relied on helped inspire the Revolution.

This is our time to come together—while staying far, far apart, preferably at 4 meters—and to sew for our communities. For our families. For our medical facilities. For the idea that no disease can break us, can ruin our lives, can wreck the society we’ve built. This virus will be brought under control just like every obstacle that has come before. And when the social distancing measures are able to be eased and we can go back to normal life, may it be a life more focused on helping those around us.

Sewing masks isn’t just about stopping the disease at whatever level they help do that. It’s about people caring for others and being focused on a goal bigger than themselves. Masks might be part of the answer to our public health crisis. But this is also the potential answer to another societal problem—how to help others care about each other. The care that motivates people to spend hours sewing in the service of others is a bright light in the midst of the current darkness.

This is an illness that relies on individuals to self-isolate, to take precautions to ensure the safety of their families and communities. Whether or not we don a face mask is also our responsibility, and though our health care workers are in the most need of those that are manufactured with the utmost safety in mind, the rest of us can easily use those materials that we have on hand.

Whether our government officials are willing to admit the obvious, that protecting your face from spreading disease and from inhaling the viral droplet of others is a worthwhile undertaking, it behooves us all to take precautions to protect ourselves, those we love, and our nations. We can sew our own masks from 100 percent cotton, and we can share them, leaving the heavy hitting N-95 masks for those on the front lines.