This is Emory University Hospitals' current advice to it health professionals:
- We know people can be contagious with COVID before they develop symptoms, or when they have very mild symptoms. Therefore, if you are sick and don’t know it yet, the mask helps prevent you from breathing, speaking, or coughing the virus out into the environment and infecting other people.
- Wearing a mask helps protect your colleagues, and your colleagues wearing masks helps protect you. If we all wear masks, we are keeping each other and our patients safe.
- Wearing a mask reinforces our message to the public and our community – maintaining social distancing and wearing masks when unable to do so helps flatten the curve.
- When our patients see us wearing masks, they take away the message that we really care about their safety and about flattening the curve.
And this is what our nation's advice to the public should be as we plan to open up the country (perhaps it will be its advice_we'll see):
- We know people can be contagious with COVID before they develop symptoms, or when they have very mild symptoms. Therefore, if you are sick and don’t know it yet, the mask helps prevent you from breathing, speaking, or coughing the virus out into the environment and infecting other people.
- Wearing a mask helps protect the public when you are out and about or with other people, and the public, your family and your friends wearing masks help protect you. If we all wear masks, we are keeping each other, our family, our friends, our acquaintances and the general public safe.
- Wearing a mask reinforces our message to the public, our community, our family, our relatives (all of us) – maintaining social distancing and wearing masks when unable to do so, i.e. maintaining social distancing, helps flatten the curve and prevent a surge in COVID-19 illness.
- When everyone see us wearing masks, they take away the message that we really care about their safety and about flattening the curve and avoiding a relapse or surge in the pandemic.
Let's all give this some thought. You don't need the State or Federal Government to have some common sense.
Dr. T