Refuse or shop somewhere else.

So they will be handing them out at the door? Or at least selling them. I have not seen any on the store's shelves, I keep wondering where these people are getting them, or do they just have one they keep wearing.

I have sewn a few for myself and friends and family. If you don't sew, you can easily use a scarf, or make one from a handkerchief. If you have scissors, there are instructions on how to cut a tee shirt. I actually think the tee shirt ones might be the best as they kind of mold to the face. You can also cut a sheet into one.

A cloth bag with the eyes cut out will probably do. Balaclava is great too.

Well, they didn't say what kind of mask, so probably not N95, which you can't get anyway, and probably not a surgical mask, also difficult to procure.

It's easy enough to make a mask out of an old t-shirt or even an old pillowcase, using a pair of scissors. Google "no sew" face masks. You can go fancy and use rubber bands or ponytail hair elastics for other no-sew masks.

Wearing a mask helps me to remember to NOT touch my face with my hands. Once I get home, or in the car, I take it off and wash it with hot water and dish soap along with washing your hands and disinfecting what you touch--it's really for rhinoviruses (0.05 microns, I think) and it does offer a bit of protection, and not for COVID-19 which is 0.02 microns.

Yeah, I used to work in a hospital for 6 years.

I'd mentioned in the other thread about how cranky everyone was at the local trucker who imported Covid into our teeny town, especially when word got out the DIL was running around doing local shopping, rather than maintaining quarantine and asking for delivery. The local grocery store checkers started wearing masks as soon as they got word.

Most of them were wearing regular masks, but there was one guy who just had something black over his nose and mouth, kind of like a piece of ski clothing. I felt really bad for him for a moment, until I got closer, and remembered he liked anime, and he reeeeeeeally liked Naruto, and it was a ninja hood for a cosplay costume and he was probably happy as a clam for the opportunity to wear it at work. :)

I no longer sew and no longer have a sewing machine, but I just made some pretty good masks out of men's white handkerchiefs, elastic, and safety pins.

They look very odd, fit well, and have a pocket to put a coffee filter into them.

The local Walmart has had a large display for fat quarters forever and it looks like no one ever buys any because it is all really ugly fabric. Yesterday, almost all of that had been sold, so my guess is that a lot of people are making masks.

I have a stash of bandanas I used whenever doing woodworking, or used as sweat bands . Those should suffice.

Grocery store worker deaths AREN’t coming into the headlines, because this virus just doesn’t seem to have deadly effects in younger, fit people. Oh, there are those few exceptions, where it wipes out a whole family, but, I would think that has more to do with the family members possessing some genes that just don’t play well with COVID-19. It’s more about keeping essential employees from spreading it back to their elders, who are overwhelming the healthcare system.

Deanna gets it. A big part of wearing masks is to protect others from you, not necessarily just the other way around.

It's not all about YOU -- sometimes, it is about THEM. Do the employees a favor and wear a mask as requested. Or, as was said above, you are free to shop somewhere else.

- John...

One of the biggest concerns with masks is, if they are uncomfortable, the wearer handles them. Excessively.

I went to the doctor’s office the other day for something non-Covid -19 related. ( my doctor requested, based on my symptoms.) Anyway, it was extremely easy to spot who was a health care worker with training, and who was clerical. Every, and I mean EVERY clerical person was re- tying, or adjusting, or tweaking their masks with bare hands, then touching all the objects around them. Phones, pens and other office stuff.

The person at the door asked for my ID, which I gladly got out for her. She went to take it from my hand, with the same gloves she had taken all of the other IDs. I gently moved it away from her. She said ‘ oh, yeah.’ Or something like that ( her voice was ‘masked’) Then she wanted to put her finger on it to touch it to read the name. Again, I gently moved it away. In other words, she had been told, or trained somewhere to NOT HANDLE things patients possess, but habits of taking the ID from the person to look at it, and handing it back are so just built into our ‘muscle memory’ that we do them reflexively. I saw for the patient she was checking in as I left that she clutched her gloved hands together, to remember to not take the card when handed it, just read information as the patient held the card. Good girl.

When I go into the hardware store to get some caulk today, I’ll be wearing mask and cotton gloves. The checkouts there use only a hand scanner, not a flatbed scanner, so I will hold the caulk such that each tube can be scanned without the cashier having to touch what I was just touching. I will bet any of you four pairs of my white cotton gloves, or one individually wrapped disposable N-95 mask that said cashier WILL attempt to handle the caulk anyway. The other day, when we bought dog food, dish detergent, and a few snacks, we had them laid out in the shopping cart so cashier could scan them without touching the items. She reached in and touched them anyway. No, she wasn’t lifting them to see if we had hidden items underneath, I had just spaced things out right in front of her, she saw me do that. She lifted them to get the angle of the hand scanner and the item aligned, instead of just moving the hand scanner ( wand, as it is sometimes called.)

We can try to protect those front line workers from bringing home the germs to their families, but, wearing an UNCOMFORTABLE mask just leads to more handling of the mask. So, I gently suggest, if you have a very soft bandana, that MAY be a better alternative to constantly touching an uncomfortable mask. And, handle items as LITLE AS POSSIBLE. Even cotton garden gloves will provide a modicum of protection for the others that may have to handle that item after you.

Yes, it IS about protecting others. BUT, let’s not blame others, or repeat tales in small towns that blame others, and potentially harm their children when small town urban legends grow and grow. No one is exempt from this. It’s the VIRUS that is to blame, not the people in our communities. Spreading stories about one families’ scared response is NOT helpful.

NE, it's just being considerate.

Kind of like no shirt, no shoes, no service, or not going to Walmart in your pajamas. :) Someone might not feel like they have the need to dress up to get a Big Mac or go buy a cheap tv... but it makes other people feel better if they do. ;)

No way. The only mask that I'm wearing in public is the freedom mask. The one that is invisible and unverifiable, like the virus.

You people are too funny. The head of New York city transit said they lost 59 drivers to the virus even though they had masks and all equipment and plans in place. The authorities told them not to wear them

Ally, Moby, and others, wear a mask, but DON’t be TOUCHING that mask. And re-tying every five minutes. And pulling it down when you want to speak clearly to someone.

AND, don’t be handling things unnecessarily. The person putting it on the grocery shelves has to handle it once, the person buying it has to handle it ONCE. IF the store does NOT have a means to checkout with a cashier handling things, then the cashier should handle things ONLY ONCE.. AND WASH HANDS between customers, or change gloves between customers.

And, that last part is where it gets all a little absurd. There aren’t enough gloves to change between customers, so that cashier’s gloves would be where germs are most likely to be transmitted.

The other thing to think about is, because this is a brand new virus, to humans, there will be people who are completely incapable of surviving this, no matter when exposed. And, as we are seeing, many people can also carry this with very mild, non-apparent symptoms.

Indeed - I bought that up a long time ago when this started. People don't know how to wear masks and/or aren't used to it -- and end up touching their face a bunch more than they would otherwise. So, for some, masks do make it worse. You have to train yourself, over time, to wear them properly and not touch them.

And Busy is very much correct in that no matter what you do, other people will continue to screw this up. That is why we do our best and go from there.

I forgot my mask today when I had to pick up mail at my P.O. box, so I took a hand towel that I keep in my car and wrapped it around and held it with one hand.

And there sat the postal clerk, no gloves, no mask, messing with her SmartPhone. Oy.

NE: To answer your question... Again, sometimes we do things because it is better for others. We try NOT to be selfish and we try to NOT just decide that we're going to do whatever we want and screw everyone else.

Again, you can be "sick" and not have symptoms yet. You can spread this to people without knowing that you have it. And lots of people can certainly spread it to others regardless of how much they "aren't buying into the idea that they are infected."

It doesn't matter how much in denial you are, you can still get it and have it and spread it.

So, again, you buck up and wear the stupid mask to be kind to your fellow man -- just on the SLIGHT chance that you might have it. Because, so far, over half a million people in the USA that probably thought that they only had a SLIGHT chance of catching it, DID catch it. And over 25,000 of them are now dead.

- John...

If you can find it on the internet, Dr. Phil just did a segment on TV "COVID-19/Branded and Scorned" and in it he mentioned that in reality about 85% of those who get COVID-19 recover and survive. He talked about how the media just mainly concentrates on the deaths and not on the survival rate.

I will not wear a mask. Most people that I know are not wearing masks. The ones that I do know who are, tend to be neurotic most of the time anyways. Although it doesn't apply to all of them, that pretty much sums it up. If you are that scared, stay home. You can order groceries online and get them delivered to your house.

‘ I would do a disservice to cover up....’ lol!

At your atmosphere, NE, you don’t breathe the same air as us anyways.

Dr. Phil apparently said: "in reality about 85% of those who get COVID-19 recover and survive."

Um, that number doesn't even make sense. That would suggest that 15% of people who get COVID-19 do NOT recover or survive? The survival rate is much higher than that, of course. (Current numbers are probably about 1-2% dying, but I think the number is likely less than that -- but, even conservatively, well over 95% of people who get it would "recover and survive." So, it is actually much better than what even "Doctor" Phil suggests.

But, that doesn't really matter. If 1-4 in 100 people with it die, that'd still be incredibly bad, of course. We're at over 600,000 infected in the USA right now and 25,000+ deaths. It doesn't mean people are "panicking" just because they want to continue to slow that down.

AllyM, Adjusting mask gets respiration droplets on your fingers, then your fingers go about their business touching things, spreading the germs to others.

Now, if one is ONLY wearing a mask to protect themselves and ta heck with others, adjust away. No, don’t . If one is ONLY concerned for one’s own health, but couldn’t give a care about others then stay out of society.

Um, Bill de Blasio is not the Governor of NY. He's the Mayor of NYC. Andrew Cuomo is the Governor of NY.

As for the deaths you are talking about... It was announced over a week ago now that there were about 3000 deaths in NYC that were very likely COVID-19, but there were not enough tests at the time to find out for certain. They have decided that, yes, they are going to count those as very likely COVID-19 deaths. Again, that is likely what they were.

Ben

Sure, John. And the guy that gets hit and killed by a car while walking across the street should also be blamed on Covic 19 because the driver might have been thinking about it when he ran him over.

Give me a break!

About a week ago I started wearing a mask every time I entered a store. I did it by choice -- there is no rule here that you have to do it.

There is a lot that they still don't understand about this virus. I've read that it may not only damage the lungs, but also other internal organs. I figure why take the chance? If the mask helps at all, it's worth it.

JB: Yeah, that isn't what happened with those 3000 dead, sorry. Again, not enough tests were available to test the dead at the time (and still not now in many areas). These were very likely COVID-19 deaths that should have been marked as such.

This isn't people getting hit by a car and counted as COVID-19.

Heck, the stats show that deaths in NYC are up like an extra 5000 compared to "usual" where they can just look at least year. So, there are likely even MORE being NOT counted as COVID-19 that are there. It likely should be several thousand MORE than they are trying to count even.

Again, this is just math and statistics going on. This isn't some conspiracy to count people hit by cars as COVID-19 cases! Come on.

- John...

NE - starting tomorrow morning, you need a mask to go into any place of business. I think a bandana is probably okay as masks are hard to come by and many don't come close to meeting the medical requirements - and you'll be ready to be a train robber down the road.

Charlie, they were NOT letting anyone who did no have an appointment in the building. Period.

Then when I got to my doctor’s office, the receptionist verified my insurance. But, the ID check at the door was to keep any stray people out. I , speaking for me personally, think this just meant I had to interact with one MORE person than in a normal doctors appointment.

I would prefer a store with such a rule.

Shows they care.

BRAD