Makers distance themselves from Abe's 600-million mask pledge

Luddite:

The masks do not protect you from the virus, nor do they prevent someone with the virus from passing it on. Stop relying on the masks.

The problem is the shunning and even assault of those who dont have any masks to wear. Not having a mask is almost seen as being buck naked nowadays.

The way they're walking gives them a zombie vibe.

○○

I hope that's enough and they are compatible with air pollution in cities produced by cars.

fillmore2

As as been stated, many times, with links to stories with facts given by medical professionals in those stories, face masks can prevent viral infection in the following ways:

By stopping coughs/sneezes/saliva/mucus from getting on people's faces.

By helping us to avoid us touching our faces with dirty hands.

They CANNOT prevent viruses in the air from infecting is via our face, as the viruses are smaller than the holes in the fabric of the masks.

Thus, masks can only offer a small amount of (extra) protection to viruses.

Washing your hands, avoiding others if you/they are sick and/or coughing/sneezing into your hands (and washing them soon afterwards) or sleeve (rather than on others) are effective ways to avoid cora/flu viral infections (with hand washing the most effective).

Hope this helps.

The masks do not protect you from the virus, nor do they prevent someone with the virus from passing it on. Stop relying on the masks.

yes, but they prevent you from touching your face which is very important as not to spread germs in you.

quercetumToday  09:20 am JST

why does medical people including doctors wear masks when they potentially have a patients with transmitted disease or virus ? Why? Is it for looks ? Masks don’t help ?

Arnold,

We would all have to wear the same masks that the medical staff and doctors wear. I’m not sure if the ones worn by the four guys in the picture have the same effect as the masks worn by doctors.

Willis, or Dr. Willis,

what are you talking about Dr.? of course, higher rated masks are better, I am talking about wearing mask as protection to oneself and others, not quality of masks, ? understand ?

I wanted to stop commenting on this section but saw a comment on protecting ears !

come on man ! Ears , how the heck can you get a virus in there ? Not suppose to touch your eyes or noses but ears. Come on man ! Did you get that from Harvard Medical Journal?

PM Abe and company getting it done!!! Look at steps he has taken to meet the Mask problem:

will provide subsidies of up to 30 million yen ($270,000) for mask makers that move to invest in boosting production.

2) The government will take responsibility" in case of oversupply and build stockpiles to prepare for future emergencies.

Well Done PM Abe!!!

I'm in Australia at present and they have sold out here too. The pharmacists have told me that, the Chinese and Koreans were coming in and buying cartons of them to send back to their home countries.

Enjoy your stay in Australia, mate. 99% of pharmacies in Australia are out of masks. The 1% are selling them at a price you would reconsider whether you really want to buy. Masks for industrial works were sold out at hardware stores a month ago, too. The good news is hand sanitizers are back in stock. My wife has been able to stockpile about 100 masks for an outbreak since winter is coming in Australia. Hopefully, the year long sunshine in Queensland can keep the virus at bay.

there are too many doctors here still.

don't have medical license but know someone or heard it through grapevine.

it's fine, don't wear it, let's not say you have c19 virus, just something less, when you are sick, have a cold or flu, just spit out to poor person near you.

This is problem with some folks, they are so stubborn that the masks don't work, or so selfish that when you are sick, you don't care if you spread your nasty germs people in the train, bus or at work.

trust me, if you are near and coughing up without a mask, i will be the first one tell you to get .... out of here fool.

Absolutely pointless wearing a mask of any type since your eyes and ears are unprotected and ready to recive the virus. Personally I wear a Hazmat suit when I go out....

In America people not sick are told not to wear a mask. The main reasons are people touch their faces much more often when wearing one, touch the mouth area when removing it and then proceed to touch food and consume it. Eyeglasses often fog up so people then start touching their eyes. Noses start to drip do to the warm air coming out and being quickly in contact with cold air outside coming through the mask.

I heard this directly from talking to my niece who is a doctor.

That lucky dude in the picture: He can summon soft drinks from the Heavens!

@Chip Star It is more complicated than that.

Of course any type of mask does not completely prevent an infection. Neither from spreading, nor from contracting.

That said there seems to be an agreement that they provide decend enough protection from spreading an infection. One of the problems with corona is, that you might be infected while only showing light symptoms or even no symptoms at all. So if enough of those people would be wearing masks, that might be enough to prevent an outbreak scenario.

Corona causes (in unfortunate cases) your lungs to break down for a few days until your immune system manages to fight off the virus. In societies with good health care systems hospitals do have the nessessary equipment (a respirator for instance) to keep you alive for those days. However, the numbers are limited - so you maybe can handle 2-4 bad infections per hospital, but not 200 - therefore slowing down the infection rate is key - masks can help with that!

As to wearing a mask to prevent an infection of oneself: This is were stuff gets complicated. There are those expensive N95 masks with air filtration which are rated to block at least 95% of small particles (0.3 micron - which is the upper limit for virus sizes). They also do block smaller particles - just not 95% percent of them.

However - in a real world scenario you have to learn how to put on such a mask effectivly. It needs to maintain skin contact, as otherwise air would bypass the filtration system (also, if you have facial hair you are out of luck...). And this is where stuff gets interesting: Studies show that if you can manage close skin contact cheap masks, like the ones sold here in Japan, also can provide decent filtration: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/54/11/1569/321689

So the conclusion here would be that - while no masks provides 100% protection - it does make sense to wear them. Your personal success with infection prevention will depend on how tight you can fit your mask to your skin.

. . . .should also consider soaps which claim kill 99.9% of all bacteria, viruses . . . Softsoap, Lysol, Pinesol . . . .

Is Abe's wild number of face masks an indication he might have caught the Moronavirus from too close contact with his orange mentor who is also known for his egregious dyscalculia and unfounded exaggerations?

Here's a fun little experiment you can do at home:

Go outside in the morning when it's cold enough so that you can see the steam when you breathe. Put on your standard mask, then breathe. You will notice that when you breathe, most of the air is actually escaping through the edges of the mask and around the nose.

Good luck with those 600 million masks.

You need to change Abe mask every 3 hours. You need 3 to 4 per school day. Investing in better mask is less expansive and a better protection

What may I ask is a Abe mask?

You need 3 to 4 per school day. Investing in better mask is less expansive and a better protection

Counting family members, all we have is 1 mask every 3 or 4 days and that won’t even last past March.

With the virus being communicable without symptoms - wearing a mask doesn't just mean one believes it stops the virus, it can be that we don't know if we already have it and doing our part to prevent its spread.

SIMPLE MASK ARE NOT ENOUGH ANYMORE HERE

°

You need to pass to anti-virus one. In general, you clean them yourself and change only the filter, or just clean them without. But with a virus with filtrer is better. Anti-pollution mask are anti-viral one today too.

The disposable one are FFP2 or 3 are the one for the medical employee (you use them to do housework or woodwork too). But it works for general population too. The disposable one have to be changed every 3 hours.

This is the type usually advice for this kind of virus where the usual asian masks failed everywhere (even in japan in the princess cruse boat). So I advice to suit upper.

In France, we are passing on stade 2 alert. This is our orange alert and we are preparing the red alert (level 3). But we are late on advices.

°

Added precaution

°

Cleaned hand (you are to wash them often or wear gloves), gloves tend to be better because you won't touch your face with them and you can dispose of them when they are in fine plastic.

You will have to cover your hairs eventually.

Life in plastic coat is fantastic. It is advised to not keep close contact meeting. The virus is supposed to be general. My country wasn't testing enough people to really know the real expansion problem.

Those are simple precaution, no need to panick. The virus only deathly attack fragile people. The short term goal is to limit the hospital cases and the spreading to elderly.

°

Important

°

You can have the cov virus even a second time. Having it give you "no imunity".

And you can have the cov virus at the same time of another one who hide the corona. You have to be tested to be sure you don't have it. This is how we lost control of the virus in France : only searching for the virus and eliminating the other virus from the corona test.

And to remember :

Normal asian precautions failed. You need to change Abe mask every 3 hours. You need 3 to 4 per school day. Investing in better mask is less expansive and a better protection.

°

NadAge.

why does medical people including doctors wear masks when they potentially have a patients with transmitted disease or virus ? Why? Is it for looks ? Masks don’t help ?

Arnold,

We would all have to wear the same masks that the medical staff and doctors wear. I’m not sure if the ones worn by the four guys in the picture have the same effect as the masks worn by doctors.

For more than three weeks, I have not seen any masks or hand sanitizers in the shops. The only exception is the occasional packets of three overpriced luxury masks.

i didn’t know we get so many doctors in the comment section today, maybe these doctors need to focus on their speciality and let the real doctors do their job.

why does medical people including doctors wear masks when they potentially have a patients with transmitted disease or virus ? Why? Is it for looks ? Masks don’t help ?

Wha'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?

The masks keep your throat and nostril moist and warm.  It's obvious the masks do help protect you from the virus.

Someone didn’t bother to read any of the links I provided.

Now they are subsidizing the very industry whose production they themselves discouraged. Instead of allowing the prices to go up, which will immediately encourage producers to increase production, and encourage other producers to join in, they will now take the money from the people in the form of a tax and give it to the producers. This will not only decrease people's purchasing power even more, but it will also not help increase production significantly. Are they going to subsidize all industries, or only the mask manufacturers? If only the mask manufacturers, their increased production will still not be enough, there will still be shortages, but now people will have less money than they did before. If they allowed the price to go up, other producers would have been encouraged to stop producing whatever they are producing, and start producing masks, because of the increased profits. All the demand would have been met, and with the increased supply, prices would start falling again. Why don't these journalists ask some economists about this. Apparently nobody cares what economists think.

Really tired of these crowds and staff everywhere disappearing behind their white face doilies. Masks are not effective against the virus as the virus is smaller than the pores of the masks. The CDC does not even mention masks as a preventative. In fact, the CDC says they are not effective. What, just ask yourself, did people ever do, how did they ever survive, before there were these little goldmines for paper mask makers? Why, they carried a hankie!

Abe should have and should start on this right now...to install soap containers in all bathrooms. That will help much more!

The masks keep your throat and nostril moist and warm.  It's obvious the masks do help protect you from the virus.

Having not worn one, I'm interested to know how many hours or days each mask lasts - assuming you are well and not coughing into it.

The government "disaster planning committee" should have foreseen this and they should have a warehouse full of these for just such an occasion.

What was there to foresee? You’ve been claiming this virus is no big deal. The government doesn’t plan for “no big deals.” Who told you to change your tune from yesterday?

I'm aware the masks do very little (if anything) to stop the spread of the virus, which is mostly due to people using the wrong kind of mask and wearing them incorrectly. However, Abe and his cronies should have been on to this as soon as the virus appeared and not after they have run out. I'm in Australia at present and they have sold out here too. The pharmacists have told me that, the Chinese and Koreans were coming in and buying cartons of them to send back to their home countries.

The irony of this situation is, people are standing in huge cues for hours to buy the few masks available, which is exposing them to people who may already have the virus. Boom!

The masks do not protect you from the virus, nor do they prevent someone with the virus from passing it on. Stop relying on the masks.

So, Abe was speaking out of his butt again! Yeah, offered subsidies to produce them, but how long will it take companies to get the cash?

You don't have to be people's govt to do things for the people.

The government again doing and saying rather than talking to people that actually know.

That was not an announcement from us," a source from an industry body, the Japan Hygiene Products Industry Association, said recently, referring to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pledge to ensure 600 million masks will be made available in Japan every month.

Of course not! But now it's payback time for all industries here in Japan to collectively work together to ensure that "Dear Leader Abe's" urges become reality!