Going down

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What's with the masks?

Flu season plus hayfever season started

Yep, so when people are coughing into their masks I can't be certain whether it's hay fever or the flu

They are all wanna be doctors and nurses! LOL. This is something that we should be doing in western countries. Helps a little bit to prevent the spread of colds and the flu. But when I first came here I wonder the heck they were doing!

People ride an escalator at a subway station at a business district in Tokyo on Friday.

i don't get what this article is about. can someone enlighten me please?

Like a scene from Orwell's 1984.

Bizarrely strange to see people in line getting on the escalator wearing large masks hiding most of their faces. Hopefully the picture will be going down big in that way. ;‑)

Looks like an 80's album cover for some new wave band out of Europe... :) Thinking along the lines Kraftwerk or Devo!

Paper stops low level radiation but not the flu. Sorry. Masks are a big money maker and useless.

Interesting pic !

ah yes, conformity over reason yet again. Too bad we can't get actual science done on this

This is why also i like Japan. Other than preventing themselves from flu or etc, they are using mask in order not to transmit decease to other people.

Not a super effective way. The key - which is yet to catch on with a big number of Japanese - is washing your hands. Especially after toilet time

The key - which is yet to catch on with a big number of Japanese - is washing your hands. Especially after toilet time

Most online guides to flu prevention put vaccination top of the list. After that, the advice is to cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing to stope the spread of contaminated moisture droplets. Then, washing your hands, especially after coughing or sneezing into them. (I don't see the toilet connection with spreading flu.) It seems to me that masks are perhaps better than using your hand when coughing or sneezing, as it reduces the subsequent chances of contaminating things with your hands.

I suspect many of us criticize the effectiveness of masks out of vanity. They look stupid, therefore we look for any evidence that suggest they are not effective. I know I'm guilty of that.

The main evidence for their lack of effectiveness is that everyone still catches flu. Symptoms develop days after you are infected, but you are infectious before your symptoms develop. And if you're sick, don't just go to work wearing a mask; bloody stay at home!

The flu virus is much smaller than the "weave" of the mask., but at least the mask will stop some of the body fluids that people spray into the air when they cough or sneeze.

In CA, only the chinese and koreans wear these masks in public. It must be an asian thing. No Black, White or Hispanic people wear them.

The flu virus is much smaller than the "weave" of the mask

Good point. So why not also wear latex gloves on JR Yamanote Line? All those germs on the handles, door rails, poles are worse than what is airborne.

Not a super effective way. The key - which is yet to catch on with a big number of Japanese - is washing your hands. Especially after toilet time.

And washing your hands after touching anything that thousands of people have touched in a day.

Most online guides to flu prevention put vaccination top of the list. After that, the advice is to cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing to stope the spread of contaminated moisture droplets. Then, washing your hands, especially after coughing or sneezing into them. (I don't see the toilet connection with spreading flu.) It seems to me that masks are perhaps better than using your hand when coughing or sneezing, as it reduces the subsequent chances of contaminating things with your hands.

Unfortunately, when you cover your mouth with your hands when coughing or sneezing you spread the contamination to everything else you touch --unless you fastidiously wash your hands each time and frequently sterilize your phone, keyboard, purse straps, steering wheel, doors, light switches and anything else you touch. Fortunately, in Japan many washrooms and doors and the like are touchless.

In Canada we teach children from a young age to sneeze into their elbow (or down their shirt if they're wearing short sleeves. This also helps. Your elbow doesn't touch anything else much.

The toilet connection with spreading the flu is that if you must touch something that someone else with the flu virus on their hands has touched, you can pick up the virus. If you don't wash thoroughly with soap, your risk of catching the flu increases. Unfortunately, in Japan many people also rise (not wash) their hands and wipe them on a small cloth which breeds contagion in their pockets/handbags all day. Soap is anti-bacterial and a good scrubbing does a wonderful job of minimizing the contagion still on the hands. This is why doctors "scrub up".

The flu virus is much smaller than the "weave" of the mask., but at least the mask will stop some of the body fluids that people spray into the air when they cough or sneeze.

True. Plus, it's a culturally appropriate way to look "considerate" and "dutiful" even if the practice is somewhat useless posing. The best practice when you are sick is to stay home until you have recovered; however, it's not "culturally appropriate" for Japanese people to do so because the burden of their absence falls on their coworkers who must do the job of the absentee as well as their own. Like India's sacred cows, there's not much you can do about it except to live with it and minimize your own risk while in Japan. Or anywhere else where people fail to practise excellent hygiene etiquette.

I think full Hazmat suits would be more useful. They could get them TEPCO certified. They're sitting on a goldmine!!

It protect you from flemy spitel covering the back of one,s head and neck when the person behind you on the escalator start into a coughing fit.

I agree on the cheap masks. Many masks now are certified to stop PM 2.5 and those are bought in batches by the Chinese tourists.

I do a lot of airbrushing and use a mask with replaceable filter cartridges, basic rule for us is if you can smell it you already inhaled it.

Also the Flu virus can enter the Body via eyes, etc.

Even though the masks seems to be very unpopular here, I still would rather deal with or be close to a person who has a cold or the flu and is wearing a mask than to someone who has something and does not have one on at all! It is not going to stop everything, of course, but it should stop some of it. Think of it. People just blowing air out of their noses and mouths without anything to stop it at all? And you people are going to say that you think it is the same thing? Hardly. I wear my mask as well just to make sure that it might stop something.

No Flu is air born. You catch it by poor hygiene. wash your hand before you put it to your mouth. That how easy it is from protect one self e.g. person cough into his hand, place his hand on arm rest. next person sit in same place place hand on arm rest. He feel like coughing, so pull out a hanky and cough into hanky . Without knowing he has passed the flu germ from hand to hanky to mouth. "Dilution is the solution" my surgeon friend had advise my of the first rule he was taught.