In Holland people have been advised not to wear facemasks. This seems to have had its origin in the right wing desire to create herd immunity, even though they say that the reason is to reserve face masks for nurses etc. There was a claim that masks don’t work -for this reason-. Of course basic logic defeats this advice, because 1. Masks do work against spreading and 2. Even if there is a masks shortage, people could improvise their own. One reason to prevent the use of basic masks (for building for example) is that these can contain anti-fungal toxins (to protect agains mold during storage) that are also toxic for humans. The general consensus is that wearing a mask is beneficial.
A masks is a very unreliable thing though, a piece of cloth will catch aerosol droplets in its pores, so then the virus lives in the cloth, until you touch it and then touch your face and so the risk of contamination is still there. We are a bit puzzled why there are no suggestions to wear better gear, a backbreather as we call it (maybe not the best name sowwy), that more or less eliminate all risk of aerosol contamination except from the hands or skin. The idea is simple, don’t get the air at face height, use a big filter so the pressure drop is low, and wear it around your waist. Can be run on Lithium batteries. Mouth, nose and eyes are covered by the breathing mask with overpressure. Should be fairly easy to heat mold masks like this.
The basic advantage of this mask is that you can let people hang out with each other, especially if you screen them for fever and infection with fast methods (10 mins is possible) what will be the risk of spreading the virus then? Keeping distance is great but unreliable. Many filter products don’t cover the eyes, so this is a small change to make them usefull. Time to innovate in this field. We need ways to move about freely and we need them asap.