Masks essential to healing

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By Judy Siedlecki

It will be mandatory to wear a mask in public effective May 1, per governor JB Pritzker.

Why wear a mask? Say you’re walking down the aisle at the grocery store wearing no mask, another person walking down that same aisle not wearing a mask, sneezes, or coughs, into the air. Unbeknownst even to them because they may be asymptomatic with COVID-19, you come along even minutes later and you walk right into the droplet spray still invisibly hanging there. You have now been exposed to the disease.

According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) is thought to be three to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure. It’s possible that some may be contagious for several days before they become symptomatic. You may not get sick at all, or only mildly sick, but you’ve unwittingly exposed any family or friends you encounter in the meantime which could be deadly to them, especially if they have a weakened immune system. You wear a mask to protect others and want others to wear a mask to protect you.

A study from MIT noted that germs from one sneeze could travel from 19 feet to 26 feet and up to 100 miles per hour. That’s why it’s so important to sneeze, or cough, into the crook of your elbow. Wearing a mask would keep that spray out of the air. You wear a mask for others not to get sick from you.

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, in the study of immunology and other infectious viruses since 1984, just the mere droplets we expose to the air from breathing are enough to infect another person. Learning how virulent this virus is, he suggested we wear masks in public and why we keep six-foot distances from each other.

As deadly as the flu can be and kill as many as 56,000 individuals each year, this virus has killed that many in one month in the United States. There is no vaccine. Be thoughtful of others, wear a mask in public.

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